7/26/16

Why Donald Trump is not a Psychopath

Back in the early 60s when I first began studying psychology, nymphomania was a thing.  As my abnormal psych professor, the late, great Frank Lackner said, it referred to women who liked sex too much.

The question arose, of course, as to how much was too much.  Apparently too much meant more than whatever the attending psychiatrist felt was appropriate for a woman.

No, really! Some doctor got to tell us we had a mental illness based on his own personal comfort level about sex. Alrighty, then.

Things took a huge shift in the 1970s, when the organization that sets up the various categories of mental illness became more research based and less grounded in the theories of Sigmund Freud. With that shift came lots of changes in how people thought about mental illness.  Liking sex too much was still a thing, but the focus was on whether this liking was making a person’s life difficult or painful and whether it was out of their control.  And that’s where it remains today.

NONE of this has anything to do with Donald Trump.

What does concern us here is that the term Psychopath also dropped out of use in American psychiatry at about the same time and was replaced by the less melodious Anti-Social Personality.  Since psychopath is the term I’ve seen used to describe Trump, we have to go hunting elsewhere for a definition. And that brings us to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.  You can find the checklist here.  

After a semi-structured interview, the individual is rated on 20 items. They get a score of 0 (doesn’t apply), 1 (applies) or 2 (really applies!) for each item. If they score 30 or more points, then Hare would say they seem to behave like those who are psychopaths.

We don’t have a semi-structured interview, but we have lots of data to work with. So if you like,  apply this to Mr. Trump. When I do, I get a score of around 20.* 

Not a psychopath.  But in a bit, we’ll have a whole ‘nother conversation about Narcissists…

BIG WARNING:  You may find this exercise so engaging that you want to apply it to more personal friends and acquaintances.  Don’t do it. This will lead to nothing but trouble. Sit on your hands. Seriously.

*The Goldwater Rule

Back in the 1960s again, conservative Barry Goldwater was running against Lyndon Johnson for the presidency. Fact magazine asked American psychiatrists if they felt Goldwater was psychologically fit to serve as president. Most didn’t answer, but those who felt he wasn’t fit said, among other things, that he was schizophrenic or  psychotic or narcissistic.  The article was published, Goldwater sued and won, and Fact folded.  Not long after, the American Psychiatric Association developed an ethics guideline that says that shrinks shouldn’t diagnose public figures unless they’ve examined them and received permission to publish.

I am not a psychiatrist. I am a retired professor of psychology who once held a certificate in Psychodiagnostics from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, did an internship in community mental health, and taught Abnormal Psych for 40+ years. In all those years I mostly refrained from diagnosing living people I hadn't met. Mostly. Except for Charles Manson. Oh, and Charlie Sheen. And I didn't even know about the Goldwater Rule.

For a fascinating but rather casual run through the matter, check out Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

Or for a meatier read, try Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door. 

7/16/16

Televangelism

On a hot summer night in the early 1960s, my brother and I and a couple of friends visited a tent revival in a small Tennessee town. As secular Jews, we were intensely curious.  As teenagers, we were under strict orders from my mom to behave ourselves.  She needn’t have bothered. It was fascinating and moving and utterly alien. We never said a peep.

People spoke in tongues. People confessed to the most personal of sins. People were cured of ills. Or at least they said they were. I had never seen anything like it. So different from the austere Reform Judaism I practiced.

A couple of friends have asked me to blog on televangelists and why they’re so successful, even in light of repeated exposure of how some spend their money. Other than that Tennessee night, I have little experience with evangelism of any kind, but I'm happy to give it a shot. 

Psychologically, conservatives and liberals each rely on five basic moral foundations in deciding what to believe.  However, they give vastly different weights to some of these, one of which is sanctity: It’s important to conservatives and a non-starter for most liberals. In practice, for example, liberals give about the same percentage to charity as conservatives, but the conservatives are giving to religious organizations and liberals to secular ones. That means it's likely that the viewers who are watching and donating to televangelists are conservatives. That also means they're more likely to respond to authority (another non-starter for liberals), as represented by the pastor on TV asking for money. And that brings us back to televangelism.

Theologically, as an agnostic Jew, I’m out of my depth. I don’t get it. However, there are people who do.  Zack Hunt is one. And I’m totally stealing John Oliver’s clip from his blog on the topic.  Don’t miss what Hunt has to say, though. He really knows what he’s talking about. His blog can be found here: Zack Hunt blog.  But watch Oliver first.

7/12/16

No, this isn’t political psychology, but it’s so cool I thought I’d blog about it anyway. The next blog will be back on topic. Stay tuned.

The Lipstick Effect

During 2008, a time when the economy was suffering record declines in sales, L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, still posted an increase in earnings. Now that’s weird right? 

Apparently not.

 

In times of economic stress, women will devote some of their very limited resources to improving their appearance. This is called the Lipstick Effect. So even though women will cut back on most non-essential items, they will spend more, not less, to make themselves more attractive.  Why would they do that?

The general theory has been that this is driven by evolutionary motives: women facing hardships will focus on reproductive growth rather than personal growth. That means finding a partner who can provide food and security for her and their children. And since men are driven to find mates that are physically attractive, a successful strategy means being as attractive as possible. Ergo: The Lipstick Effect.

However, the latest research, that popped up in my inbox this morning, suggests that women have additional reasons to look good in times of stress: their jobs.

When people appear more attractive, they are also seen as more competent and more intelligent.  With more and more women in the workplace, and especially during times of economic stress, even a little edge can make the difference between finding or keeping a job or even getting a promotion. So money spent on makeup is actually money well spent.

Whatever is driving this, when the economy tanks, the cosmetics industry thrives. I should have bought stock in L’Oreal!

7/8/16

Facts don’t change opinions.  Emotions do.

When it comes to politics, liberals and conservatives have different, intuitive emotions tied to values that determine whether we approach a fact or avoid it.  Those leanings may well be hard wired into the brain, so they're very, very important!


Liberals are focused on things like care/harm and fairness/equality. If you want to push my liberal buttons, make it about being fair. I’ll listen to you. Equal pay is about fairness. Labor unions, dear to liberal hearts, are in part about fairness. That's not a coincidence. 

Conservatives are focused on a broader array of things that include loyalty, authority, sanctity, purity (in-group similarity), and liberty as well as equality and harm. They're interested in fairness and avoiding harm, but they're also interested in all these other things.

Yelling at people or presenting charts of data don’t work because people don’t first connect with them emotionally. As a result, they won't change people's minds  As the Redneck Liberal says, Hillary Clinton could sell his Social Security number and a photo of his nude wife to Kim Jong Il, and he still wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. 

If you want to get a liberal to listen to conservative facts, you first need to indicate respect for the things that liberals value.  That gets them to pay attention. Then show how those values can be applied to conservative issues.

If you want to get a conservative to listen to liberal facts, you need to do the same thing.  Appeal to their patriotism, for example. Show that it is important and valuable. And then show how that value of patriotism can be applied to liberal issues. For example, if you want more conservative buy-in to the notions of a diverse and inclusive society, make it about values that conservatives already hold.  Make it about patriotism. Make it about Americans. And get John Cena, 250 pounds of red-blooded American male, to sell the notion to the American people. 

YouTube Link

(Note the use of patriotic imagery throughout the video. There's as much red, white and blue as there are facts about diversity.)

7/5/16

The Zombie Apocalypse

I asked people via SurveyMonkey, who is more likely to survive a zombie apocalypse, liberals or conservatives?  Here's what you had to say.

About half the liberals said the liberals would survive.  About two thirds of the conservatives said the conservatives would survive.  And for totally different reasons.

The liberals (and the others who voted for liberals) said it was because liberals were better at getting along with each other, so they could cooperate more and defend themselves better.  They were also noted for being more original and creative than conservatives, good talents to have when facing an army of the undead. On the down side, liberals were seen as more tender-hearted and thus less likely to survive.

The conservatives (and the vast majority of the others who voted for conservatives) said it was because they were better armed. 

 

The response of “guns” was so overwhelming, I felt compelled to check it out.  Are conservatives, in fact, more likely to have guns than liberals or moderates? The answer is yes!  Conservative respondents, as documented in several different surveys, are about TWICE as likely to have guns as liberals.  But it’s still less than 50% of conservatives.

About 25% of all respondents said it doesn’t matter because behavior in that kind of situation is unpredictable or because we're all gonna die anyway or because each group brings its own set of skills to the problem.  As one moderate said:

They each have their pros and cons. Conservatives are more likely to be carrying the big guns to kill the zombies but have an "every man for themselves" mentality. Liberals are more likely to work together and have a team mentality, however they will lack the firepower and have to resort to hand to hand combat unless Katniss shows up!

 So there you go. It takes both.