Jesse Bering
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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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The last several generations of my paternal lineage were filled with crafty, unctuous souls—men who smiled too easily in conversations with strangers and women who appeared vacuously sweet but in reality could outfox the Devil. Well, perhaps that’s a bit strong. But in this genealogical mixer of traveling salesmen, reverends, nurses, and factory workers, a certain ingratiatory capacity has indeed always struck me as being an especially prominent feature of the Bering disposition.
Take my father, for example. His particular magic, which he has performed for as long as I can remember, lies in the subtle ways he responds toward people from all walks of life. Chances are, you wouldn’t recognize it happening, but soon enough he could sell you Heaven-on-a-stick if he wanted to. How? He’d do it through his rapt attention and his frequent nods to your banal stories, his laughter at your most wanting of jokes, his smiling assent to even your strangest of thoughts. In fact, throughout the 1980s and early 90s, I watched him use these tacit measures of persuasion to go from a meager salesman for Eveready Batteries to become one of the senior vice presidents at Borden, Inc.
Of course, my father isn’t always sincere in his agreeable affectations, but I suspect he isn’t entirely insincere either. Rather, for him, these nonverbal behaviors are more like a behavioral heuristic—automatically deployed because they’ve proven to be socially effective. A recent study conducted by University of California, Berkeley psychologists Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner may explain why my paternal pedigree is synonymous with affirmative head-nods, engaging smiles, inquisitive eyebrow raises, and good-natured laughter: my immediate ancestors were mostly broke, or at least to some degree financially bereft. My father’s father was a factory man, his mother an office assistant at the same plant; theirs was a lower middleclass family that never quite lived off the dole, but which was usually only a paycheck away from such a gloomy post-Depression era prospect.
Kraus and Keltner’s study, published in last month’s issue of Psychological Science, shows that individuals who are low on traditional measures of socioeconomic status (SES) (their family earns less than the state’s median income) demonstrate more “engagement cues” in conversations than do their wealthier peers. The authors hypothesized this effect based on the following evolutionary theory:
In nonhuman species, the ability to assess resource displays accurately leads to preferred mating opportunities and the avoidance of costly, aggressive encounters in negotiations of status. In humans, nonverbal displays of the capacity to provide resources are likely to be important in mate selection, as well as in group members’ attempts to identify individuals suitable for positions of leadership.
In other words, the rich can afford to be relatively aloof in their conversational exchanges. However, those of us whose net worth is in negative equity tend to be more attentive communicative partners, since we have more to gain by being liked. With resources aplenty, powerful people are less dependent on others, and this translates to their being more disengaged in everyday social interactions.
Although Kraus and Keltner do not articulate the evolutionary mechanics of this phenomenon very deeply, their naturalistic explanation of nonverbal behavior should not be taken to mean that such behaviors are “innate” to whatever SES milieu one happens to be born into. On the contrary, snooty rich kids probably have snooty rich parents and snooty rich friends, and at least to some degree they may have learned to mimic these behaviors. However such behaviors come about developmentally, the evolutionary interpretation accounts for why the wealthy are “disengaged” and the less wealthy “engaged” during social interactions—and not the other way around.
In their study, Kraus and Keltner asked over 100 undergraduate students to engage in a short interaction (a five-minute “get-acquainted” conversational exchange) with a complete stranger. Seated in chairs and facing each other about 3 ft apart, students were told to describe themselves to this other student, then to converse freely for the remaining five-minutes. The students were completely naïve to the purpose of the study, which was to examine their nonverbal behaviors during this brief exchange with the other person. (A hidden video camera recorded the session.) Rather, they were told that the study was about effective strategies for job interviews, and that the get-acquainted interaction was simply a warm-up for the actual study.
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5 Comments
Add CommentI'm afraid Plato, the ancient Greek Philosopher, might disagree with the author somewhat. In his book, "The Just Society", Plato stated: "and, again, if he be more orderly and has learned courage from discipline he moves less, but if he be a coward, and has no training or self control, he makes greater and more violent movements, and, in general when he is speaking or singing he is not altogeather able to keep his body still; and so out of the imitation of words in gestrues the whole art of dancing has arisen."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThus, Plato, as have many other ancient and renowned philosophers, has noted that personal self control is evidence of both good breeding and good education.
Does the study acknowledge an individual's ability to "lie" or ability to provide false cues? Imitation of the wealthy is a popular hobby, especially for school children. And therefore the main conclusion I draw is that our social cues represent our self perception or self projection, more so than our actual socioeconomic background.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes the study acknowledge an individual's ability to "lie" or ability to provide false cues? Imitation of the wealthy is a popular hobby, especially for school children. And therefore the main conclusion I draw is that our social cues represent our self perception or self projection, more so than our actual socioeconomic background.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.wealthyperspective.blogspot.com
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Here is a neat blog about high-end expensive stuff for rich people only. I like the stuff in the articles (duh) it made me laugh at least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.wealthyperspective.blogspot.com
enjoy