Psychopathic Leadership, Part Three: Self-confidence over Self-knowledge: Grandiosity in Psychopathic Leadership
Part Three of Our Ancient Ambivalence toward the Psychopathic Leader
τοῦ ὦν δὴ πεδίου τούτου τοῦ μεγάλου οὐκ ἐλαχίστην μοῖραν μετέχουσι οἱ Μασσαγέται, ἐπ᾽ οὓς ὁ Κῦρος ἔσχε προθυμίην στρατεύσασθαι. πολλά τε γάρ μιν καὶ μεγάλα τὰ ἐπαείροντα καὶ ἐποτρύνοντα ἦν, πρῶτον μὲν ἡ γένεσις, τὸ δοκέειν πλέον τι εἶναι ἀνθρώπου, δευτέρα δὲ ἡ εὐτυχίη ἡ κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους γενομένη: ὅκῃ γὰρ ἰθύσειε στρατεύεσθαι Κῦρος, ἀμήχανον ἦν ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἔθνος διαφυγεῖν.
The greater part of this wide plain is the country of the Massagetae, against whom Cyrus was eager to lead his army. For there were many weighty reasons that impelled and encouraged him to do so: first, his birth, because of which he seemed to be something more than mortal; and next, his victories in his wars: for no nation that Cyrus undertook to attack could escape from him (Herodotus, Histories 1.204, translation Godley).
A LINK BETWEEN PARANOIA, NARCISSISM, AND PSYCHOPATHY. This article is a continuation of a consideration of the question, how psychopathic do leaders need to be, or more specifically, what traits of psychopathy do leaders need to have — and to what degree? In Part One we explored why this question matters and laid out a general framework for thinking about the psychological stresses that leaders face in terms of some salient features of leadership (responsibility, accountability, prestige, and authority). In Part Two we considered the pros and cons of the first trait on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), glibness and superficial charm. Here we look at a trait often associated with narcissism, but also considered part of the paranoid personality disorder and psychopathy, namely, grandiosity.
To continue briefly with Ted Bundy as our example, we can see grandiosity at play in numerous forms throughout his life. As a young man, he moved from Philadelphia to Tacoma, WA, to immediate disdain.
[Ted] hated Tacoma at first. After Philadelphia, the Puget Sound mill town seemed raw and impermanent to him — just a jumble of ugly brown and gray buildings on a hillside jutting out into the frigid salt water of Puget Sound. Ted would outgrow his initial distaste for his new home, but he never got over an arrogant disdain for anything he regarded as common. This attitude was linked to how he felt about himself, his deep self-doubt, and also to his later conviction that life had wronged him (Michaud and Aynesworth 52).
Note the emphasis on Bundy’s putative low self-esteem (“self-doubt”), but it is not necessarily the case that all grandiosity stems from this.
Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Bundy appreciated classical music and sought to emulate his uncle Jack Cowell, a music professor, who was renowned in the Bundy family for his “accomplishment and refinement.”
As an adult, Bundy was defined by an overconfidence in his own abilities, his inability to see the role luck had played in his successful flight from law enforcement, and his consistent underestimation of law enforcement, especially one of his nemeses, detective Jerry Thompson.
Much of Bundy’s behavior in the weeks following his first arrest makes sense only when viewed through the prism of his psychopathology. Somehow, he was able to sustain the delusion of invulnerability (Bundy could not accept the fact that Thomson made a case against him), and he enjoyed taunting the police. But also he made several moves suggesting a cunning criminal intellect, the sort of mind that could plot murder after successful murder (Michaud and Aynesworth 144).
Speaking of nemeses, Bundy was able to conceive of his fight against the system as a story in which he was the protagonist, even a martyr.
[H]e went to court for a routine hearing to determine if he should be bound over for trial. Tucked conspicuously under his arm was a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago that he opened and read at the defense table. Ted meant the volume to suggest parallels of oppression and his own martyrdom (Michaud and Aynesworth 149).
On his delusion that he was somehow the author of his drama,
A defense psychiatrist would later write of Ted that “in a certain sense Mr.Bundy is a producer of a play which attempts to show that various authority figures can be manipulated…Mr. Bundy does not have the capacity to recognize that the price of this ‘thriller’ might be his own life.” Ted always underestimated the opposition (Michaud and Aynesworth 139).
Bundy was bolstered in this delusion by hundreds of adoring fans who would show up in the courtroom and correspond with him by mail. He went to trial, finally, and lost, believing all the time that he was smarter than everyone in the room and that he just needed a stage on which to prove it. To this day he is lionized in chat-rooms and comments-sections for his insouciance in the face of authority (despite the fact that he killed more than thirty women).
But enough of Bundy. An anecdote from one of Kent Kiehl’s case studies captures succinctly the psychopath’s grandiosity. As Kiehl explains, the person named Martin scored a 37 (of a maximum 40) on the PCL-R and complained that he had been designated as likely to re-offend. Moreover, he hated the negative connotations of the word psychopath. But as Kiehl explained the the various traits to him (e.g., low empathy, manipulation), Martin’s mood began to change:
“Well, this psychopath thing really sucks; I don’t want to be called a psychopath.”
I just looked at him with my best poker face.
Then Martin scooted forward to the end of his chair, grabbed a pen off my desk, and turned his photocopy of the Psychopathy Checklist score sheet around and started to scribble. He crossed out the word Psychopathy from the top of the page and then wrote in big block letters SUPERMAN. He turned to show me his creative work and then said: “I’m no psychopath. That’s the wrong name for me. I’m renaming this the Superman Checklist. And now I’m Superman.”
My poker face broke with a smile. I might have to elevate Martin’s score on Psychopathy Checklist Item 1 — Glibness and Superficial Charm.
Martin stormed out of my office and for the next several days he showed everyone his score on the Superman Checklist. Martin told his roommate that he had to call him Superman or he would beat him up (Kiehl 2014: 120).
Psychopaths seem to be proud of what they’re capable of, often without a hint of underlying self-doubt.
DEFINING GRANDIOSITY. The behavior of these psychopaths can seem very narcissistic, and in fact psychologists have for a long time seen connections between narcissism and psychopathy. Paulhus and Williams explored similarities among the so-called “Dark Triad” of offensive but non-pathological personalities, to find that there are strong correlations among subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, though they are not identical constructs. Specific forms of narcissism such as “malignant narcissism” have been viewed as identical to, or at least on a spectrum with, psychopathy. “Grandiose narcissism,” which is associated with a “flamboyant and dominant style,” seems most consistent with grandiosity of the psychopath.
“Grandiosity refers to an unrealistic sense of superiority, a sustained view of oneself as better than others that causes the narcissistic person to view others with disdain or as different or inferior. It also refers to a sense of uniqueness, the belief that few others have much in common with oneself and that one can only be understood by a few or very special people. Additional attitudes and behaviors that serve to support and enhance the inflated self-esteem include admiring attention seeking, boastful and pretentious attitudes, and unrestrained self-centered and self-referential behavior” (Ronningstam 78).
Some of this “self-referential” behavior takes the form of what is called “self-enhancement.” Apropos of our interest in glibness, Paulhus and Williams have shown that both narcissists and psychopaths have a tendency to “over-claim” general knowledge (or pretend to have knowledge of things that didn’t actually happen) and they report having greater intelligence than what objective scores suggest.
Ronningstam describes the correlation between grandiosity and malignant narcissism in tyrants and dictators:
Studies of political leadership have suggested that malignant narcissism can accompany grandiose ambitions and strivings for power and control in certain political dictators and tyrants. Glad (2002) found the malignant narcissistic syndrome most useful for describing and understanding the behavior of Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Saddam Hussein: “[T]he grandiosity, underlying sense of inferiority, the sadism, and the lack of scruples in dealing with perceived threats to their position…lack of genuine commitment to their comrades in arms and the values they espouse, as well as deep-seated proclivity to split the world in two, assigning all the darker traits of their own personalities to external enemies” (p. 22). The tyrants create an environment in which cruelty, paranoia, and criminal behavior become legitimized to reach and defend their grandiose, unlimited mission. The achievement of absolute power and control of their territories serve both to support the grandiose self through commanded acclaims and worship, and to eliminate critique and enemies, threats, and frustrations that can escalate their own inner conflicts and depression. On a personal level, both previous misdemeanors and present loneliness and self-doubts can easily be alleviated by surrounding supporters. The cycle of self-aggrandizement accompanied by increased success and power tends to escalate the tyrants’ experiences of grandiose omnipotence and invulnerability which, in and by itself, can trigger paranoid control and hostility that gradually undermine their superior position (Ronningstam 109).
Why should these behaviors (malice, grandiosity) be linked? As we will discuss in a future article, in addition to being enabled by political and social circumstances, they may all be part of connected circuitry in the paralimbic regions of the brain:
“As a group, paralimbic brain damaged patients are characterized by problems with aggression, motivation, empathy, planning and organization, impulsivity, irresponsibility, poor insight, and lack of behavioral controls. In some cases, paralimbic brain damaged patients may become prone to grandiosity and confabulation. These are all symptoms we see in psychopaths”(Kiehl 2014: 168–171).
But is grandiosity always a bad thing in leadership?
You have to ask yourself one question…Of all the people running, would I be the best president? If you can answer yes, then you need to run — Bill Clinton
The former president posed this question to his wife as she was pondering whether to run for president in 2008. The time and setting are full of the liminality appropriate to such a momentous decision.
On New Year’s Day [2007], Hillary and Bill were out on a boat [off the coast of Anguilla], bobbing along the blue-green sea, and decided to take a swim. They leapt into the water, swam up to the beach, and then Hillary posed the question directly to the person who knew her best — and who understood as well as anyone alive what running for president entailed.
What should I do, Bill? she asked. Should I do this or not?
Bill did not invite Hillary to consider whether she could win, or what her strategy might be, or even whether she would enjoy being president. There thus is a certain apparent selfless nobility in his invitation to consider whether she would be the best president. “This is not about you or your chances: If you’re not actually going to benefit the country more than any other candidate, you shouldn’t do it,” he seems to be saying.
But how did Bill actually expect Hillary to determine whether she would be the “best”? Should she have asked her friends if she would make the best president? What did they know about the job? What about advisers? How well did they really know her? How about her husband? Could he tell her whether she was the best candidate with full objectivity? Or would his views be clouded by love, admiration, guilt, delusion, and self-interest? Should she have done a Google search for “would Hillary Clinton make the best president?” I’ll leave that outcome to your imagination.
Walking the fine line between the essential self-confidence that makes it possible to be comfortable with power and the arrogance or pomposity that occludes one’s vision and undermines effective leadership is among the most difficult challenges leaders face — Nan Keohane
SELF-KNOWLDGE. What we are tackling here is a problem of self-knowledge. Followers have a long tradition of setting up criteria to determine a leader’s worthiness to lead. But how does the leader herself know? Self-knowledge is hard enough for any of us as private citizens, but in a leadership context it is much worse. Max Weber is often cited for pointing out how power can lead to a lack of self-knowledge. He notes that power attracts flatterers, who in turn distort the leader’s self-conception, causing him or her to be vain. Well before Weber’s time, however, the ancient world offered an abundance of heirloom fruits with the flavors of this phenomenon.
As we saw in the opening quotation from Herodotus’ Histories, the Persian king and conqueror Cyrus “the Great” feels confident in attacking the Massagetae because of his own noble birth (it had led him to believe in his divinity) and his astonishing success so far, which created a condition known as victory disease (a form of confirmation bias). It turns out that Cyrus is dead wrong about his invulnerability: he attacks the Massagetae in what Herodotus calls the fiercest battle in history — and loses. Tomyris, their queen, soaks his severed head in blood out of revenge for killing her son.
Self-deception is a major pitfall…since it is easy to justify one’s indispensability to the organization and the rightness of one’s views and remain in office even when the organization would be better served by one’s departure— Nan Keohane
The Athenian philosopher and historian, Xenophon, provides another example of how a leader may be deprived of self-knowledge in the Education of Cyrus (c. 365 BCE). This time Cyrus is cast as the good leader learning from the mistakes of another king named Croesus.
In Greek literature Croesus plays the role of the superficially prosperous king who acquires self-knowledge too late; but his tragedy is meant to serve as a guide for others. In this instance Croesus has waged war on Cyrus and lost (7.2). At the conclusion of the battle Croesus is brought before Cyrus to explain, in effect, how he could have waged war so foolishly. Croesus says that the god Apollo, through the Oracle of Delphi, had promised him happiness if only he should “know himself.” Croesus explains that self-knowledge turned out to be much harder to come by than he had first thought:
“[S]poiled by the wealth I had and by those who were begging me to become their leader, by the gifts they gave me and by the people who flattered me, saying that if I would consent to take command they would all obey me and I should be the greatest of men — puffed up by such words, when all the princes round about chose me to be their leader in the war, I accepted the command, deeming myself fit to be the greatest; but, as it seems, I did not know myself. For I thought I was capable of carrying on war against you; but I was no match for you; for you are in the first place a scion of the gods and in the second place the descendant of an unbroken line of kings, and finally you have been practising virtue from your childhood on” (7.2.23–24, translation Walter Miller).
The very act of holding power seems to cause us to think more highly of ourselves — and even to fabricate our flatterers. When the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal broke in 2011, many wondered why it is that politicians routinely think that they can get away with such behavior, especially when they must be aware of tragic consequences of so many of their peers. It turns out that in positions of power, or even apparent power, the brain is more prone to take risks (or to underestimate the riskiness of certain behavior) and more prone to interpret a simple greeting as a sexual advance.
It turns out that even without flatterers (imagined or real) we may be prone to exaggerate our talents and contributions to community activity. Joshua Greene, in his book Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them, argues from a neurological basis that we are all in a sense grandiose because of our perspective on the world.
It is plausible, if not inevitable, that we are more aware of the pain we suffer at the hands of others than of the pain that others suffer by our hands. Our society’s nervous systems — the media, word of mouth — are far more likely to broadcast messages about our own group’s painful experiences than about the painful experiences of others. As a result, our moral biases may, in some cases, be built into the systems that we use to perceive the events in the world.
This cognitive principle, in addition to explaining why we underestimate the impact of the harm we cause, also explains why we overestimate the impact of the good we do. Eugene Caruso and colleagues asked the authors of four-author journal articles to separately estimate the amount of credit due to each of the four authors. On average, the sum of the credit that authors claimed for themselves added up to 140 percent. We’re fully aware of the contributions we make, because we make them, but we’re only partially aware of the contributions of others (Greene 2013: 97).
According to Caruso et al. “egocentric bias” explains our tendency to overestimate our contributions. On the one hand, we engage in motivated reasoning, in the sense that we need to believe, for reasons of legitimizing our place in the group, that we have contributed more than we have. On the other hand, we are also biased by “differential accessibility,” i.e., we just have more information about what we do than what others do. They also suggest that we may have the related tendency to regard group members as a collective rather than as individuals.
All of these many mechanisms, both social and neurological, may conspire to deprive us of our self-knowledge and cause us to believe that we are more than we think we are. Grandiosity is a hydra.
But it turns out to be the kind of hydra that people are attracted to and one that leads to objective success in a leadership role. Simply reflecting on a time when you felt confident and in control prior to an interview seems to increase your chances of landing a job. We seem to be predisposed to believe that others have more power than they do. Economists have argued for years that the president has very little control over the success or failure of the American economy, much less the world economy, yet we continually praise and blame our presidents for the price of gas.
Watts et al. studied the relationship between the two kinds of narcissism mentioned above, “grandiose” and “vulnerable” narcissism, and their correlation to presidential “greatness,” things such as public persuasiveness, crisis management, agenda setting, winning the popular vote, and initiating legislation. According to these authors, grandiose narcissism is associated with a “flamboyant and interpersonally dominant style,” extroversion, high self-esteem, low distress, and minimal neuroticism. These are people who may be somewhat wrong about their awesomeness, but they nevertheless seem to be perfectly secure in it. By contrast, vulnerable narcissists are characterized by an “emotionally fragile and socially withdrawn style.”
Watts et al. found that there was a strong correlation between grandiose narcissism and presidential “greatness.” There was also a strong correlation between grandiose narcissism negative outcomes, including unethical behavior and congressional resolutions for impeachment. It will probably not surprise you to learn that Bill Clinton ranks 7th (out of 42) on the presidential list of grandiose narcissists.
We return now to the question he posed to Hillary:
You have to ask yourself one question…Of all the people running, would I be the best president? If you can answer yes, then you need to run. If you’re not sure, then you need to think more about it, and if the answer is no, don’t do it. That’s all I can tell you, Bill said.
It is worth parsing Clinton’s words here. He does not actually ask Hillary to investigate the question of whether or not she would be the best president. He says, “If you can answer yes.” I take him to mean that what is most crucial here is Hillary’s level of grandiosity: is she convinced that she would be the best president? Given the former president’s own extensive experience campaigning and holding office, grandiosity seems to be necessary in order to endure the criticism of others who would insist that she is not only not the best president but in fact unfit to be president. In this context, Clinton’s advice may seem a little less noble but perhaps even more sensible, coming from someone who seems to understand the role that grandiosity played in his own presidential success.
Hillary seems to have understood his question in these terms because she wasted no time exploring her presidential fitness on any objective basis.
Not long after, Solis Doyle’s phone rang back in Washington [Doyle would become Clinton’s campaign manager]. ‘Bill said that if I really feel like I can do this, and do a good job and be the best one, then I should do it,’ Hillary said. ‘And I do believe that.’
GRANDIOSITY AND VISION. To some extent grandiosity seems to be woven into the leadership role, and Hillary Clinton’s career seems to be a good example of their interconnectedness. I hasten to stress that grandiosity is not synonymous with “vanity” or “power lust” or “dominance” or “cruelty,” though it may be associated with these behaviors in tyrants and dictators. It is possible to be grandiose and well-meaning at the same time. What I’m thinking about is this: Hillary Clinton has spent her adult career in politics, crafting policies, debating, campaigning, making deals, wielding power. It is clear that she has a careful vision for how the country could be improved, maybe how the world could be improved. She has no doubt thought about this for a long time. And indeed we expect leaders to have a vision, whether they’re the CEO of a company or the president of the United States. But what role do we imagine the leader imagines she has in realizing that vision? Is it not natural that the crafter of the vision would assume that only she could do it, in the same way that architects and engineers think that they should have a hand in the implementation of their revolutionary blueprints? Why would Hillary Clinton not imagine that she is best suited to realize her carefully crafted vision, especially when her two likely opponents, Barack Obama and John Edwards, were either new to the scene and or a policy lightweight? The problem in the competitive political sphere, of course, is that all of the candidates are convinced that they would be best at realizing their vision for the country— but they can’t all be right.
In 2008 Edwards was perhaps most eaten up with it:
Over and over, he proclaimed to his aids, ‘I am going to be the next president of the United States.’ Some of them dismissed his outsize confidence as proforma, but others took it as a sign of something deeper — a burgeoning megalomania (Heilemann and Halperin 2010: 124).
Experienced or no, Obama could absorb (or seem to absorb) all of their policy positions and yet offer even more. There is a parallel story of how he came to decide to run for president in a conversation attempting to win over Michelle’s support to campaign.
“What exactly do you think you can accomplish by getting the presidency?” Michelle asked him pointedly.
“Well,” Obama said, “there are a lot of things I think I can accomplish, but two things I know. The first is, when I raise my hand and take that oath of office, there are millions of kids around this country who don’t believe that it would ever be possible for them to be president of the United States. And for them, the world would change on that day. And the second thing is, I think the world would look at us differently the day I got elected, because it would be a reaffirmation of what America is, about the constant perfecting of who we are. I think I can help repair the damage that’s been done” (Heilemann and Halperin 2010: 72).
Fortunately for Obama this was a vision only he could realize; unlike every other presidential candidate in history, he faced no rivals for it. He could feel justified in his grandiosity, for he was unique.
In the end, our ambivalence toward a leader’s grandiosity may have as much to do with the vision behind the grandiosity as it does with the naivete implicit in the grandiosity or with our concerns about looming unethical behavior. Sarah Palin’s foray into the vice-presidential race is a good case in point. For those who disagreed with the conservative agenda, her claim to have not had any doubts about accepting the nomination “even for a moment” seemed hubristic and even megalomaniacal. By contrast, while some conservatives worried about her lack of experience and familiarity with the world outside Alaska, many saw her as the refreshing future of the party and the savior of the McCain presidential campaign in 2008. They embraced her grandiosity.
CONCLUSION. As absurd as it sounds, does a leader’s unsubstantiated confidence in her ability to lead actually make her more qualified? This is a very hard question for us to answer. On the one hand, the answer seems to be yes, at least insofar as the leader is able to sell her vision to her followers and also convince them that she is best at realizing it. One of the most common things that liberals say about Obama is “he’s not perfect” or “he didn’t realize all the promise of Hope and Change” but “he’s way better than the alternative.” So what if he overshot by 50%; it was still the right direction.
Obviously, grandiosity only works within certain limits. The vision, however grand, must at least be plausible. Similarly, if realizing the vision requires unethical behavior, the grandiose leader may find herself on a slippery slope.
I will conclude with a contemporary fictional example. In the middle of Season 3 of House of Cards, Heather Dunbar emerges to challenge Francis Underwood for the upcoming democratic nomination. Her vision is a simple one of “anti-corruption.” She has fought corruption her entire career as a lawyer, including prosecuting the campaign finance mismanagement of the former president. Her integrity is so high that she is a worthy replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jacobs. But she believes that she can do better as president. As the show presents it, her ambition begins as a critique (she finds politics corrupt). Over time she comes to believe that she is the only person capable of ridding the presidency of that corruption. She explains to Justice Jacobs who is stepping down because of Alzheimer’s and wants her to take his place:
It is not that I have changed, Robert, that ambition has clouded anything. It’s that I was blind to this until now, what I am meant to be. And I am meant to be president of the United States — Heather Dunbar, House of Cards (E38, 6:03)
Dunbar’s grandiosity seems morphed into a sense of entitlement, well characterized by Ronningstam:
Officially defined as unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with one’s expectations (DSM-IV), entitlement may either stem from a sense of grandiose self-righteousness or function as a defense against feelings of envy, guilt, shame, depression, and threat of closeness (Moses & Moses-Hrushovski, 1990)…Expressions of entitlement can range from infuriated reactions — irritability, hostile rejecting, or vindictive behavior — to feeling surprised, hurt, unappreciated, unfairly treated, or even exploited. Entitlement is closely related to a passive attitude and lack of self-initiative (Kerr, 1985) and to an experience of not getting as much as one deserves (Havens, 1993). It can also be associated with expectations or hopes for reparation of past damages or correction of injustices (Moses & Moses-Hrushovski, 1990). An expectation that things should come easily and be provided by others often comes with negative or even shameful feelings toward the requirement of one’s own efforts. Further explorations of people’s feelings of entitlement may reveal a striking contrast between inner experiences of defectiveness, undesirability, or worthlessness and an overt special entitled attitude of unrealistic rights, expectations, and exemptions (Cohen, 1988). Entitlement in such a dynamic context may have its roots in unmodulated aggression and harsh judgmental self-criticism” (Ronningstam 93).
It will be interesting to see how closely Heather Dunbar’s story arc follows this pattern. House of Cards seems to be setting up the possibility that her grandiosity and sense of entitlement will erode her own integrity and force her to become corrupt herself. So far her devotion to her ideals has caused her to do ruthless things because she does not believe that anyone else is qualified to fulfill her vision.
In the next article we will look at one of the most distinctive features of psychopathy, the employment of instrumental aggression.
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