xander.ai
On Dark Triads in Silicon Valley
The most overlooked skill for technical people in Silicon Valley is the ability to detect and avoid Dark Triad personalities. Why do our humanities and social sciences courses fail to impart this obviously beneficial skill?
Xander Dunn, 19 Feb 2023, Initial draft ~2019
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. - William Shakespeare
Evil is not an ethereal force from hell, it is just Psychopaths.
The Dark Triad
The Dark Triad refers to narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy/sociopathy. Narcissism is an outsized sense of self-importance. Machiavellianism, named after the author of The Prince, is the belief that the only thing that matters is power. Finally, we have sociopathy and psychopathy, which are defined by an inability to feel empathy for other people.
There is a common misconception that sociopaths are white-collar criminals while psychopaths are serial killers. The sensational hit book Bad Blood about Elizabeth Holmes specifically calls her a sociopath in its conclusion. This may be the pop culture usage of these terms, but it bears no relation to the technical use of the terms in clinical psychology. As a starting point, read this article. Sociopathy is defined as a lack of empathy resulting from environmental factors, such as a challenging childhood. Psychopathy is defined as a lack of empathy resulting from genetic factors. It turns out that serial killers are more likely to be sociopaths than psychopaths. Many serial killers had extremely challenging childhoods, for example physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. Environmental extremes like parental abuse causing a destruction of empathy would be designated sociopathy rather than psychopathy. But, it's not hard to believe that lack of empathy can be genetic: Elizabeth Holmes' father was a Vice President at Enron where he perpetrated one of the largest frauds in US history. Furthermore, Elizabeth had an extremely privileged childhood with very little hardship. With little environmental hardship and a history of wrong-doers, Holmes probably came by her lack of empathy genetically, not environmentally. My goal here is to reveal complications in how these terms are used popularly, but ultimately we don't care whether someone is a psychopath or a sociopath. If someone lacks empathy, we don't care why, we just want to identify and avoid.
Another common misconception is that people with any of the above personalities have stunted social skills, and come across as aggressive or otherwise bad or off-putting. On the contrary, these personality types tend to have above-average pro-social skills. They tend to be very charming and very good at convincing others. See here for evidence that psychopaths can appear above average genuine when they choose. Pop culture imagines that sociopaths and psychopaths are bad at understanding others' emotions, but actually, they are above average at identifying the emotions of others. Their ability to identify others' emotions is what empowers them to use those emotions in manipulative ways to achieve their goals at the expense of other people's goals. Identifying and understanding emotions is wholly separate from feeling any kind of empathy, values, or remorse. Indeed, on the other end of the spectrum, there are highly empathetic people who are strongly affected by the emotions of others but are very bad at identifying what those emotions are.
How Prevalent Are Dark Triads?
One lens for looking at Dark Triad personality types is as an evolutionary advantage. I see these personalities as something that adversarially evolved. If your genes are attempting to get an advantage over others so that they can propagate better than other people's genes, developing a better-than-average ability to manipulate others to do your bidding is clearly an advantage. But it would probably be bad for your genes and the genes of your entire species if everyone evolved into a psychopath, narcissist, or Machiavellian, so it's going to be an uncommon trait. I'll estimate that around 5% of the general population is Dark Triad, and I would roughly estimate that about 20% of Silicon Valley leaders are Dark Triads. If you pore over the literature estimating the common population and executive prevalences, you could come up with sums across the Dark Triad personalities that are both much lower and much higher than these numbers. Most people are decent people. Never confuse incompetence, burnout, stress, or other issues with Dark Triad.
It's particularly important for people in Silicon Valley to be aware of these personality types because they are particularly prevalent in Silicon Valley. Anywhere there is money and power to be had, you will find Dark Triad personalities in higher-than-average abundance. See various sources for the higher prevalence of Dark Triad personalities in executives, including here, here, and here.
What To Do?
Avoid. Simply avoid them at all costs. Identify these personalities as early as possible and just leave. Block them. Move on. It's not normal, it's not healthy, and it's not productive. You can get paid even more than you are paid now somewhere you don't have to deal with these personalities. There are all sorts of strategies for dealing with these people, such as "grey rocking," trying to be as uninteresting as possible when they've got you in their crosshairs. Forget all of these strategies. The Dark Triads are evolutionarily hardwired to withstand infinitely more emotional crap than you are. You will lose. Other than perhaps a helpless child who doesn't know better, I can think of few to no circumstances where it is truly impossible for you to just leave the situation. "It's my cofounder" doesn't count as a truly impossible situation. Trust me, you can quit and start again and everything will be fine.
One failure mode I see good people in Silicon Valley fall into after discovering these personality traits is an attempt to "use them," to align with Dark Triad people professionally in the hopes of getting the good while avoiding the bad. This is a terrible idea. You can be professionally successful without associating with any of these personalities, and you will be wholly unable to mitigate the negative effects in your vicinity even if you can name them. Knowing that arsenic is poisonous doesn't allow you to live in the vicinity of arsenic with impunity.
Tests
You should have litmus tests, principles, or "razors" in your back pocket that you continuously pull out when you meet new people. Some that I've found useful over time:
- Avoid people who have a disregard for the truth. In its most extreme form, I know a CEO who explicitly said, "The truth doesn't matter." Given extreme statements like this, the typical response is to laugh it off, "Surely they must be joking." But in my experience, such insane statements are completely honest and should be taken at face value. Being tactful with how, when, where, and to whom one reveals truths is not what I'm referring to here. A non-Dark Triad need not be the naive child who always yells the first thing that pops into his head. I'm referring to the extreme disregard for truth that intentionally misleads, considers destroying evidence, etc.
- Has this person ever said, "I'm sorry," "I don't know," "I was wrong about that," or "You were right"? These are phrases that will necessarily come out of every sane human's mouth at various points in their life due to the simple fact that we are all highly limited in our capabilities, flawed, and imperfect. It doesn't need to be anything big. This could be as simple as a quick, "Sorry I'm late" to a meeting, or the realization that some code they wrote wasn't the right way to approach the problem. Dark Triads are typically completely incapable of uttering these sounds with their mouths. Narcissists in particular. Note that Dark Triads will expect and demand apologies from others, they just won't ever apologize themselves. Anything that begins with "I'm sorry you..." is not an apology, it's manipulation.
- Avoid anyone who attempts to intertwine your personal values with your professional life, or who demands loyalty above all else. Becoming friends with your coworkers and going on outings with them is great, but that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to a CEO who tries to tell you who you should be friends with. A simple razor here is to ask yourself: Do I feel like I would ruin my whole life and disappoint everyone around me if I were to quit my job / quit my relationship? If the answer feels like a "yes," then you've probably got a Dark Triad warping your sense of reality. Emotionally stable leaders can handle the fact that people change, needs change, situations change, and no one stays in one place forever. If leaving the company/relationship makes you an enemy, then you've got a Dark Triad.
- Ask them. If you ask the right questions and really pay attention and accept their answers at face value, most bad people will tell you that they are bad people. Asking if someone is a narcissist turns out to be surprisingly effective, see also here. Ask how they think about truth and what's important to them. Ask them to describe a time they were wrong about something. I once went on a first date and I asked if he'd had any relationships since moving to the Bay. He said, "I dated someone for a year but I always knew I didn't really want them." What sort of immoral person strings someone along so deeply for a whole year? Why would I expect to be any different? I once knew a CEO who told me that he ripped off his employees and he was bemused that they hadn't even fought for what was rightfully theirs. I once knew a CEO who manipulated a woman into fetching something for him, after which he immediately turned to me and said, "That's called a false bid." He was perfectly happy telling everyone around him that he was being manipulative. Ask and take the answers at face value. Bad people are usually happy to tell the world that they are bad people, and there's a very important realization here that the best way to predict how someone will behave in the future is to look at how they've behaved in the past.
- Did you ever get a sense of unease shortly after meeting this person? This is likely evidence that they are NOT Dark Triad! Recall that the Dark Triads have evolved specifically to pass your trustworthiness filters. An immediate sense of unease around someone is more likely about Asperger's than it is about Dark Triad. If a Dark Triad is willing to be honest and upfront about their worst qualities: "I'm the best in the world at ____," "I am a narcissist," "Truth doesn't matter," etc, then they have no need to trip up your dishonesty detector. Different people will have differently calibrated manipulation detectors, so maybe yours is different, but I've seen this play out many times in many very smart people in tech. The people whose honesty you're immediately focused on are probably not the people whose honesty you should be worried about. Dark Triad personalities typically give an upfront sense of familiarity, not of unease. The smooth talker who has everyone in the room at ease is more likely the Dark Triad than the shifty character who has difficulty making eye contact and tries to avoid talking about themselves.
- Beware of the perpetual promisers. "We will do something," or "We can talk about that if you want." This is a manipulation tactic to avoid the topic. If they actually wanted to do it or if they were actually going to talk about it, then they would simply do it now, they wouldn't indefinitely delay it.
- When you met this person, did your interactions start with a lot of idealizations? Praise on you or idealizations of what you're going to achieve? This is likely the idealize → devalue → discard treadmill. Reasonable people can cite positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and risks. But if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
- Look out for false compliments, or back-handed compliments. An example would be saying, "You're cooler than I thought you were." There's no need to make such a statement back-handed and manipulative. Any sane person would've just said, "You're cool." Positives should never be conditional. If a "compliment" raises questions in your mind, then it is definitionally not a compliment, it's called negging.
- Become good at identifying facial expressions of disgust and contempt. I've found that Dark Triads often let slip micro-expressions of contempt. Not all of them, of course, but some of them view most people as contemptible.
- Does this person default to distrust of others? In my experience, people who are quick to assume that others are lying are themselves liars. Assuming dishonesty is often an indicator of one's own dishonesty. A dishonest person rightly assumes others are dishonest because they have a lot of personal experience with being dishonest! The more brazen someone is with this distrust, the more likely we've got a Dark Triad. For example, telling someone point blank that they're lying even when there's no evidence that they're lying, or openly stating that other people are liars, again without evidence.
- Does this person invalidate your experiences, without any evidence? An example of this would be saying that you hurt your back while doing squats, and the response you receive is "You didn't hurt your back." This is a manipulation tactic. The Dark Triad doesn't care whether you did or didn't hurt your back, but by throwing out an absurd, unsubstantiated denial of your reality, you've been put on the defense, precisely where the manipulator wants you.
- Does this person behave differently when being observed vs. when they think they're acting in secret? On one occasion I confronted someone with his very poor actions and his only defense was, "I didn't know you would see me." The idea that integrity is something to flip on and off based on audience is a Dark Triad red flag. Someone who will get away with absolutely anything they can so long as they're not caught is someone you want to be as far from as possible.
- Are you worried that you might be a Dark Triad? Then you're not a Dark Triad and never will be, so stop fussing over it. As mentioned above, narcissists are delighted to be narcissists. Sociopaths are not undergoing any critical self examination that would create any concern over lack of empathy.
- There are various batteries and questionnaires, including in the books I've listed below. If you read through them and it sounds familiar, you've got a Dark Triad. One example is this list from the Mayo Clinic. I once gave this list to a friend and he was completely aghast as he went down the last and it perfectly described the person he was dealing with.
Read Up
I would highly recommend reading some books to learn more about identifying and avoiding these people. Some of these books are targeted at romantic relationships, but all of the same advice applies professionally:
Conclusion
Philip K. Dick in his seminal work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, posits that it is empathy that separates the human from the non-human. With complete sang-froid, the replicant picks the legs off of one of the last real spiders on the planet, confused by the human's horrified reaction at this callous act. If being human requires having empathy, then Dark Triads should be seen not so much as human, but as evolutionary aberrations prowling amongst us as wolves wearing human skin.
Most people are mostly honest and have empathy and can take responsibility for their mistakes. Even "good" people will have some bad too. Most founders aren't Dark Triad. 99% of the people I've worked with have been fantastic people, and I am still friends with nearly all of my former coworkers. Most of my experiences here come from a romantic relationship. Don't go around waving your newfound Dark Triad wand at every person you don't like. Be particularly cautious of casting the Dark Triad label on people whose political opinions you don't like. But do start asking questions when charismatic, ideal, innocent people come into your life.