CHAPTER 6

The Teddy Effect

CAN YOU IMAGINE BARACK OBAMA—or any head of state, for that matter—sneaking away from his security team to grab some private time? In this safety-conscious age, it’s hard to picture. But that’s exactly what Theodore Roosevelt did in 1903, only two years into his first term as president. While on an official visit to Yosemite National Park, he abandoned his retinue and stole away with a couple of park rangers and none other than John Muir. Muir spent much of their stolen time together advocating for greater governmental preservation of wild lands. They spent the night among the sequoia trees and ventured to the magnificent precipice of Glacier Point before Roosevelt rejoined his bewildered staff in the hotel on the valley floor below. Now known as “the greatest camping trip in history,” Roosevelt’s ability to breach protocol was instrumental in what would later become wide-ranging legislation protecting wilderness areas.

If you think this act of rebelliousness and entitlement was a fluke, think again. In the modern era, can you imagine a government leader swimming naked in the Potomac River, the backyard of the White House, to stay physically and mentally fit in the wintertime? Teddy knew how to manipulate his public image and other people. When William McKinley ran for president in 1900, he picked Teddy to be his running mate. They won and when President McKinley was assassinated, the world waited for Teddy to take the reins of power. The world would have to wait longer than intended because Teddy happened to be out of reach, rock climbing in upstate New York. Teddy had an inflated view of his superiority and potential for greatness, and felt he deserved special treatment.

The world needs more Teddies, and not because we need more nudity in the Potomac.

Roosevelt possessed bravado, daring, dynamism, and a willingness to embrace his dark side that few—if any—governmental leaders have had before or since. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor as a soldier. Catching malaria from an infected leg wound wouldn’t stop him. He explored hundreds of miles of the Amazon rainforest; in fact, his party traveled farther down the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt) than any travelers before them—a river later christened the Rio Roosevelt in honor of his awesomeness. Before a campaign stop in Milwaukee, he was shot at close range (the bullet passed through the handwritten speech in his breast pocket and lodged in his chest), but opted to give the hour-long speech in its entirety before seeking medical attention. As a statesman, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign diplomacy. He is also seen as the father of the National Park Service, the first such system in the world to protect lands for widespread public enjoyment. By anyone’s standards, Roosevelt was a great man and is commonly ranked as the fourth greatest American president (just behind Lincoln, FDR, and Washington).

How does one human being accomplish so many extraordinary feats? Is Roosevelt’s success based on his indefatigable optimism and compassion? Evidence suggests just the opposite, the possibility that Roosevelt was that rare person with equal access to both the light and dark sides of his personality. He made the most of being whole. Edwin Lawrence Godkin, editor in chief of the Evening Post, devoted many articles to Teddy’s “bellicose temperament,” claiming that his “value to the community would be greatly increased if somehow he could somewhere have his fill of fighting.” But we see it differently: this aspect of wholeness, which we call the Teddy Effect, allows us to deal with the social aspects of discomfort, instead of avoiding them.

Curious about the adaptive nature of seemingly bad social traits, psychologist Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues examined the leadership provided by forty-two US presidents by drawing on the expertise of 121 biographers, journalists, and scholars. Each expert was asked 240 questions about the personality profiles of these presidents, and this information was then compared with job-performance data from polls and other historical information. In particular, the Lilienfeld research team was interested in traits related to psychopathy, commonly defined as a personality dysfunction characterized by antisocial behavior, a diminished capacity for empathy or remorse, and poor behavior control. Without question, psychopathy in general, and psychopaths in particular, have a bad reputation. But psychologists referring to psychopathy are talking about a constellation of traits that include some very positive ones: being charming, being immune to the paralyzing effects of anxiety, and being physically fearless.

The researchers discovered that American presidents with more psychopathic tendencies—especially those associated with fearlessness—were better performers. Their psychopathy was directly associated with a huge range of enviable outcomes, such as being more persuasive, being more capable of handling a crisis, being more willing to take risks and to introduce new legislation, being viewed as a world figure by others, and maintaining better relationships with Congress. Of the forty-two presidents evaluated in the research, Teddy was ranked—by a landslide—as number one in fearlessness and number two in grandiose narcissism. Interestingly, in a series of follow-up studies headed by Sarah Smith, the Lilienfeld research team found similar results for psychopaths in college students and normal adults in the general population. Across these studies, psychopathy was repeatedly found to be associated with higher rates of altruism and more frequent acts of heroism.

If you have a brain in your head and a heart in your chest you probably don’t want to be an evil jerk. That said, your likely default position of playing nice might be holding you back from that final 20 percent of the success you could otherwise be enjoying. Here we present a body of research that suggests strategic use of the dark side of your personality, including helpful behaviors that happen to be rule bending, dominant, cold, fearless, grandiose, manipulative, flamboyant, and self-absorbed. A minority might dislike you but nobody ever achieved great success or pushed the boundaries toward innovative change with a 100 percent approval rating. Not Plato, not Mahatma Gandhi, not Mao Zedong, not Nelson Mandela. If you were somehow able to match their fearlessness, unyielding determination, and undying devotion to excellence, just like them, you would be unable to escape criticism, jealousy, and enemies. As Teddy Roosevelt demonstrated, you do not have to sacrifice healthy relationships for successful accomplishments. Although his first wife died young, Roosevelt enjoyed a long and happy marriage with his second wife, and they had five children together. Socially uncomfortable behaviors can put you on the track to success without alienating your loved ones.

Throughout history, the Teddy Effect has been a legitimate way for leaders to acquire power and promote well-being. To motivate, improve performance, and survive you have to give yourself permission to engage in acts of dominance, aggression, strategic manipulation, and selfishness (putting yourself, family, and innermost circle first). This is as true for leaders with a capital L (as in heads of companies) or with a small l (as in anyone who is trying to influence someone else). By embracing the Teddy Effect, you access the 20 percent edge that you and the majority of society prematurely dismiss. As Teddy Roosevelt’s life demonstrates, you do not have to sacrifice healthy relationships for successful accomplishments. Teddy was beloved by his wife, children, the soldiers under his watch, and an adoring public during his own time.

Let us be the first to admit that considering dominance and aggression as self-growth tools can seem off-putting. In our modern, hypersensitive world, many leadership experts refute the need for so-called dark behaviors, claiming that the success they offer is only short term. The modern positivity movement has placed an emphasis on gentle tactics by leaders who, according to Tom Rath of Gallup,

deliberately increase the flow of positive emotions within their organization. . . . Instead of being concerned with what they can get out of their employees, positive leaders search for opportunities to invest in everyone who works for them. They view each interaction with another person as an opportunity to increase his or her positive emotions.

This approach is great for people who are less inclined to get angry, be assertive, or show toughness. It’s the perfect approach when kids are intrinsically motivated to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, or do their homework. Studies show that leaders with virtuous traits can push people toward better performance while prompting them to feel good about themselves. However, almost all of this research has been conducted during times of prosperity, when the bottom lines are in the black, and families aren’t so stressed over their finances. What happens during downturns? During these times, it makes more sense to consider adding the benefits conferred by the darker aspect of your natural humanity.

Understanding the Three Parts of the Teddy Effect

Without dismissing the potential damage of being emotionally detached or manipulative on a regular basis, we argue that attempts to pathologize certain strategies and eliminate them as options because they seem malevolent has led to leaders who struggle to communicate bad news, recover slowly from stressful events, and create employees and citizens unable to handle adversity. Just as negative emotions are often helpful, negative strategies can also make a surprising contribution. To gain insight into these benefits, let’s peer inside the three parts of the Teddy Effect: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.

An astute observer of human behavior, philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli offered specific advice for decision making and leadership in his magnum opus, the five-hundred-year-old text, The Prince. Machiavellianism, as his way of thinking and acting has become known, is about being emotionally detached when making everyday decisions so that the short-term pursuit of happiness does not derail our long-term plans. Machiavelli’s rules are not about how to do good in an ideal world. Instead, they’re about making the right choice, at the right time, for the right reasons in the real world. This means developing a heightened sense of situational awareness and the latitude to shift between honesty and deception, aggression and kindness: “He must stick to the good so long as he can, but, being compelled by necessity, he must be ready to take the way of evil.” Machiavelli makes a powerful argument that the best thing to do cannot be divorced from the situation in which it is performed. This brings to mind Teddy Roosevelt’s winning both the highest award for military combat and the most prestigious award possible for peaceful negotiations.

Machiavellianism is generally perceived as morally repugnant, and the same is true of narcissism. When psychologists consider it, however, they take into account that it has both positive and negative features. Narcissism is best defined by a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement. Narcissists do things in hope of winning the approval and admiration of other people, and they show little interest in people who can’t provide such opportunities for them. On the plus side, narcissists idealize people they think they can learn from, showing deference as they absorb knowledge and skills. They also truly believe they are special in some way, which gives them a sense of entitlement—and therefore confidence—to pursue their own path.

According to Greek mythology, Narcissus was a young man renowned for his beauty. At one point, he gazed into a pool of water and fell in love with the face he saw there, not realizing that it was his own. Unable to tear himself away from his beloved, Narcissus did not drink, eat, or sleep, and eventually he died at the pool’s edge. This tale warns us against the dangers of vanity. Although Narcissus might have been fixated on himself, this obsession was based on his legitimately superior physical beauty. Narcissus was extraordinary in this regard. That said, the superficial nature of this particular quality might be unappealing to the rest of us.

Does narcissism have any benefit beyond those rare instances when it is helpful to acknowledge extraordinary strengths in other people (beyond mere physical beauty)? Psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues studied the potential upsides of narcissism and found that “people with a high sense of entitlement did not report stronger or weaker desires, but they reported less conflict about these desires than other people did.” That is, when narcissistic people wanted something, they wanted it without regret, guilt, or second thought. The Baumeister team also concluded that “highly entitled persons apparently regard the fact that they want something as ample and often sufficient reason to do it.”

In other words, grandiose people possess a willingness to pursue lofty aspirations that most people might dismiss as foolish, self-absorbed, or impossible. Rather than fantasizing about hosting a television show, for instance, narcissists are more likely to go out and try to do just that. The confidence of people who lean toward self-absorption derives from a sense of specialness. It’s entirely possible that a feeling of uniqueness and a dollop of entitlement gave us the iPhone, the Human Genome Project, Microsoft Windows, an independent Israeli state, the Oprah Book Club, and Exile on Main Street.

In the minds of everyday people, the negative qualities associated with Machiavellianism and narcissism pale in comparison with psychopathy. Sensational accounts of psychopathic serial killers have blackened the reputation of this quality for the general public. People with psychopathy are considered incapable of feeling empathy for other people, and that such a life—devoid of any emotional connection—translates to the absence of guilt, to violence, and ultimately to murder. Research psychologists take a different view of psychopathy, one that offers a window into the benefits of small-stakes, situationally appropriate negative behaviors.

Simply put, the performance of psychopaths is unaffected by the fear and other powerful emotions that commonly paralyze nonpsychopaths. For most people, a knockdown drag-out fight with a romantic partner leads to impaired function of some kind, whether it’s the ability to concentrate or even the ability to eat. In difficult circumstances, it can be very helpful to dial down the flow of emotions. Take the example of one dentist we know. When we jokingly asked him how he could tolerate the fact that he caused so much pain in his chosen profession, he had a ready answer.

When I greet my patients, I feel human. I meet them in the waiting room, smile, and shake their hands. We are standing on a soft, shag carpet. Then, when we cross the threshold to the linoleum floor of the exam room I change. From that point forward, I turn my emotions off. Each patient becomes a set of teeth and a problem for me to fix.

The three elements of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (we call them the Dark Triad) each represent a tightrope. Lean too far one way and you hurt other people; lean too far to the other side and you become incapable of taking risks, or being truly effective. The Dark Triad lies at the core of every fictional antihero. In each case, they have flaws but also provide us a fantasy of a more successful self. Think Batman, James Bond, Han Solo, Severus Snape, Stringer Bell, and Tyrion Lannister. For female antiheroes, look no further than Scarlett O’Hara, Madame Defarge, Scheherazade, Jessica Atreides, and Carrie Mathison. Their dispassionate cool makes them appealing, even when this attraction collides with our better judgment.

You’ve Been Naughty

Having restored some virtue to the Dark Triad, we’re not proposing that you change your personality. Don’t give up apologizing, volunteer work, or holding the door open for other people. Continue to be nice. We are suggesting, however, that you adopt Machiavelli’s advice to be aware of situations in which the best possible outcome require the use of your inner Machiavelli, narcissist, or psychopath. If the Teddy Effect still feels repellent to you, then we would like to take this opportunity to remind you that you already engage in these behaviors to some extent.

Have you ever

Perhaps you’ll feel better knowing that we’ve all behaved “badly” for most of our lives. We know this from research on the honesty rates of children. Researchers Angela Evans and Kang Lee investigated the moral integrity of four-year-olds. Before leaving each child alone in a room, Evans asked them to resist looking inside a gift bag next to their seat. The children, of course, never suspected that they were being secretly observed, and 80 percent of them disobeyed to peek at the toy inside. When Evans came back into the room, she wanted to know whether the little swindlers would try to conceal their misdeed. To her surprise, 90 percent of kids didn’t hesitate to say that they never opened the bag. Now get this: for every additional IQ point, the children were slightly more likely to lie. With greater intelligence, we become more analytical in our thinking, and more sophisticated in our strategies to outwit and successfully manipulate others.

Research suggests that you, like everyone else, think that you are better than other human beings. This so-called better-than-average effect shows that most people believe that they are above average, which, of course, is a mathematical impossibility. In one study, for example, 25 percent of respondents said they were in the top 1 percent when it came to getting along with others. In another study, 93 percent of respondents said they were above average in driving ability. When you ask romantic couples living together how much each one contributes to the overall housework, it always adds up to more than 100 percent. The average person lives inside a narcissistic bubble, a self-serving bias that gives most of us the confidence we need to face a complex and uncertain day.

In fact, research on the better-than-average effect is mirrored in other studies that suggest that narcissism—a heavy dose of me-focus—is on the rise, at least in the United States. A number of studies by Jean Twenge at San Diego State and Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia suggest that the times, they are a-changin’. In one study, the Twenge team discovered that the use of collective pronouns such as we and us are decreasing slightly in everyday speech and that their cousins, the first-person pronouns of me and mine, are on the rise.

Similarly, this trend toward uniqueness can be seen in the naming of babies. In a study of more than a hundred years of baby names, the Twenge team found that parents are increasingly seeking highly individualistic names. In the days of yore, for example, 40 percent of boys were given names from the ten most popular baby names for that year (e.g., John, Michael) but today fewer than 10 percent are. Even we—the authors of this book (Todd and Robert)—have named our five children Violet, Chloe, Raven, Jayanti, and Jedi. Except for Chloe and Violet, which are very popular names at the time of this writing, we are pushing our kids off the grid. At this rate, kids in the future will be named after individual prime numbers.

Yes, narcissism is on the rise. You have spotted an increase in emotionally fragile, distrustful, antagonistic, admiration-seeking characters with a strong sense of entitlement on your work team. You have sensed a seismic shift in how people treat one another. No longer do two people fight, get it out of their system, and the next day pat each other on the back and move on with a bit more respect for each other. If you threaten someone’s sense of superiority, they will often fight back. The difference is that more recently, when people feel attacked, they are relentless in their response. They will not stop until they win and you lose.

This phenomenon has become increasingly commonplace on the highway. Think about how much time you spend each week defending your tarmac territory, inching toward the car in front of you so that the person to your left or right is boxed in and unable to cut you off. When you do this, have you noticed the additional physiological burden it places on your body, the increase in blood pressure, the elevated tension in your hands and feet? If this doesn’t describe you, have you noticed how other road warriors box you in, somehow taking it personally that it requires a shift in lanes to get off at a highway exit?

When you take a step back and observe this kind of human behavior, this narcissistic vulnerability, this antagonistic need to protect personal space as if a war has been declared, is bizarre. It’s even worse online, where people can feel empowered by devaluing someone else and shredding their creations. It takes years to write a book, to film a movie, or to prepare for a world championship competition. It only takes a few minutes to write a scathing criticism of them. Such antagonistic rivalries and zero-sum games stress out all involved and are harmful to our mental health.

But as Twenge, Campbell, and others bemoan the imminent apocalypse, forgotten is that a healthy side of narcissism, dubbed the striving for supremacy, is also on the rise. This side of narcissism happens to be an unheralded strength. When the need to win the admiration of others is activated, this triggers the charming, self-assured, dominant behaviors that may result in various desired social outcomes:

Narcissists have grandiose visions of themselves, which result in the vigorous pursuit of goals where they get to showcase just how unique, visionary, and potent they think they are.

Sometimes good people act badly. Sometimes the Teddy Effect is responsible for bad behaviors. But if you hold on too firmly to this idea, you will miss out on a few surprises. Who do you think is most likely to help a stranger in crisis, a person scoring high on a measure of psychopathic tendencies or someone who lacks these so-called negative qualities (a positive person)? To find out, psychologist Mehmet Mahmut used trained actors to determine what it takes for a bystander to intervene.He didn’t just have one actor cry for help; he set up a gauntlet for unsuspecting pedestrians to stroll through. First, pedestrians encountered an actor pretending to be lost, asking for directions. Then they ran into an actress who dropped a stack of papers on the ground. Finally, they came across an actor alone at a table with an arm in a sling unable to drink from a water fountain or jot notes on a pad.

When the stranger asked for directions, psychopathic pedestrians were less likely to stop and help. When watching a stressed woman pick up an unwieldy number of dropped documents, psychopathic pedestrians helped as often as their positive peers. On seeing the stranger with a broken arm struggling with daily tasks, psychopathic pedestrians were much more likely to step up and show kindness. When there was potential for heroism, when a display of virtue would look good to outsiders, when anxiety about what do is high, psychopathic characters stepped up, whereas more compassionate folks tended to walk by. Self-involved people are interested in the Big Stuff. Narcissistic people want to be admired, and this motivates them to take action in situations that will appeal to the outside world.

Under the Influence

The word manipulation is loaded with negative connotations. We tend to think of con men as manipulators, or of the psychic who bilked one of our family members for thousands of dollars. Manipulation actually means to control or influence, much in the way that beer companies influence you by making a funny commercial that gives you a jolt of well-being. Or much in the same way a driver following close behind you is urging you to switch lanes and let her pass. Or much in the same way that retired San Joaquin County Sheriff Robert Merk would occasionally flash his badge when he was pulled over for speeding and say, innocently, “I should have known better than to be driving so fast since I work in law enforcement.” Every day we all exercise influence.

One reason the word manipulation lands poorly on our ears is that it can suggest gaining power over another person. When we read accounts of slimy sales tactics—lowballing, bait and switch, the foot in the door—these strategies seem ugly. In one account of car sales techniques written by psychologist Robert Levine, for example, the sales process seems freighted with trickery. One salesman Levine interviewed admitted to offering absurdly low prices simply to get people to visit the car lot. Once they arrived, the salesman suddenly received a phone call and passed the customer off to a colleague, who then explained that the first guy had made a mistake and that the cars were actually more expensive than the customer had been led to believe.

When we hear about these tactics our blood boils. We get so offended, in fact, that we forget a simple truth: the customer is actually looking to buy a car and the salesman is actually looking to facilitate that process. Getting the customer on the lot through trickery may be dishonest but it is—in all honesty—an indispensable part of the car buying process, and one that will serve the customer.

One relatively innocuous instance of positive manipulation is when nonprofit organizations solicit contributions. Just like advertisers of food products, charitable organizations have a stake in manipulating people to fork over cash. They think hard about how best to do this. A science has even emerged around soliciting funds. Take a single study by Daniel Feiler, at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He was interested in examining the different types of appeals used by charitable organizations. One type is known as egoistic appeal (giving money will help you feel good) and another is known as altruistic (giving money will help provide food to the poor). When presented with one or the other type of appeal potential, donors to a university alumni association donated about 6.5 percent of the time. When presented with both appeals, however, that percentage was cut in half. It appears that people don’t mind being appealed to, but too much appeal feels like manipulation, which is a turnoff. This study underscores what is, perhaps, the only rule in the game of social influence: it’s okay to manipulate as long as you don’t get caught.

Another positive example of manipulation and influence comes from police work. Every day, police officers are faced with situations in which they must influence others in the interests of public safety. They coax potential jumpers back from ledges, convince naked people to put their clothes back on, encourage partners in domestic arguments to cool off, and negotiate to free hostages. The police have a wide range of physical interventions at the ready—guns and tear gas and tasers and handcuffs—but they are also trained to use their body language and words to de-escalate tense situations. Effective police officers must be master manipulators.

In 2008, the city of Portland, Oregon, had contracted one square block of the city center known as Pioneer Courthouse Square to a private security firm. The square, affectionately known as “Portland’s living room,” is an open plaza where businesspeople have lunch, where folks can play chess with strangers, and where the town’s towering Christmas tree stands in the winter. Its security guards, much like those at shopping malls, were primarily meant to serve as a preventive measure, intended to ease the burden on the police. In the event of a major crime, Portland’s finest could have been on the scene quickly, but otherwise they wanted to be free to patrol high-crime areas. However, the criminal element noticed the relative absence of uniformed police officers, and before long the dispatcher was receiving between thirty and thirty-five calls a day reporting instances of drug dealing in the square.

Enter Adam Morengo. He and his partner, dressed in plain clothes, arrived at the square to gather intelligence regarding the drug activity. After a half hour of observation, Morengo had identified the lead drug dealer and his five runners, and had figured out the specific nuances of the drug-selling operation. There was no question that enough heavily armed police officers could eventually apprehend the six criminals, but likely not without a foot chase and a possible shootout or other dangerous consequence.

Morengo opted for the soft touch. With his hands and body visibly relaxed and open, he walked right into the middle of the pack of drug dealers. He identified himself as a police officer and immediately reassured the group that he had no intention of arresting anyone. The primary dealer became very aggressive toward Morengo, saying at one point, “You can’t do anything to us. We could have you gunned down in the street.” Morengo persevered.

“Guys,” he said, “I am not here to disrespect you. I am not accusing you of anything, and I am not mistreating you. I am here for one purpose only, and that is to see if we can work together.” This threw the drug dealers for a loop. They went from posturing to watchful. Their curiosity, it seems, was getting the best of them. Morengo explained his proposition.

“Really, all I care about is that this square is safe. People bring their kids here, and I just want to know that no one is going to get hurt. Now there is no way I can arrest all the people here who are breaking the law; I simply don’t have the resources.” This drew wide grins from his audience. “So,” Morengo continued, “I want to brainstorm with you guys on how we’re going to work together to make this square safe.”

The leader loomed over Morengo. “Are you giving us a free pass?” he asked in disbelief.

“Absolutely not,” Morengo said. “You know that when we see illegal behavior we have to act on it. You know that the more obvious and persistent the behavior is, the more we are obligated to take care of it. So if you deal drugs I can promise you that you will get arrested. But we have an opportunity right now to avoid trouble and arrests. So what can we work out?”

It may have been that Morengo was using de-escalation techniques such as keeping his hands in plain sight, speaking with a soothing voice, answering questions, and not smiling (which, as we’ve seen in the studies on mimicry, can be misinterpreted). It may have been that he was treating the drug dealers with a degree of respect they were unaccustomed to from police officers. Whatever the case, the drug dealers suggested a solution. “We could move out of the square and take our business somewhere else.”

Morengo told them that he would sincerely appreciate that, and that he was happy that they had all worked together to keep things safe in an important part of the downtown corridor. Without showing his weapon, or even raising his voice, Morengo had convinced a large, tough, and well-armed group of criminals to walk away from a lucrative location. As it turned out, all the men were arrested within twenty-four hours of setting up their drug operation in a new location. There, just as Morengo had suggested, conspicuous drug dealing drew a phalanx of heavily armed officers who didn’t mind arresting the group of young men in this less populated area.

Morengo’s story is suggestive of the wide range of techniques—from open discussion to armed response—that we use to influence others. When we, the authors of this book, think of influencing others, we generally sort this into two categories: hard and soft approaches. Hard approaches are more overt, dramatic, and sometimes coercive. A perfect example of this can be seen in the way that Ronald Reagan handled a nationwide strike of air traffic controllers. In a three-minute speech delivered in 1981, the former president declared, “They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work in forty-eight hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.” This was not a warm hand extended in understanding or an offer to sit down at the negotiating table. It was a tough stance and it was no bluff; Reagan went on to fire more than eleven thousand air traffic controllers.

Hard approaches to influence are admittedly one of the reasons why people have such a negative view of so many Teddy Effect strategies. In thinking about hard approaches, it’s important to look beyond a long history of con men using shady dealings to fleece public trust and money. You can see more pedestrian examples of hard approaches in the grandstands of virtually any major professional sports event in the United States (and elsewhere). Die-hard fans—those with face paint and wearing official team merchandise—are well-known for both their support and opposition. They cheer on their hometown favorites and jeer at their opponents. Basketball fans sitting behind the glass backboard, for instance, wave what are called thunderstix to distract visiting players attempting to make a free throw. So common is this practice, in fact, that the Dallas Mavericks have experimented with waving the stix in unison, on the advice of a neuroscientist who suggested that it would be a more effective visual distraction than random waving. In their first two coordinated attempts, Maverick fans were able to drop the number of successful rival free throws by approximately 20 percent.

Hard influence—especially related to aggression—has also received scientific support for being effective. In one study, mini-crowds of ten people watched various athletes perform. The crowd was instructed to cheer in some conditions, to jeer in others, and to be silent in a control condition. The jeering worked; athletes performed worse than when they were supported or when the spectators kept quiet.

In another and more compelling study, researchers tracked the effects of booing in real basketball games at the University of Illinois and at Kansas State University. Here the researchers were interested in the performance of both the home and visiting teams in the five minutes that followed fifteen sustained seconds of booing. Interestingly, in only half of all games were there instances of such extreme displeasure. When this type of booing did occur, however, it had an immediate impact. Home teams immediately started scoring more, committing fewer fouls, and maintaining better control of the ball (committing fewer turnovers). Visitors, by contrast, scored less, lost the ball more, and committed more fouls in the five minutes after the jeering occurred. Notably, the seventeen thousand fans packed into the Assembly Hall basketball arena at the University of Illinois are not a selection of sociopaths; they are normal people who can access their Teddy Effect when it serves their needs.

Take another example of a hard manipulative approach. If you’re a commuter crossing the state line from northern Virginia into Washington, DC, by going over the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, stop at the first red light and turn your head to the left. You will see a man in a two-button three-piece petrol-gray suit. In his clean hands is a haphazardly ripped piece of cardboard with the words “Need Money for Cocaine.” He is smiling, beckoning you to put a few bills in his velvet hat. Many people hoot at him contemptuously, waving him off. Five yards farther on stands another man. He has a shaggy beard with what looks to be dirt and bits of egg shell embedded in it. A dirty, plaid blanket is wrapped around him, and his eyes plead for compassion as he holds up his own sign that reads “Help Me, Need Food.” Drivers roll down their windows and hold out one- and five-dollar bills for him to grab. By the end of the day, his pockets are filled with cash.

We spoke to these two men. As you probably suspected, they work as a team. They used to work alone until they started comparing notes about what behaviors increased their revenue. They switch roles every few days and thoroughly enjoy it. They also earn a lot of money, far too much to stop and start working for minimum wage at a fast-food chain. What’s their favorite part? Some people call them out on the scam, smile, and then give them money anyway for the entertainment.

They are unapologetic about their manipulation. As two adults with a combined education of thirteen school years, and a long history of physical and emotional abuse by caregivers, they found a tiny niche that works for them. You have to hand it to them for their ingenuity. They’re a perfect example of how manipulation can become an art, both literally and metaphorically, and how the best work makes other people feel good, right, or both about what they are doing. You simply cannot have a genuine conversation with another person and influence them without temporarily switching your perspective to theirs in order to understand what they want and what motivates them to take action.

Soft approaches to influencing others are more subtle. These approaches, often based on charm and seduction, might include hints, smiles, or seemingly casual mentions of other people to show off, or incite rivalry. Soft approaches are ultimately defined by their nonconfrontational nature and their evocation of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings in the target.

If you’re turned off by hardball tactics, then consider a typical soft approach: guilt. As we saw earlier, guilt-tripping is a surprisingly common method of influencing people. It involves three common strategies: (1) telling a person about your many self-sacrifices (to activate a feeling of reciprocity); (2) reminding a person of their obligation to the relationship (to activate feelings of personal responsibility); and (3) pointing out a time when a person behaved in a desirable way (to activate knowledge of how easy it is to change). Think about those times when you’ve said “No, you go ahead and enjoy your movie; I’ll stay home and clean the kitchen” or “I’m pretty sure your sister would be willing to do this, if you won’t.” These are usually instances of coercive manipulation.

Interestingly, guilt-tripping is not a strategy reserved for mean-spirited mothers or self-serving best friends. Activating another person’s guilt can serve as a tool for good. When Grandma complains that “no one ever comes to visit me,” she isn’t a villain. She is, instead, reminding you of the very real and very typical social obligation we all take on to fulfill duties and maintain relationships. Similarly, when the new head coach of the Portland Timbers soccer team, Caleb Porter, explains how much he hates losing, it puts pressure on his players not to disappoint him. It worked. Porter turned a bottom-of-the-barrel team into the Western Conference champions in his very first season with the club.

Another example of the soft approach can be seen in this anecdote told by Rachel Barnett, of Portland, Oregon.

I was seventeen years old. It was Christmas season and I was going to the local mall. I was driving on the highway with a few friends in the car going about seventy miles an hour and we passed through a construction zone with a thirty-five mile-an-hour speed limit. There was a motorcycle cop there and he signaled me to pull over. He came to my door and I immediately started crying. I was legitimately freaked out because this was the first time I had ever been pulled over. Even so, I didn’t try and stop myself because I knew it would be helpful in dealing with the cop. The officer asked me if I would stick to the speed limit from now on. I cried some more and finally said yes, and he let me go.

Rachel’s story is instructive because it’s simultaneously authentic and manipulative. She was truly upset. She’s no psychopath pretending to cry when she’s not really upset. On the other hand, she also wasn’t in any rush to say to the officer, “Please don’t mind my emotional state. I was speeding and you should give me a ticket despite the fact that I’m crying.” In fact, she knew that her distress would likely provoke sympathy and therefore serve her well.

Soft approaches are often intended to grease the wheels of social interaction through flattery, name-dropping, or reciprocity. These approaches are commonly used, and sometimes for the most altruistic reasons. For example, a charity might enlist the aid of a well-respected celebrity to help drum up interest in their cause. Similarly, people often use soft persuasive tactics to resolve conflict, especially in the case of friendships or romantic relationships. Consider, for instance, a boyfriend who wants to console his partner and says, “That must be really hard for you.” The empathy can have the intended effect, which is to lower the level of emotional distress in the room, a move that protects him as well as his partner. Of course, this depends on how convincingly the words are said, and genuineness cannot be underestimated here. It also might be an intentional strategy intended to replace his knee-jerk impulse to offer advice with an expression of empathy. In this instance, it is both genuine and strategic.

All the World’s a Stage

Shakespeare claimed that all men and women are players in one great, unfolding drama of life. He suggested that they have their entrances and exits and that they play many roles. Psychologists agree. In fact, psychologists often describe social interactions in terms of roles and scripts. When you interact with the cashier at your local grocery store, for instance, you follow a fairly predictable sequence. You might inquire as to his or her well-being, and the answer almost always indicates that things are good. If there is additional time, you might make small talk about the weather, the current holiday season, or the relative number of customers at the store. Whether you feel comfortable admitting it or not, a huge amount of your behavior is conducted with the idea that others are watching. Case in point: while observing cloud formations on your way to the mailbox, you trip over your shoelaces and start to jog a few steps, as if that’s what you were planning to do all along. Delightful to watch and fascinating when we think about why this happens.

The idea that the world is a stage and that the people around you are an audience creates an opportunity you can manipulate to your advantage, and for the gain of others. In business negotiations, international peace talks, and legal mediation there is always some degree of stagecraft. In sensitive talks between disputing governments, for example, there is often a mutual agreement not to make public statements about the ongoing process. To do so would be to entrench one’s position and—potentially—inflame the other parties in the discussion.

Jeff Dahl, a lawyer who worked personal injury claims in Florida for more than a decade, illustrates the ways that stagecraft—while manipulative—can be in everyone’s best interest. Florida, like many other states, likes to see lawsuits handled through mediation rather than cluttering up the court system. One time Dahl was serving as mediator between a thirty-year-old plaintiff, who had been injured in an automobile accident, and an insurance company. Dahl put the plaintiff and his lawyer in one room, and the insurance representative across the hall in another room. Both rooms had glass walls and afforded a full view of the opposing party.

Dahl spent the better part of the next two hours moving from one room to the other, patiently hearing out each side and validating their concerns. The insurance company agreed to pay seventy thousand dollars, which Dahl knew was exactly the figure the plaintiff wanted, so Dahl expected to conclude the deal. Unfortunately, when the plaintiff received the offer he became temporarily intoxicated by the prospect of money and indicated that he wanted to hold out for more. Dahl knew that the insurance representative was not authorized to pay additional money. Fearing that the mediation would devolve into a bitter lawsuit, Dahl opted to engage in a little drama.

Dahl marched into the room where the insurance rep sat waiting to hear that the plaintiff had accepted his offer. Instead of relaying the fact that the plaintiff now wanted even more money, Dahl said, “I need to know you are serious about this seventy thousand dollars and that it’s your best offer. If this is truly the case, you can communicate that to me in earnest by packing up your briefcase and leaving. After all, there is nothing more for us to do here.” At Dahl’s suggestion, the rep began packing to leave.

Dahl used this opportunity to rush, panicked, to the plaintiff across the hall. “Oh no!” Dahl warned, “The rep is leaving and taking his offer with him! You’d better agree to the deal quickly, so that everyone can go home happy.” Minutes later, the parties got together to sign the papers. It’s important to remember that while what Dahl did was manipulative in the purest sense of the word, it was also intended to benefit all parties equally—and it succeeded in doing so.

How does this type of artifice apply to you and your success? You might—just might—be timid about lying, for instance. Some folks have a black or white attitude about lying. This, oddly enough, is why so many people are such atrocious storytellers. How many times have you heard a friend feebly try to relate a true story, only to have the factual details derail the whole process? “I was in my calculus class that started at nine o’clock . . . wait, no, I think it was at ten o’clock.” One of the positive benefits of a bit of psychopathy is the ability to be fluid socially by not getting hung up on minor and—quite frankly, irrelevant—points of accuracy. Psychopaths can see the big picture and engineer situations to serve the larger outcomes. Sidestepping the truth can be difficult for other people, especially because it can smack of betrayal or other immoral motives. If you can balance the notion that the truth is a gray area with the idea that your actions should promote the welfare of others, psychopathy can suddenly seem like a more attractive tool.

But what is it that makes Dahl and others like him so good in these tense situations? Dahl is kind and mild-mannered, and no one who meets him would think of him as a psychopath. He’s not, yet he does possess some of those skills: he’s a quick thinker and he has a superhuman ability to remain calm in stressful situations. The same emotional detachment that we sometimes associate with serial killers is also helpful for mediators—and for emergency room doctors and hostage negotiators. In fact, this is another element of stagecraft: knowing your lines. People with psychopathy feel that what they are doing is right in the same way that actors gain confidence by memorizing their lines. When things aren’t going well, you can also draw on another skill common to both actors and people who can draw on psychopathy: improvisation.

Another way you can use stagecraft to your advantage when attempting to influence others is to act as a director and to cast people in a particular role. Social psychologists have long known that the roles people fulfill—daughter, husband, lifeguard, boss, volunteer—have real-world impact on their behavior. Classic evidence for this comes from Phil Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which Zimbardo took a group of Stanford undergraduates and assigned some to be prisoners and others to be prison guards. The scenario extended over several days and the guards became increasingly abusive. They forced prisoners to do large numbers of push-ups; they interrupted their sleep and isolated them. Remember, these “guards” had been right-minded undergraduate students only days earlier.

Roles can be incredibly powerful, and not merely in ways that leads to poor behavior. Take the inspiring example of Lin Hao, a Chinese schoolboy. You might recall young Lin walking with basketball player Yao Ming to lead the procession during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in the summer of 2008. Only months before the games, Lin Hao’s home in the province of Sichuan was struck by a massive earthquake, which flattened buildings and killed nearly seventy thousand people. Lin, only nine years old at the time, gained renown for saving two of his second-grade classmates from the rubble of his school. When asked about his heroism, Lin referred to his role. “I am the hall monitor,” he pointed out, as if saying, “heroism is my job.”

One of the easiest ways to manipulate people into being the hardworking world-changing folks you want them to be is to assign them roles that bring out their best. When Peter Lindberg, an American expatriate, took a job teaching English in Taiwan, he noticed that a huge change came over his students when they adopted English names. These reserved and soft-spoken children suddenly became as outgoing as if they were Americans. Modern businesses increasingly draw on the power of roles by assigning titles such as director of learning or director of fun. Although these roles can seem kitschy, they also serve as a permission slip to act in a certain manner.

Two Narcissists Are Better Than One

Interested in the effects of narcissism in a group setting, Jack Goncalo and his research team at Cornell University created teams of four people who were told they were serving as organizational consultants for a company with serious problems to solve. Their objective was to generate innovative action items that could be realistically implemented. Not only did the members of the teams want to succeed, they were also under the added pressure of knowing that two experts in organizational psychology would be independently evaluating their ideas in search of the top performers.

Seventy-three teams were given several weeks to complete this group project. Before starting, all 292 consultants were evaluated for narcissistic traits; after the project, they were asked about group dynamics such as debating ideas and considering all possible alternatives before making decisions. Defying the notion that narcissistic leadership is inherently bad, researchers found that too few or too many narcissists led to suboptimal group dynamics and creativity (as determined by experts’ rating solutions for the company). Two narcissists were better than one or none, in terms of both the group process and the quality of the product.

You might be asking, why do I want narcissists on my team? The reason two narcissists performed so well is that norms and rules often get in the way of creative thinking. To be creative, people need to challenge assumptions of how things are supposed to be. Narcissists, with their sense of being special and their grandiose fantasies, have little interest in being socially appropriate. Ideas that might otherwise have been prematurely ruled out as absurd or unfeasible become fair game. In his Harvard Business Review article, Michael Maccoby came up with many examples of successful narcissists, people who can get people to stop talking and start doing.

Throughout history, narcissists have always emerged to inspire people and to shape the future. When military, religious, and political arenas dominated society, it was figures such as Napoléon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt who determined the social agenda. But, from time to time, when business became the engine of social change, it, too, generated its share of narcissistic leaders. That was true at the beginning of this century, when men like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford exploited new technologies and restructured American industry. . . . Leaders such as Jack Welch or George Soros are examples of productive narcissists. They are gifted and creative strategists who see the big picture and find meaning in the risky proposition of changing the world and leaving behind a legacy. Indeed, one reason we look to productive narcissists in times of great transition is that they have the audacity to push through the massive transformations that society periodically undertakes. Productive narcissists are not only risk-takers willing to get the job done but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric.

Narcissists want to do something daring and attention grabbing. They also tend to be trendsetters: when they break the rules, other people follow suit. The first rule of creativity is that you must be able to risk being wrong, risk making mistakes, and risk public scrutiny. One narcissist in a group gets stares and snickers. Two narcissists are a powerful minority faction that can no longer be ignored. They inspire the kind, compassionate, selfless (non-narcissist) members of the team to change tactics, to fight the status quo, and to aim to do something worthy of admiration.

The Teddy Effect helps creativity in another way, by making a person argumentative. The problem with creative people is that they have a tendency to fall in love with their own ideas. This is partly because creativity is experienced as a pleasurable epiphany, and what feels good is often mistaken for what is good. See New Coke, the oddly shaped Suzuki X90, and Fiery Habanero Doritos for examples of products that must have sounded terrific in the boardroom. Some amount of critical pushback, or so-called depressive realism, acts as an antidote to falling in love with our own ideas. Hans Eysenck, one of the pioneers of intelligence and personality testing, was famous for saying that the only useful brainstorming sessions are ones that involve fierce criticism. Why do so many parents, teachers, and organizations ignore his advice?

Organizations desire creativity but often want it controllable. It is a long-standing problem for managers that highly resourceful problem solvers also have a hard time following rules and completing detailed work. What’s more, businesses love new ideas but hate the lack of certainty that accompanies them. Is there a way to deal with this paradox? Thankfully, we can turn to more than a decade of creativity research by Jennifer Mueller at the Wharton School of Business and her colleagues.

Imagine yourself in one of her research situations. You’re working hard when a colleague announces a new influx of capital in the company. You’re told you might receive some of this money, but, to avoid long debates about who contributed most and is most deserving of an unexpected cash bonus, distributions will be determined by random lottery. You feel excited, anxious, and uncertain. After this research dynamic has been established, everyone is asked a few questions on a computer. What the researchers want to know was this: when you’re in a mental state of uncertainty (being told the money you receive has nothing to do with merit, it’s going to be randomly determined) does your attitude change about the status quo? In particular, when you feel uncertain, are you more prone to crave certainty and therefore less open to novel ideas?

The researchers knew it would be useless to ask everyone point-blank whether they valued creativity. Nearly everyone knows that the “right” answer is yes and will likely skew their responses accordingly. To get around this, Mueller and her colleagues used computer reaction-time tests—famously tough to fake—to check whether people had unconscious biases against creativity. The results could not have been clearer. When put in a state of high uncertainty and asked whether they valued creativity, 95 percent of participants said, yes, creativity rocks! Yet, when the computer test measured automatic mental associations, people in a state of uncertainty linked creativity with words like vomit and agony.

Here we move closer to that 20 percent edge. When we want to get rid of uncertainty, we harbor negative attitudes toward creativity. To be open and receptive to creative ideas, we need to be open and receptive to discomfort. From what we learned about the Teddy Effect, narcissism might be helpful in overcoming this kind of discomfort. At this point, you won’t be surprised to hear that entitled, grandiose people are better at facing uncertainty. They experience fear openly, without the fear of fear, because they are busy moving in the direction of the grandiose kind of life they most want to live, feel they deserve, and are willing to work toward. With this final thought on the value of the Teddy Effect, we ask you what you would be doing with your time if you were not busy managing your [insert whatever difficult feelings, thoughts, urges, or memories that bother you here]? What have you given up, how has your life space narrowed over time, in an attempt to feel less social discomfort?

Is the Teddy Effect a source of evil in the world? It can be. But it can also be a source of beauty, happiness, meaning, and growth, and when you can extract these benefits, you emerge as a stronger, more resilient, and agile leader. The darker behaviors described in this chapter are part of our genetic blueprint, and we find evidence of their existence in children as young as four years old. These darker behaviors are built into the very society that likes its leaders to be unrelentingly positive—from teachers to athletes to surgeons to police officers to the soldiers we ask to fight our wars. In the right context, we can all draw on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy to keep a level head in tense situations, to charm others, and to believe in our ability to pursue big dreams. Acknowledge this part of your psychological repertoire, be willing to access it when needed, and you’ve just gained the 20 percent edge that you will need in that final lap. Everyone has these tools at their disposal, and yet too many people won’t use them for the sole reason that feeling comfortable in the moment is more important than doing what the situation requires for fulfillment and success.

The message here, supported by scientific research, is to encourage you to deviate from a kind, compassionate approach when situations warrant. Sometimes you have to be assertive and manipulative, not only for your sake but also for the sake of those around you, whether they are direct reports, colleagues, or members of your family. By learning both hard and soft strategies for dealing with other people, you gain an edge you will need to make your work, and your life, complete.

THE TAKEAWAYS

  1. Everyone, without exception, manipulates others.
  2. Doing so effectively is a matter of dosage and timing.
  3. It is essential to separate the malevolent parts of the Dark Triad from the benevolent parts of psychopathy, such as fearless dominance, and the benevolent parts of narcissism, such as grandiose self-assuredness, that stimulate courage, creativity, and leadership ability.
  4. Some of the greatest leaders in history had these qualities and with them were willing to take risks and be disliked in the pursuit of personally valued, ambitious goals.
  5. A little narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (underutilized skills in human relationships) can be extraordinarily effective in winning others over, creating great experiences for friends and customers, motivating other people, and accelerating a sense of intimacy and comfort.