Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  “I'm doing this because it's good for Enron, not for me!” Fastow shouted.

  “Goddamn it! I am sick and tired of people attacking this! It's good for you, it's good for your business! So fuck you guys!”

  Bowen hadn't said a word.

  “I'll tell you what!” Fastow yelled, careening out of control. “We'll shut it down! And you fucking guys won't be able to get your fucking deals done because you won't have the fucking capital. So just figure it out on your own!”

  Bowen held the phone away from his ear as the screaming escalated.43

  If it had been just Fastow and his duplicitous schemes, the damage could have been caught and contained early on—Fastow's lack of ability alone would have seen him ushered to the door in most companies. Yet, with equally Machiavellian, cognitively dysfunctional CEO Jeffrey Skilling averting his eyes as necessary, Fastow's every incompetence and illegality was overlooked or somehow explained away. After all, whatever the means, Fastow was able to magically produce the profits that Skilling and others on the management team were so eager to see.c. CEO Skilling presented an even richer level of Machiavellianism:

  Skilling thrived on confrontation and had a perfect command of the minutiae of deals. In interviews he could stun financial writers with his grasp of details, but that same superiority made corporate meetings enervating for his colleagues. His vision was messianic…. From the beginning, colleagues say, Skilling's pattern was to scapegoat others without leaving a trail that could lead back to him. In meetings that Ken Lay chaired, Skilling was often silent, letting Lay believe that he was completely in control. But at other times Skilling could be very volatile…. He would often blurt out astonishing remarks in public—he once, famously, called a stock analyst an asshole during a conference call—and the public-relations staff worried each time he gave an interview.44

  It was Skilling's egotistical, charismatic, almost borderpathic ability to convince listeners that he was creating a new vision for business rather than recycling a de facto pyramid scheme that led whistle-blower Sherron Watkins to openly declare during meetings that “[t]his is a circle jerk.”45 But others were swept into rapt agreement with Skilling. (After Enron's demise, Skilling would become more obviously delusional, suffering a nervous breakdown on the streets of New York City, “running up to people in bars and on the street, pulling open their clothes, and claiming that they were undercover FBI agents.”)46 Overseeing Skilling and Fastow was glad-handing chairman Ken Lay, a man so dysfunctionally clueless that whatever the evidence presented to the contrary, he believed the entire issue was simply a PR problem that could be solved with a press release.47 Those who looked the seemingly gullible, self-serving Lay in the eye and told egregious lies were forgiven—their “minor” sins excused.

  In short then, encouragement from Enron's semi-delusional Machiavellian top fostered development of a dim-witted Ponzi scheme. This was coupled with hiring, retention, and reward practices that selected for the unethical or their willing codependents, Intimidation of those who might have spoken up ensured that dissent was kept to a minimum. All this was bolstered by an oblivious chairman who refused to take firm action no matter what was brought to his attention. This sinister system was so obscenely and delusionally corrupt that it bent the lax rules for sinister stability past breaking. In the end, as the company went bankrupt, thousands of Enron employees lost their jobs and retirement savings, and some investors their life savings.

  In short, then, narcissism—like many of the Machiavellian attributes—can be a double-edged sword. Too little of it can allow even the most talented and intelligent of individuals to pass by unnoticed. Too much of it—well, it seems there can never be too much of it. Extreme narcissism combined with even a modicum of talent can be a recipe for success on a grand scale. But when narcissism finds itself combined with intelligence, charisma, a too-easy glibness with truth, chameleon-like identity diffusion, and a Mao-like ability to manipulate mood with frightening effect, it can lead to individual success at high cost to others. When abetted by other Machiavellians and the oblivious dysfunctionality of blind optimists, Machiavellian narcissism can lead to the worst sorts of social disasters. On an organizational level, it can lead to Fastow, Skilling, and Lay's Enron. On a broader historical level, it can lead to Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, or Mao's China.

  TEMPER, TEMPER, TEMPER

  But there is another seemingly dysfunctional trait with a positive flip side, perhaps best shown by George Washington—the “Foundingest Father of them all.”48 Gouverneur Morris got right to the heart of the matter, eulogizing Washington as a man of “tumultuous passions” who was capable of terrible wrath.49 At the Battle of Monmouth, Washington tracked down a commander who had allowed his troops to retreat and, as one observer noted, “swore that day till the leaves shook on the trees. Charming! Delightful! Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.”50 Years later, Thomas Jefferson dryly noted Washington's reaction to a provocation at a cabinet meeting: Washington became “much inflamed; got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself.”51

  Yet, despite—and possibly related to—his passion and sometimes overwhelming efforts to master it, Washington managed to control and resist a temptation to remain in power that Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, and thousands of other leaders, great and small, have been unable to resist. An anguished Napoleon commented on his deathbed, “They wanted me to be another Washington.” But he wasn't.

  Washington wasn't alone in harboring a volatile side that he attempted to control even as he performed noble deeds. Spiritual master of nonviolence Mahatma Gandhi shared the same characteristic. (Beyond their shared temper, Gandhi, like Washington, wasn't above rewriting his own history to burnish his legend.)52 Biographer Louis Fischer, who knew Gandhi personally, reported, “He had a violent nature and his subsequent mahatma-calm was the product of long training in temperament-control.”53 Early on, it was Gandhi's wife who felt the brunt of his temper. “Once,” Fischer reports, “they quarreled so fiercely he packed her off from Rajkot to her parents in Porbandar.” But where Washington made a virtual religion of self-control, Gandhi made it an actual religion. He took the Hindu ascetic practice of brahmacharya to its broadest interpretation to include “restraint and control of all of the senses, including diet, emotions, speech, and actions.”54

  It's enlightening to contrast Gandhi's combination of hot-blooded emotion and generally tight control with Hitler's emotional makeup, as described in a secret analysis written by Dr. Walter Langer in 1943 for US intelligence:

  [Hitler] shows an utter lack of emotional control. In the worst rages he undoubtedly acts like a spoiled child who cannot have his own way and bangs his fists on the tables and walls. He scolds and shouts and stammers, and on some occasions foaming saliva gathers in the corners of his mouth. [An eyewitness observer], in describing one of these uncontrolled exhibitions, says: “He was an alarming sight, his hair disheveled, his eyes fixed, and his face distorted and purple. I feared that he would collapse or have a stroke.”

  It must not be supposed, however, that these rages occur only when he is crossed on major issues. On the contrary, very insignificant matters might call out this reaction. In general they are brought on whenever anyone contradicts him, when there is unpleasant news for which he might feel responsible, when there is any skepticism concerning his judgment, or when a situation arises in which his infallibility might be challenged or belittled.55

  Hitler, in other words, had an extraordinary temper—with only a rare desire to put a damper on it. No doubt Washington's and Gandhi's abilities to control their sometimes overwhelming emotions was in part abetted by their conscious decision to exert control—just as Hitler's perceived lack of desire to control his emotions was abetted by his realization that he could get his way more easily through temper tantrums. (In fact, architect Albert Speer, one of the few who was close to Hitler, argued that “self-control was one of Hitler's mo
st striking characteristics.”56 Biographer Ian Kershaw agreed that Hitler's rages and outbursts of apparently uncontrollable anger were in reality often contrived.57) Hitler clearly had a passionate temper—which he was perfectly capable of switching on and off as he needed to manipulate others.

  Passionate emotions, as evinced by impulsive, angry outbursts—sometimes, but not always, kept under control—are found surprisingly often in a great number of high-achieving individuals, good or bad (or good and bad). A random list of those who have been said to possess such a temper might include Microsoft's Bill Gates; designer Ralph Lauren; opera singer Maria Callas; France's prickly Charles de Gaulle; “Iron” Mike Ditka; and a broad slew of US presidents, ranging from Bill Clinton to Richard Nixon to fiery nineteenth-century battle hero Andrew Jackson—a brawler who killed a man in a duel for casting aspersions on his wife.58 And of course, impulsive tempers are found widely in the less talented, or less fortunate, run-of-the mill population: the friendly florist pulled over for road rage, the mother with an acid tongue, the landlord with an attitude.

  In the end, impulsivity and temper may form part of Machiavellianism, but they also form a part of the broader spectrum of human behavior. If there is a difference between normal and sinister behavior, it is that the successfully sinister often appear to use their temper in a more consciously manipulative fashion for malevolent ends. As the perceptive Abigail Adams would write of George Washington, “[I]f he was really not one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might be a very dangerous one.”59

  COGNITIVE FUNCTION AND DYSFUNCTION

  But temper and ego aren't the only double-edged traits. Perhaps surprisingly, cognitive dysfunction can also carry good as well as bad aspects. After all, it was the near-delusional idealism of another founding father, Thomas Jefferson, that lay behind the inspiring opening words to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” Jefferson's flight of rhetorical hyperbole, and the well-intentioned mindset it sprang from, inspired a nation to recognize the principles of individual rights and freedom that have since spread from “men” to women and people of all backgrounds. Indeed, Jefferson's extraordinary affinity for “idealized or idyllic visions, and the parallel capacity to deny evidence that exposed them as illusory [was] a central feature of [his] mature thought and character.”60 Jefferson declared, for example, that “all men are created equal,” even as he owned slaves and bedded at least one of them. But despite Jefferson's Mao-like tendencies for duplicitous behavior (George Washington endorsed a characterization of Jefferson as “one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in America”),61 Jefferson retained a very un-Mao-like mental flexibility. He had a sincere aversion for conflict and carried a lifelong willingness to absorb advice from his many friends. As a consequence, most of Jefferson's more lunatic ideas—such as canceling all debts every nineteen years—were pruned before ever reaching public discourse.

  It is that ability to listen and, at least on occasion, to change one's views in response (perhaps echoes of the ability or inability to resolve conflicting information that Posner's group was studying), that appears to be the key difference between inflexible tyrants such as Hitler and Mao, and vastly more effective, although still tough, leaders such as Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk; Britain's Winston Churchill, and, in other fields, business executive Jack Welch, basketball coach extraordinaire “Red” Auerbach, and Manhattan project director J. Robert Oppenheimer (a probable polio survivor).62 After all, as James Surowiecki has shown in The Wisdom of Crowds, although groups don't always converge on the right answers, they can frequently get pretty close. One smart but inflexible person will always be wrong part of the time—and sometimes about crucially important decisions. But a critical thinker who accepts the best of surrounding input, instead of tuning out what he or she doesn't want to hear, can obviously do far better than any one inflexible thinker acting alone.

  Delusions

  It's worth lingering a bit on the dark side of our shades of gray to discuss outright delusional thinking, which can sometimes be found even in high-functioning, seemingly rational individuals.63 Recently, the editors of Popular Mechanics saw more than their share of such thinking as a result of their book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. The editors’ conclusions? Conspiracy theorists, it seems, are often completely incapable of assimilating facts that counter their claims.64

  Research in delusional thinking is still in its infancy, but it seems clear that delusions must involve a fairly complex process. After all, it isn't just that the delusional person makes a mistake when perceiving something. Instead, a delusion can be adopted and maintained as a belief despite convincing contradictory evidence, and in the face of the fact that it is completely implausible. Delusions can be held with great conviction and defy rational counterargument. Such delusions often also involve jumping to conclusions: a negative bias in the way facts are absorbed; a way of processing information so that it becomes focused on the delusional individual herself; and biased recall that can actually seem emotionally richer to the delusional person than real memories. Indeed, one of the strongest characteristics of delusional thinking is the unwillingness to admit to any evidence that would refute the belief. Such thinking is reminiscent of the inflexible thinking of many a nefarious dictator—or difficult college roommate.

  Researchers who have studied deluded patients have taken care to point out that these patients aren't delusional about everything. But such patients often do show a personalizing bias—a tendency to blame other people when things go wrong (in a word, projection). Interestingly, it seems that there is a separate neural circuit for threatening information that pertains directly to the “self” as opposed to anything else. Delusional patients, it seems, are not able to tone this circuit down, which means excessive attention is paid to “self-referential” information. This inclines the delusional person to think in a self-serving fashion. Research in delusions may help to provide a neurological-based understanding for the sometimes incomprehensibly self-centered behavior found in extreme narcissism.d.65

  One hypothesis relates delusional thinking to defects in the regulation of dopamine and perhaps other neurotransmitters. This could lead to a person improperly assessing the importance of the information she is receiving, because dopamine helps a person figure out whether whatever she is perceiving is either good or bad. It's thought that there may be two very different types of delusional thinking—one that is driven by emotion, and one that seems to have no relation to emotion at all. Interestingly, treatment of mood disorders seems to reduce delusional thinking that is based on emotion. No one knows the cause of many of the nonemotion-related delusions.

  The Delusions of Dictators

  Dipping again into the darkest shades of gray, we find that Hitler's borderline-like thought processes followed the emotion-driven pattern of delusion—his thinking was observed to “proceed from the emotional to the factual instead of starting with the facts as an intellectual normally does. It [was] this characteristic of his thinking process that [made] it difficult for ordinary people to understand Hitler or to predict his future actions.”67 (This is an eerie echo of Milosevic, who, if you'll remember, decided first what was expedient to believe, and then believed it.)68 As early psychoanalyst Walter Langer pointed out, Hitler was so clever at finding facts to prove his emotions correct that he appeared to be making rational judgments when that was actually far from the case. This was particularly true in discussions, where Hitler was “unable to match wits with another person in a straightforward argument. He [would] express his opinion at length, but he [would] not defend it on logical grounds.” One observer noted: “He is afraid of logic. Like a woman he evades the issue and ends by throwing in your face an argument entirely remote from what you were talking about.”69 Hitler's near-schizophrenic magical thinking led him to believe “that his ‘will’ could accomplish wha
t others thought impossible, [he would thus] brook no contradiction from lesser souls. The absolute power he in fact obtained served then to reinforce his idea that his will was magical.”70

  “No matter how impulsive, bizarre, destructive, or lawless his actions were, Hitler rationalized them as legitimate.”71 And, like each of the other dictators we've discussed, Hitler was particularly gifted at the borderline trait of gaslighting—that supernal technique of denying reality that can so throw an opponent. Particularly disconcerting in light of Hitler's phenomenal memory (about which more will be said later) was his capacity for “forgetting.” He would say something one day and then, several days later, say something that would completely contradict the first statement. If the inconsistency was pointed out, Hitler would fly into a rage, demanding to know whether the other person thought he was a liar. Leading Nazis took to mirroring Hitler's trick (shades of the emotional contagion seen in Ceausescu's Romania—and in Skilling's Enron). As former Nazi leader Hermann Rauschning observed: “Most of the Nazis with Hitler at their head, literally forget, like hysterical women, anything they have no desire to remember.”72 He noted further that Hitler was “capable of entertaining the most incompatible ideas in association with one another.”73

  The Delusions of Madmen

  But, on the other hand, could humankind do without utterly inflexible, sometimes almost delusionally visionary people? Could we have done without determined teachers such as Socrates who, rather than accept exile, cheerfully drank hemlock as punishment for refusing to recognize the gods and for “corrupting” youth with his teachings? Or brilliant, tragic Joan of Arc, whose visions inspired her countrymen to fight off the yoke of the English? Or archly inflexible Galileo (Eppur si muove—“and yet it moves”)? Or the mysterious man of China's Tiananmen Square, courageous enough to stand for a just cause in front of massed tanks?