Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  President Clinton was just as gullible regarding Saddam Hussein: “I think that if he were sitting here on the couch I would further the change in his behavior. You know if he spent half the time…worrying about the welfare of his people that he spends worrying about where to place his SAM missiles…I think he'd be a stronger leader and be in a lot better shape over the long run.”100 Dan Rather was similarly mushy with Hussein, allowing him the commercial airtime to speak, without rebuttal, about how much he loves peace and humanity.101

  60 Minutes stalwart Mike Wallace was charmed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the deeply fanatical president of Iran, effusively describing him as “very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way…infinitely more rational than I had expected him to be.”102 Wallace had been similarly obsequious with Syrian tyrant Hafez Assad as well as Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, prompting journalist David Bar-Ilan to note: “Had [Wallace] treated American…politicians this way, he would have been drummed out of the profession.”103

  Naivete about people's motives, especially from well-known figures, often allows Machiavellians a public stage to work their confusing, deceptive wiles. But sometimes, Machiavellians achieve this publicity by covertly appealing to their interlocutor's narcissism rather than naivete. When mediators and interviewers interact with a well-known sinister character and bring out the seeming best in him, it provides an opportunity to flaunt their own character: “See. He may seem evil, but he's really not so bad. At least not to intelligent, nice, right-thinking people like me. The guy's just a pussycat when I talk to him.”

  WARREN BUFFETT—MULTIFACETED GENIUS

  But there is yet another way that emergenic traits can combine to shape extraordinary, radically different behavior that has a potent influence worldwide. Investor Warren Buffett's life provides proof you don't need to be Machiavellian to succeed. But Buffett's success also shows the importance of recognizing the possibility of darker motives in others.

  Warren Buffett is widely acknowledged to be the greatest investor the world has ever known. As biographer Roger Lowenstein summarizes: “Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century. Over a period of four decades—more than enough to iron out the effects of fortuitous rolls of the dice—Buffett outperformed the stock market, by a stunning margin and without taking undue risks or suffering a single losing year. This is a feat that market savants, Main Street brokers, and academic scholars had long proclaimed to be impossible.”104 How does he do it?

  Buffett merges so many extraordinary abilities in one ebullient fireball that it's impossible to single any one trait out and say that's the key. He possesses an Einstein-like ability to focus (that is, a Lamborghini of an anterior cingulate cortex) and a photographic memory (making it easy to posit val/val BDNF with a deluxe option package of accompanying alleles). Buffett doesn't need a computer because, as he told one interviewer, “I am a computer.”105

  Perhaps surprising in light of Buffett's extraordinary ability to discern patterns from numbers is his talent for intuiting people's ability and motives—an underappreciated tool in the investment toolkit. If a would-be manager is more interested in the money than the business, Buffett either settles on a different manager or pulls up financial stakes and instead invests elsewhere. One whiff of Enron-style leadership, one suspects, and Buffett would make a speedy getaway.

  Buffett himself writes:

  I would agree that I have been pretty good at sizing up people. Not perfect, of course—I've certainly made a few mistakes in selecting managers at Berkshire. I would say that part of the reason for the success I've had is that I only take the easy cases. In other words, if you gave me 100 people to evaluate on a scale of 1–10 in terms of how they would work out at Berkshire, I would be pretty good at selecting a few 10s. I would also miss a few other 10s in my screening and I would be terrible at differentiating between the 3s and the 7s. This is similar to my method of selecting stocks where I only have to be right on a few decisions and can put most of the rest into the “too hard” pile.106

  Buffett's practical ability to tell the difference between genuinely outstanding managers and their dark, chameleon-like doppelgängers has shaped his approach to business and propelled his efforts to steer Wall Street toward an ethical path. As Bill George at U.S. News & World Report points out: “[Buffett's] commitment to sound ethics and principles, his self-discipline and consistency, his transparency in disclosing mistakes, his criticism of Wall Street fees and compensation of underperforming CEOs, and his pleas for improving corporate governance—all have had a salutary influence on the corporate community.”107 In reality, no other businessman has applied such pressure to ensure that ethical practices are woven into the regulatory fabric that governs Wall Street. And in the end, Buffett's donation of his fortune to philanthropy will be, at nearly $40 billion, the largest in history. Fittingly, rather than set up his own ostentatious foundation, he is donating his money to the philanthropic organization of his good friends Bill and Melinda Gates, where he knows it will be put to wise use.

  No, one need not be Machiavellian to be successful. But being able to recognize that shades of gray in others helps.

  HEALTHY CYNICISM

  Over the years, I've found that nice people (that is, the majority of people) generally fall into two categories—those who have dealt with and have been wounded by the successfully sinister, and those who haven't. Those who haven't—which naturally includes many younger people—often simply don't believe that the successfully sinister exist. After all, since elementary school they've been told that virtually anyone can somehow be reasoned with. Even if a problem does arise, the naif thinks, surely the seemingly sinister person can be taught how to act more reasonably, perhaps through the proper modeling of patience, understanding, and compassion. Explaining the true nature surrounding the cognitive dysfunction and emotional imbalance of the successfully sinister to a naif is a little like trying to explain color to a blind person—it is no wonder that such naivete continues even when someone is warned point blank to be wary.h. People simply aren't generally raised and educated to understand that small percentages of the population—some of whom are outwardly very successful—are quite capable of masking deeply disturbed personalities. Sometimes, sadly, the devastating reality of these “unfixable” personalities becomes clear only after marriage and children. (As relationship expert Russell Friedman once quipped: “You can't love someone into mental health.”)108

  On the other hand, those who have dealt with the successfully sinister usually know instantly what I'm talking about. When I describe the concept behind this book, within seconds and without a further word from me, people I barely know will unwrap and describe psychic wounds that they've carried privately for years—the ex-wife who left the kids and a trail of credit card debt; the supervisor who made life a living hell; the friend who wormed close, mimicking hair, dress, even a way of talking—and stole a boyfriend; the uncle who took his grandmother's life savings and left her to die unattended in a filthy nursing home. “I can't believe there might be some kind of scientific explanation for this,” the have-dealt-withs tell me time after time, “I never even talk about it because no one would believe me.” Without knowledge of recent studies, people have little way of figuring out that their seemingly isolated experience was far more common than they'd realized—and that extraordinarily enlightening explanations are becoming available.

  In an ironic twist of justice, it appears that the worst of all human crimes—genocide—often occurs simply because people can't believe that heretofore noncriminal humans can perpetrate horrendous acts such as mass murder or gratuitous torture. “I don't believe you,” said Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, when told by an eyewitness of the “naked corpses in the Warsaw ghetto, yellow stars, starving children, Jew hunts, and the smell of burning flesh.” Frankfurter interrupted to add: “I do not mean you are lying. I sim
ply said I cannot believe you.”109 The justice literally could not conceive of the atrocities being described. Samantha Power describes one of the key causes of genocide in her Pulitzer Prize–winning “A Problem from Hell”: “Despite graphic media coverage, American policymakers, journalists, and citizens are extremely slow to muster the imagination needed to reckon with evil. Ahead of the killings, they assume rational actors will not inflict seemingly gratuitous violence. They trust in good-faith negotiations and traditional diplomacy.”110 Sadly, ordinary people often have little exposure to the research regarding Machiavellians that could do much to help prevent genocide. Only by recognizing Machiavellians for what they are and how they operate can we begin to stop them.

  But if the dark shades of the successfully sinister are sometimes evil—and I believe they are—it is important to understand that that evil is complex. The dictionary definition of evil, after all, is “Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.”111 That definition implies a gestalt sense of evil—not evil in every particular. Shades of gray lurk, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter. And the occasional genuinely decent act from a successfully sinister person can't help but confuse our gut feeling that someone like Hitler, or on a more mundane level, the man who throws his screaming children from a fifteenth-floor hotel balcony, must be totally evil. With popular emphasis on “the sociopath next door,”112 people often don't understand that deeply dysfunctional, even unquestionably evil individuals can have genuinely decent aspects to their personality. “You could not imagine what a good heart Adi has,”113 one man exclaimed, after witnessing Adolf Hitler, as a penniless young man, protesting against the unjust treatment of an employee of a coffeehouse. And Hitler gratefully recognized the Jewish doctor who treated his mother's terminal cancer, protecting him until he emigrated in late 1941.114

  In the ultimate world with its shades of gray, where “bad” traits can be used for good purposes, and “good” traits can be seen in bad people, some things, it seems, are relative. But not everything.i.115 It seems that normal people worldwide use the same neural mechanisms to process moral questions. Thus the basic features of morality appear to be hardwired, and not a product of culture.116 Harvard biologist Marc Hauser, who has done extraordinary work in this area, has found that although there are some differences in morality between cultures, there are limits to those variations. There are some things, in other words, that religion or education can't easily instill in us, because it goes against our natural intuition—our built in moral compass.

  Ultimately then, religion, education, and even family may have less of an impact on our innate sense of morality than we may think.117 Ethics classes, in other words, really may just preach to the choir. Those few who are wired differently—and we are beginning to learn how the wiring's awry—march to their own moral tune, no matter what they are taught.

  * * *

  a.I hope the reader can forgive my loosely interchangeable use of narcissism, ego, self-esteem, self-importance, conceit, arrogance, and the like. Clearly these concepts are related to one another, but not identical. In the end, I'm fuzzy because hard science research in this area is fuzzy.

  b.Unfortunately, egotism alone does not do the trick—as Churchill's talentless son Randolph revealed. Churchill biographer Gretchen Rubin summarizes: “[Randolph] was universally considered an over-bearing, egotistical snob—in fact, one club's constitution stipulated, ‘Randolph Churchill shall not be eligible for membership.’ Drunken arguments, broken marriages, and unfulfilled ambitions marred his life.”

  c.Enron's culture of rewarded incompetence was the antithesis of Microsoft's. Whatever Microsoft's sometimes cutthroat business tactics, Gates's own dazzling technical and business acumen underpins virtually every major decision. A willingness to argue intelligently with Gates's ideas is prized.

  d.I can't help but wonder whether this same set of circuitry might be involved in Hannah Arendt's “banality of evil.” As the Rape of Nanking, the murderous actions of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, and savage onslaughts of the Huns show, virtually anyone can be taught to kill. However, careful examination shows that these killers have often been taught, sometimes through lifelong indoctrination, that other people aren't people. (This practice has a long tradition: It appears nomadic human bands generally refer to themselves as The People—other bipedal types, of course, being just humanoid imitations straight out of The Thing.) It may be that such killers have often been reared or trained to use a “non-self” or “not one of us” referential circuit that is less able to activate feelings of empathy. This would explain why, for example, savagely brutal WWII Japanese soldiers, taught since childhood to believe that the Chinese were worse than dogs, could return home from their rape and slaughter with little or no feelings of guilt and show themselves to be decent, upstanding family men. And this would explain Goldhagen's thesis that pervasive and violent German anti-Semitism lay at the heart of the Holocaust. Other types of killings may be based on development of a social frame that sparks neural circuitry related to morally justifiable actions. Cambodian refugee Youk Chhang, for example, is haunted by his teenage memories of heckling a couple as they were beaten and buried alive for the crime of falling in love without official permission.

  Those with borderpathic traits, however, would need little training to commit their sometimes heinous crimes. Such sinister individuals could serve as ideal shock troops to inflame and train ordinary people. For example, researcher Paul Brass points out that Indian riots are generally fomented by “riot specialists”—somewhat sinister types ranging from scruffy young hooligans to university professors who specialize in converting what is often a minor local incident into a major regional or even national problem. (In borderline-speak, you might call these “splitting” specialists.) These riots are often ordered up by either the Moslem or Hindu elites to keep people on edge and make sure focus is maintained on Hindu-Moslem relationships. When the time is right for the full-scale riot, lumpen elements, including criminals, hooligans, and willing students, are brought in to get the ball rolling.

  In some sense then, most of us are indeed capable of horrendous acts, but it may be that people with different neurological underpinnings would be induced to commit those acts much more easily and for very different reasons.

  In relation to these ideas, Philip Zimbardo, a former president of the American Psychological Association, recently published The Lucifer Effect—a “penetrating investigation” of his famous 1971 Stanford Prison experiment involving college students who proved themselves capable of becoming sadistic prison guards or abjectly submissive prisoners. Zimbardo drew sweeping conclusions to the effect that it was the situation alone that drew these “good people” into doing “evil.”

  Zimbardo's understanding was that he had gone out of his way to select “young men who seemed to be normal, healthy, and average on all the psychological dimensions we measured.” However, as pointed out by astute researchers Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland,66 that does not at all appear to have been the case. On one test related to authoritarian attitudes, Zimbardo's volunteers scored higher than every standardized comparison group except San Quenton prisoners. Moreover, Zimbardo and his group did not indicate which version of Christie's Machiavellian test was used as another of the tests to determine normalcy. This makes it impossible to be certain what the scores reported by Zimbardo's group actually mean. In fact, it appears that, by most interpretations of the data, the Machiavellian scores of those involved in the experiment were far higher than normal. This logically implies that Machiavellian individuals tend to be attracted to prison-related situations.

  Carnahan and McFarland tested this idea by writing two different newspaper advertisements for study volunteers. One ad was virtually identical to Zimbardo's original, which referred to “prison life.” The other was also virtually identical—except it was missing the words “prison life.” Testing of those who responded to the ad revealed there was indeed a dramatic difference in Machiavellian scores
between the two groups of respondents—prison-related work apparently is a magnet for Machiavellians. Moreover, those who volunteered for Carnahan and McFarland's study were higher not only in Machiavellianism, but also in narcissism, dispositional aggressiveness, authoritarianism, and social dominance—and lower in dispositional empathy and altruism.

  Ultimately, then, it is probable that Zimbardo's sweeping conclusions about Abu Ghraib, genocide, human nature, and evil itself are based on a fundamentally flawed study.

  e.As I tell our kids—you can always find a distinguished scientist who backs up your views, whether you believe that US government agents destroyed the Twin Towers or that smoking cigarettes is good for you. People are often surprised to learn that a person can be simultaneously both an intelligent scientist or public personality and a crackpot. An immunologist friend once spoke with preeminent scientist Peter Duesberg—principal proponent of the idea that HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is harmless, and that AIDS is actually caused by noninfectious factors, such as the very drugs being used to treat AIDS. Duesberg's work has inspired people like Christine Maggiore, an engaging, articulate, well-to-do HIV-positive woman who heads up a group that denies standard treatment is necessary or effective for AIDS. After Maggiore's three-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia, Maggiore still leads the movement.

  While conversing with Duesberg, my friend asked him why people with AIDS showed a certain well-studied pattern where certain cells in the immune system were killed, while others were left alone—an unlikely pattern if chemicals are the cause of the disease. Duesberg, although friendly, dismissively waved her question off with “I haven't seen that data.” In point of fact, it is mind-boggling that Duesberg would not be aware of, and obviously uninterested in looking at, that very well-known and relevant data. Incidentally, the foreword to Duesberg's book, Inventing the AIDS Virus, was written by Nobel Prize–winner Kary Mullis, who has also written of his abduction by aliens from his California forest hideaway.