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Psychopathic Manipulation
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what we do, how we look, the clothes we choose to wear, and
whether they agree with our values and beliefs as filtered through
their own biases, stereotypes, likes, and dislikes. The filters other people
use to evaluate us can, to varying degrees, distort the picture folks
get of who we really are.
The problem is that all of us form first impressions of others
very quickly, perhaps during the first seconds of meeting someone
for the first time. Once formed, people solidify their first impressions
by filtering out new information that contradicts their early impressions,
and preferentially let in information that is supportive. The
people we like right off become even more likable, and those we
don’t care for remain so. For example, you may feel an affinity for
those of a similar religion or political party and generalize this to
other aspects of their makeup. Feeling affinity for someone makes us
more accepting of the things we like about him or her, and more forgiving
of those things that we might dislike. Consistency between a
person’s words and deeds also plays an important role in reinforcing
his or her reputation. Consistency leads us to see people as honest—
even if we don’t totally agree with their views—while inconsistencies
we notice may leave us wondering about them. All of these filtered
perceptions can cause problems, of course, if we misjudged the persona
of a person when forming a first impression.
To summarize our model of personality so far: We have a private
self made up of positive traits we value and want others to appreciate,
and a collection of negative traits and characteristics we prefer to
keep to ourselves. When we interact with others, we present a carefully
crafted persona or public self comprised of a selection of traits
and characteristics from our private self that we want others to see.
Sometimes we may exaggerate a few of our positives just to make an
impression or to exert influence on others. Occasionally, material
from our private, dark side slips into the public view without our being
aware; at other times, we may be aware of traits that slip through,
and we feel embarrassed or guilty. Finally, our reputation is the “personality”
by which others come to know us. Ideally, our reputations