In our turbulent times, everyone you disagree with is of course a narcissist. If you pass the staircase and the neighbor's cat hisses at you, the cat is a psychopath and the neighbor is a narcissist. If you divorce your husband, he the neighbor is a narcissist. If you divorce your husband, he's always been a narcissist. He says, you are a narcissist. Your children agree. Both of you are narcissists. Everyone and his dog and his cat and his goldfish. Everyone nowadays is a narcissist. It's a useful label.
However, there's a theory in psychology. It's known as labeling theory. I'm going to discuss it today. Labeling is seriously dangerous.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and I'm Professor of Clinical Psychology.
Labeling in psychological assessment is when we categorize a patient, when we classify a patient, we use nosology or we use a classification system in order to slap a label on a patient. Labels are shorthand, they are the equivalent of scientific stereotypes. A label allows us to capture, with minimum words, maximum information.
And we label patients according to lists known as diagnostic categories or diagnostic criteria.
The problem with the labeling of patients is that most labels are incomplete. And the overwhelming vast majority of labels, studies have shown, are misleading.
And the reason is variance.
Not all cases and not all patients conform to sharply defined characteristics of standard diagnostic categories.
In other words, there's a lot of bleeding between categories. There's a lot of overlap between diagnostic criteria.
And consequently, there is something called comorbidity when we have to label patients with multiple labels in order to finally capture the clinical essence that we have witnessed in therapy or during treatment.
This is where labeling starts, but we all tend to label each other, even when we are not qualified to do so.
We are not therapies, we are not psychologists, we're not psychiatrists. We are not even humble professors of psychology. And yet we label each other.
Labeling theory is actually part and parcel of sociology, not psychology. It's a sociological hypothesis that when you describe an individual in terms of particular behavioral characteristics, this has a significant effect on the behavior of this individual. It's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
So when you walk around labeling everyone a narcissist or a psychopath, what you're doing actually, you're encouraging them to behave like narcissists and psychopaths, to emulate narcissists and psychopaths.
Labeling is motivational. When someone slaps a label on you, you say, the hell with it. Since anyhow I'm labelled, let me justify.
If your husband constantly suspects you of cheating, you may find yourself ultimately being unfaithful because you say to yourself, anyhow I'm bearing the costs, anyhow I'm being punished for something I haven't done, so let me at least do it, let me get the benefits.
Similarly, if you label someone a narcissist, consistently, repeatedly, regularly, they end up saying, I'm being unjustly labeled a narcissist, I might as well be one.
This creates motivation to conform to the label, a self-fulfilling prophecy or a self-fulfilling label, describing an individual as mentally ill or as deviant or in possession of specific traits, like you're stingy, you are dysempathic, you're stupid.
When you treat people this way, this results actually in mental illness or in delinquent behavior.
This is known as the societal reaction theory and it's a proven fact.
Nowadays, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people, label each other as narcissists and psychopaths, and that's one of the major reasons we are having an increase in narcissism and psychopathy.
Labeling becomes self-fulfilling prophecy, people conform to the label, and presto, a new narcissist or a new psychopath has been minted.
We distinguish between primary and secondary deviance.
Primary deviance in theories of deviance and identity. Primary deviance is an initial rule-breaking act, some kind of non-conformity, disobedience, in your face defiance, an initial act, performed by an otherwise socially compliant individual.
We all have healthy narcissism, but we also, each and every one of us, as healthy as we may be, possess narcissistic defenses.
And when someone calls you a narcissist, it triggers and provokes your narcissistic defenses, and you begin to resemble a narcissist at least behaviorally.
Sometimes we have flashes of narcissism, sometimes we are egotistical, sometimes we're selfish, sometimes we're dysempathic, sometimes we're sadistic and cruel. We all have these flashes in the pan, but that's no reason to label people.
In most cases, individuals amend their behaviors in response to social queuing and social pressure. The overwhelming vast majority of people do not continue to violate social norms. In other words, they're not secondary deviants.
So, when you come across someone who is acting in a mentally ill way or lacks empathy or is selfish, ask yourself, is this a one-off? Is this a flash in the pan? Or is this the character of that person?
In other words, is it primary deviance or secondary deviance?
When you label someone, you've made up your mind. This is a stereotype, a straitjacket, a prison cell, and the person labeled cannot extricate themselves. Their reputation is constructed on the labeling. Your name precedes you, your reputation precede you, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief or an expectation that helps to bring about its own fulfillment.
When you expect something, it usually happens. You bring it about.
If you expect your nervousness or your attention deficit to impair your performance in a job interview, you're likely to fail the job interview.
When a teacher has a preconception about a specific student's ability, this would affect the child's accomplishments.
When someone is labeled as bad and mad, they're likely to become bad and mad.
Social pressure, social expectations, social queuing and social scripting mold us. We are relational creatures. Our relationships shape us and make us who we are. That is the main lesson of object relations theories.
And so there is an expectancy effect, the effect of one person's expectation about the behavior of another person.
The actual behavior of people is determined by the expectations of other people, and this is known as the interpersonal expectancy effect.
There's also an effect of other people's expectations about their own behavior and subsequent behaviors of both parties.
In other words, interpersonal expectancy effects and intrapersonal expectancy effects actually shape our behaviors within social interactions.
We are actually responding not to other people, not to real people, but to our expectations of ourselves, our expectations of our behaviors, our expectations of the impressions we are about to make, and our expectations regarding the other person, his personality, her behavior, and the type of interaction that is about to unfold.
We are managing expectations and impressions all the time and therefore you should think twice, three times, 200 times before you label someone a narcissist or a psychopath or mentally ill or a borderline or whatever. Labeling is powerful. It's shaping, it shapes the identity of the other person.
We know, for example, that when there's a power asymmetry, when someone in the relationship has more power, has more authority, has more knowledge, is older, there's a power asymmetry, there's a power matrix, where one person has all the potency, and the other is weaker, helpless, and consequently more submissive.
We know that in such situations, expectations are everything.
There is something called the Pygmalion effect. It's a consequence or a reaction in which the expectations of a leader or a superior engender behavior in followers, subordinates, fans, subscribers, intimate partners, children, and the behaviors conformin followers, subordinates, fans, subscribers, intimate partners, children, and the behaviors conform, they are consistent with the expectations of the superior person.
The superior person's spoken and unspoken demands shape and mold everyone around the superior person. It's aform of self-fulfilling prophecy.
So if there's a manager, for example, a corporate setting, if there's a manager and his expectations of the performance of his subordinates or his employees are high, the employees and the subordinates would try to meet these expectations. They would try to rise to the occasion. They would meet the challenge head on. And this would enhance the performance of these subordinates and employees.
Of course, the other way around as well, if the manager disparages, mocks, humiliates, and criticizes his subordinates and employees all the time, their performance is likely to deteriorate, not because of passive aggression, because they would try to please the manager or the superior person by conforming to his or her expectations.
It's all about group conformity, remaining in the in-group, continuing to belong.
It's as if the superior person is broadcasting, if you want to remain in this group, if you want to belong to my sect or my cult or my family, you have to conform to my expectations of you for better and for worse.
When you go around labeling people narcissists and psychopaths, you're perceived as superior because you imply that you're in possession of some knowledge that the other party is not privy to, has no access to.
And this position of authoritative knowledge, which is often fallacious, you don't possess this knowledge, you're not qualified to diagnose, this position creates conformity in the other person and the other person begins to behave in ways which affirm your judgment and your diagnosis. They become narcissists and psychopaths.
The upward Pygmalion effect is an effect in which the expectations of followers and subordinates lead to behavior on the part of the leader or superior that is consistent with these expectations.
So it's a two-way street.
A leader, someone who is superior, a wise man, a guru, an older person, or a parental figure, they influence their subordinates, their inferiors, their dependents, they influence them to conform to their expectations.
But the other way around is equally valid. The expectations of your children shape you, the expectations of your dependent spouse, mold you, expectations of your employees affect your behavior.
The behavior of the leader does not reflect their true ability or personality traits, but rather the perceptions of the leader by subordinates.
All this is part of what is known as role theory and I have a video in this channel dedicated to role theory.
There are good grounds to claim that pathological narcissism and psychopathy, and to some extent borderline, involve role playing.
There's a role of being a narcissist. And the narcissist acts out and acts the role.
It's a theater play. It's a movie. And in the movie, the script says that you should be a narcissist. So you're a narcissist. It's all about roles and role expectations.
Role expectations are the traits, attitude and behaviors considered appropriate for an occupant of a particular position within a group or social setting.
For example, if you are an elementary school teacher, you're associated automatically with expectations of warmth, patience, empathy, compassion, nurturing. Because that's what elementary school teachers are like. There's a stereotype of an elementary school teacher.
The desire to motivate students to help them achieve things and the ability to develop useful curricula and provide appropriate instruction. This is the job description of an elementary school teacher, but it's also the identity of the elementary school teacher. It's who the elementary school teacher is. It's essential.
These expectations may be communicated to the occupant of the role byother people in the occupant's role set. So people around you broadcast to you their expectations as to the role you're supposed to play and these people are known as the role set.
Gradually you begin to adopt their point of view and the expectations regarding the role become yours.
But think for a minute if there's someone surrounded by people who keep telling him that he's a narcissist, if there's someone whose entire milieu, his friends, his spouse, his children, his teachers, his colleagues, everyone tells him that he's callous, that she is cruel, their psychopaths, and so and so forth.
Gradually, they will enter the role. Their the espion skills, their acting skills will be triggered.
The role expectations of the role set of the people around the person. Their role expectations would define the person and they would become increasingly more and more narcissistic and more psychopathic.
We are creating narcissists and psychopaths nowadays because we label people and labels go with expectations.
We reward people. When we say someone is a narcissist, we reward the narcissists for being a narcissist.
For example, we pay them attention. We bother. We're there.
And we penalize them when they're not narcissists, when they're not being narcissistic.
So if you have made up your mind that someone is a narcissist and he's being nice to you, you're not likely to say, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that person is not a narcissist.
You're likely to say he's nice to me because he wants something. He's manipulating me. He's being Machiavellian.
Labeling is narrow-mindedness. Labeling is the inability to change your mind or your opinion. Labeling is being closed to learning, inability to learn. Labeling involves confirmation bias.
And confirmation bias is a tendency to gather evidence that confirms pre-existing prejudices and expectations emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence.
Of course, that leads you to rigidity in thinking, in opinion making, your judgment is impaired. It impairs your reality testing.
And when you broadcast to someone, you're a narcissist, I expect you to behave as a narcissist. Whenever you behave as someone who is not a narcissist, I'm going to interpret it in a way that will sustain my view of you as a narcissist. I am never going to open myself up to the possibility that you're not a narcissist.
Because I've made up my mind. Don't confuse me with the facts.
When this happens, it provokes a process known as behavioral confirmation or behavioral conformity.
It's a process where the actions of one person, let's call this person the target. The actions of the target come to reinforce the expectations of another person, the perceiver.
So when there's a social interaction, the perceiver broadcasts to the target. This is the way I perceive you.
And then the target tries to conform to the perception.
Behavioral confirmation processes. I use to explain how beliefs and expectations including stereotypes come to affect reality it's a special case of self-fulfilling prophecy it's an expectancy effect.
The target's actual elicited behavior confirms the perceivers beliefs, expectations.
Theory. We all create a theory of mind. A theory of mind is a theory, as the name implies, about how other people's minds operate. What makes other people tick?
It's a part of a process known as mentalization.
When we create a theory of mind about another person, that person tries to comply with a theory of mind, this behavioral conformity or confirmation, the actual actions and behavior, behavioral choices of the target person change in order to sustain and buttress and affirm our theory of mind, our view of the target person, our perception of the target person.
This is a powerful motivation to belong, to be accepted, to conform, which is very problematic because when you label someone you are actually altering that person's behavior to the extent that he is no longer the same person. If you want to delve deeper into this, you should read the work of Mark Snyder, a Canadian-born US psychologist. And so the end result is that cues that influence or bias other people's behavior, suggesting the outcome, suggesting specific action, even suggesting emotions and cognitions or responses. They have real-life impact. You need to behave responsibly. You shouldn't bandy the label narcissist or psychopath around. These are severe mental health disorders, and very rare, by the way. You're not qualified to diagnose don't diagnose you are creating the very monsters you claim to be afraid of the very abuses you claim to have suffered by and you distort reality you distort reality by introducing into it fake knowledge because you are not knowledgeable and you're not qualified and you're not an expert and so this distorts reality and this is known as demand characteristics. You pose demands on reality by introducing labels and phrases and terms from clinical psychology when you're not qualified to do so. It's a part of something known as projective identification.
In psychoanalysis, projective identification is a defense mechanism. The individual projects qualities that are unacceptable to the self that have been rejected by the self. And the individual projects these qualities onto another individual. That person, the recipient of the unwanted rejected qualities, internalizes the projected qualities and believes himself to be characterized by them appropriately and justifiably. So if you're a bit narcissistic and you label someone a narcissist, you're projecting your narcissism. It's something you can't live with. It's part of you that you reject and don't accept. And so you attribute it to someone else. But when you attribute narcissism to someone else, the recipient of your attribution may end up adopting it. May say, you know what? I'm really a narcissist. They're right. I'm a narcissist.
And they, I'm really a narcissist. They're right, I'm a narcissist.
And they begin to behave like a narcissist, and they begin to think like a narcissist, and they begin to feel like a narcissist. In object relation theory, Melanie Klein said that a defense mechanism involving fantasy and internal splitting is projective identification. She said what we do is we split ourselves into good and bad and then we take the bed part, the part that we don't want anything to do with the part that we wish we were not and then we project this part into another person an object another person
and the idea is to harm the bad part, to disown it, to discard it, and at the same time, protect it in some way. So that the belief in your ability to control your bad part is sustained. So according to Melanie Klein, you split yourself as a good part and a bad part. Then you want to get rid of the bad part. You want to discard it, but at the same time, you want to protect your belief that you're able to control your bedside, your dark side, and there's no need to worry about it. Everything is under control that you are master of yourself. In Melanie Klein's work, projective identification is a key feature of what is known as the paranoid schizoid position. And Wilfred Bion, who continued Melanie Klein's work in some respects, theorized that in normal communication development, the infant projects a part of their mind into another object in order to have that part of the mind felt and understood by the object. It's like the infant gets to recognize itself, becomes self-aware through another object by granting that other object, that other person, granting that person access to the bad part of the infant. But all this applies to adult relationships, because we are all ultimately infants in some way. We all have an inner child.
When you label someone a narcissist or a psychopath, maybe you're actually labeling yourself, recognizing the bad aspects of your personality, the bad object inside you, trying to get rid of it by handing it over to someone and that way retaining a mass, an illusion that you're in control of yourself or at least in control of the bad part and that's a lie you're burdening the recipient of your bad part.
When you're projecting narcissism onto someone, when you label some a narcissist, that's a burden. You don't have a right to do this. It's immoral. It's unethical. It's evil.
Labeling people narcissists and psychopaths is evil when you're not qualified to do so and it is this evil ironically this evil in yourself that you are trying to get rid of by labeling other people evil.