- What are some of the signs of a high conflict personality? Because in an ideal world, we avoid these people. And again, we're not trying to say that they're bad people. Some of them are bad people, some of them aren't. But since I'm not a clinical psychologist, you are, you can make the assessment certainly better than I can.

What are some of the ways to avoid these circumstances besides the first year rule? And then let's talk about some ways to disentangle from these people based on their unique phenotypes. So is there a question or set of questions one should ask themselves when they are potentially dating someone, potentially becoming friends with somebody, potentially becoming coworkers with somebody, and so on?

- Yeah, so what's interesting is often your gut feeling tells you something's up here. Like the person suddenly has a shocking opinion of somebody else, and they say, you know, that person's a total jerk, and yet you know that person, and they're not a total jerk. They suddenly, something's disproportionate.

I think disproportionate emotions is often a trigger. I put in a lot of my books now what I call the web method, is pay attention to their words, your emotions, and their behavior. So starting with words, do they use a lot of blaming words? You know, it's all that person's fault.

Do they use all or nothing words? They seem to see things through a narrow lens, that you know, there's all good, there's all bad. Unmanaged emotions, which they may or may not show, like I explained. Some people are good at hiding all that, even though it drives them inside.

And the extreme behaviors, do they do things 90% of people would never do? And I'll give an example here. And this is, I won't say the city, but there was a mayor, there was someone who worked, who was a congressperson, and they decided to run for mayor in their city, instead of flying to go to Congress.

But when they were flying to go to Congress back and forth, this is in California, I'll say that much. People can easily research this. So this person, flying back and forth, one day, one night, standing, you know, there was a line to get your bags at the airport after you got off the plane.

And he was told to wait in line to get his bags. And he said, "Don't you know who I am?" And he pushed his way to the front of the line, and had an argument with the person behind the counter, said, "Don't you know who I am? "I want my bag right now." And she said, "You don't have it now, "you can't have it right now." And he pushed her and knocked her over.

He shoved this airline worker behind the counter and knocked her over. - This was a mayor of a major-- - Not yet, he wasn't mayor yet. He was a congressperson. Anyway, so that means he's-- - Sorry, no knocking. I know some very decent congresspeople, but like, okay. Whoa in any case, right?

This person could be any number of different professions. - Yes. - Yeah, this is antisocial behavior. - But this is a high profile person. So this is all over the news the next day. This is 20 years ago, maybe, 15 years ago, something like that. - Goodness. - Anyway, so it's in the newspaper the next day.

And newspaper says, "Congressman so-and-so "gets into physical altercation with airline worker." Knocks her over. Half the people said, "That's terrible." And the other half the people said, "Wait, wait. "He was sleep deprived. "He was flying across country. "You have to understand that he was stressed." And here's where my web method comes in.

90% of people would not have done that even if they were sleep deprived. And I fly back and forth a lot. And I'm not, I don't do that. - I would like to think 99% of people wouldn't do that. - I think you're right, 99%. - To get physical with an airline person over a bag.

The cutting to the front of the line is egregious. The shoving the airline person is like beyond the pale. - Yeah, exactly. So this is, so anyway, so he's running for mayor and I'm going, "This guy's a high conflict person. "If he gets elected, he's not gonna be a very good mayor.

"He's gonna have a lot of trouble "with the people close to him." And so guess what happened? He gets elected. Within, I think it's eight months, he is, and this is before the Me Too movement got started, but people are reporting he's harassing women, sexually harassing women. Women come into his office to meet with him, professional, experienced, important, and he's like wanting to touch them a lot.

Inappropriately, they don't wanna be touched. Anyway, so women start complaining about him. Word kinda gets out, yeah, this happened with a lot of different people, that he's not sexually assaulting them, but he's treating them badly. - So it cuts across domains. It's like in-- - Yes. - So it's not just in the office, it's there, but it's also at the airport.

It's basically any time he's not getting what he wants, he throws a tantrum. - And that's the thing with personality disorders, is a narrower range of behavior that's repeated in a variety of settings. So he's fitting all of that. So which personality disorder, I'm not gonna diagnose him, but it narrows down to one or two.

- So it's not context-dependent, it is-- - Right. - It's pervasive. - Pervasive, and that word is in the diagnostic manual, that it's pervasive across, I think, several settings. I think that's the words, but let me just finish. - Yeah, please, please. - 'Cause the end of the story, (laughs) the end of the story is, he's also got committees and people that are supposed to accomplish things.

He doesn't want them to think, he wants them to, he wants to do the thinking and tell them what to do. So he goes around alienating a lot of people. Within eight months, he's out of office, because enough people were upset. And the way he got out of office is, some of the heads of government told him, I think it was the city attorney or something, "If you quit now, we'll help you with your legal expenses," 'cause he's starting to get sued for some of this stuff, suing the city, suing him, "We'll help you with your legal expenses if you quit now." And there was starting to be a petition movement for some, I don't know, the mechanics, like a special election or something to get rid of him.

Anyway, within eight months, he was out of the office. And now you don't hear about him in that city. - It's a very interesting, literally high-profile, although still anonymous, based on this conversation, case. I wonder if on a more subtle or typical level, the following is informative or not.

I'm not looking for a validation of the example I'm about to give, but I've been very surprised at times how a person who I'm with for the first time out on a meal will behave towards the wait staff. - Yes. - Not explicitly disparaging of them, but sometimes mildly disparaging of them.

Or feeling as if the amount of liquid poured into their glass was somehow an indication of how the waiter felt about them or didn't feel about them. Like reading into these things where you're just thinking to yourself like, "Whoa, life must be really tough for you. Like who's paying attention to this stuff?" And so that's one that I've noticed in people.

And it's proved informative. - It's really a useful thing to see. That's part of what you see, their behavior, and their behavior towards other people. This was a brilliant thing. I don't remember the name of the program, but there was a guy who was head of a company, and he used to, when he was interviewing people for high-level jobs, he pretended he was a taxi driver or something, would pick them up at the airport as the taxi driver and see how they treated him as the taxi driver.

And then he gets in the interview room, and he's the guy interviewing them. And in some cases, people treated him really disrespectfully. And it's like, now I know this is not someone I want. - Clever. I made the decision to not work for somebody years ago when I was on a very different stage in my career based on how that person treated a janitor.

And it was amazing because it was one very brief interaction. And it wasn't like this person yelled at the janitor. It was the dismissiveness. - Yeah. - And I remember it was this, your web approach. It was his, I guess I just revealed, it was his words towards the janitor.

It was my emotional response was sort of like, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I was like, hey, that was... It just felt like a very, what I would call like the football play, unnecessary roughness. - Yes. - It was mild from the perspective of like, no one got physical or called anyone names, but I remember thinking like, oh, like that sucked.

- Right. - And then their behavior was just to just go right back to what they were talking about. And I knew in that moment, I was really crestfallen because in that moment I knew, oh my goodness, I can't work for this person. - Yeah. - Like I just can't.

And I made the decision not to. And actually their response to my deciding not to for a variety of other reasons too, confirmed everything that I suspected in that one little interaction. - Yes. - But it's interesting because we're trained to collect data rather carefully. You know, and we don't wanna make snap judgment.

Somebody could truly be having a bad day, but in this case it was the right decision to not work for them. Thank goodness. I thank my lucky stars. Made some really bad decisions about people in my life. That was a really good decision. I never spent a day regretting it.

And I went to work for someone else who was terrific instead. - Right. - So, but as you said, these things sometimes hit at a somatic level, as opposed to some sort of, wait, did, you know, some like very cerebral analytic thing. It kind of hits at a, what must be a very primitive circuit.

I can't help the neuroscientist in me wants to say, like, it's gotta be something at the level of the body where we go, wait, that was messed up. - Yeah. - And you can't really point to a specific word. And then you start to question yourself. That's the problem.

You wonder was, well, maybe their tone wasn't, maybe it's my own perception, but I don't know. Maybe the body doesn't lie. Maybe it knows. - I think the body is like a first responder and that we should pay attention to that. And especially with high conflict personalities, especially the con artists, which is part of antisocial personality, and the ones I've dealt with are very good at this, is their words are just right.

And your brain is like soothed by them. You go, this person gets it and I'm totally comfortable. They're charming, all of that. And your gut goes, wait, they're out of sync. I have this cold feeling. Why do I have this cold feeling? And I think that they're aimed at your cerebral thinking and that your guts kind of gets it because they're in a way predatory, like antisocial tend to be predatory.

- Those people have dead eyes. I've known a few. I've known a few men and women and their eyes are, I can only describe, and I'm a vision neuroscientist. That's like what my career has been. And those are two little pieces of brain right there. And there's something about the deadness.

And I don't have a science to support what I'm about to say. There's something about the deadness in their eyes. Maybe their pupils don't change shape with levels of arousal the same way other people's do, 'cause we know that happens in healthy, people with an unhealthy autonomic nervous system, but there's something lacking.

- Yeah. - And people make up all sorts of theories online. Like I'm not a big blinker. I don't blink. When I'm concentrating, blinks break up my flow. And this is actually a way I can remember things. People have these theories about blinking, non-blink. The research doesn't support any relationship between blink frequency and personality.

They had this whole theory about Zuck too. Like he doesn't blink, therefore he's whatever, he's a robot. None of that holds up. What does hold up, however, is this mismatch between words and the affect that it creates in us. - Yeah. - It's sort of like it sounds right, but it doesn't feel right.

I wish we understood more about this at the level of science. There are a lot of theories, not a lot of tools. - Someday, I think, yeah. - Yeah, the tools for measuring this stuff are getting better. I wanted to ask you about other ways of just knowing if you're interacting with a high conflict person when the cues are more subtle.

Are there other things or examples of the web method that come to mind? - Well, for me, of course, dealing with court especially, there's a lot of stuff in writing. And so being able to look at what's written and a lot of blame words, the all or nothing words.

She did this and she did that. And disparaging words, she's stupid or whatever. Or he's a bully, he's this and that. Which triggers for me, maybe he is, or maybe the person saying it is, but it heightens my attention. - Yeah, how do you disambiguate between projection and a real thing?

Like online now? - I mean, one of the fastest ways to get a popular social media account is for somebody to give advice about how to avoid bad people. You know, name calling, gaslighting, narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, history on it. Like these are clinical terms that now the general public can leverages to like, you know, sort of amplify community.

And then in part, I understand from talking to people on the tech side is that social media is social. - Right. - The accounts that grow fastest are the ones where you don't need much language to convey what you're trying to convey, like a sport or dance or an animal.

And among the others that grow very quickly and therefore rewarding to people are ones where you're recruiting these negative advocates. - First of all, I wanna make sure that I get this point across. And that is, there's a lot of temptation to label people with like the mental disorders, the personality disorders.

And it's absolutely essential that people don't do that. If you think somebody might be a narcissist or might have borderline personality or be antisocial, keep that to yourself and adapt how you work with them to be more effective or be more cautious, whatever. But the worst thing I think is people say, oh, and everyone agrees that person's a narcissist.

So we kind of gang up on that person. That's not helpful. The goal is not rejecting people. The goal is adapting what you do to either manage the relationship, decide, okay, that's not someone I'm gonna get close to, but I can still work with them or have them as neighbors or whatever.

So I wanna emphasize that 'cause I think you're right. There's a lot of that today. And people come to me with that concern. They say, Bill, you teach about personality disorders. Yeah, so people understand patterns of behavior and how to adapt your own behavior. I'm not teaching people to label other people.

So that's real important. - Yeah, people go to school for many years and do 3,000 plus clinical hours to learn how to do that, to do that properly. It's like saying, it's like diagnosing anything, right? I mean, a dermatologist might be able to help diagnose a skin patch for potential cancer, but we're taught that we're not supposed to do that ourselves.

- So we have to be cautious. But on the other hand, aware. And the more you're aware of patterns, like being aware of someone with an alcohol abuse issue is to go, okay, I'm not gonna be serving him alcohol with dinner, he's a great person, but I'm just gonna leave that out of the evening meal.

Adapt to what we do rather than judging them. And I don't see people with personality disorders as lesser beings. I see them as having a different set of behaviors that they acquired pretty much in childhood. So I don't hold it against them. I may dislike their patterns of behavior, but I really don't hate people like that.

I've been a therapist with clients like that. So I think our awareness needs to be there so we adapt how we work with people. But I think the gut feeling is so important. And as a therapist, I was trained, pay attention to your gut 'cause that's gonna help you with your clients.

And that's why the web method. Their words, their behavior, but how I feel often gives me tips. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)