Crying Wolf

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.

Shankar Vedantam:

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Elisabeth Finch:

Six years ago I was diagnosed with a rare inoperable form of bone cancer called chondrosarcoma, a cancer I still have to this day.

Shankar Vedantam:

Elisabeth Finch used to be a writer on the popular medical TV show Grey's Anatomy. Other writers said they deferred to her opinions while writing episodes since as a cancer patient, she was the authority on what patients were going through.

Elisabeth Finch:

All told, my cancer cost me my hair, my immune system, one knee, half my bank account, half my thirties and one functioning kidney. I may never be cancer free, my doctor said-

Shankar Vedantam:

But in a December 2022 interview with The Ankler, a newsletter about goings-on in Hollywood, Elisabeth Finch admitted that her cancer diagnosis was a lie. One of her colleagues told the newsletter that Elisabeth Finch was someone who supported "a visible chemo port bandage, who regularly took breaks to vomit, who only ate saltines for long periods of time, and who wrote and talked about her experiences all the time." We were unable to reach Elisabeth Finch for a response. Her story may seem extraordinary, but she's not alone in making false claims. In 2021, the website intelligent.com surveyed more than 1,200 white college applicants. More than a quarter of the respondents on the online survey said they had lied about being a racial minority on their college application. Blanca Villagomez is the website's higher education counselor. She says that most of the people who lied claim to be Native American.

Blanca Villagomez:

And we found that the number one reason for why these applicants lied was they believed that they would improve their chances of getting accepted.

Shankar Vedantam:

It used to be that we tried our best to conceal disadvantages, hardships, and humiliations. Traumas were often experienced as shameful and hidden away. In fact, in previous centuries, historians have documented numerous cases of people who were the target of discrimination, who did their best to avoid the labels that would invite prejudice. Many people of color try to pass as white to escape Jim Crow laws. Movies and plays document how women try to escape sexism and sexual violence by pretending to be men. As Jews fled the Holocaust, some pretended to be Gentiles, but new research explores a curious shift. Even as many people with limitations and disabilities continue to hide their challenges, others flaunt hardships that don't exist.

This week on Hidden Brain, the strange psychology of wanting to seem worse off than we really are.

Why would you invent a disadvantage that doesn't exist? For a man we are calling Arthur, who grew up in a small town outside Mexico City, the answer was clear. It was a way to avoid being the target of homophobic bullying. He vividly remembers a traumatic event during his freshman year of high school. Students had gathered for a social event.

Arthur:

We were supposed to be there just to spend some time and to have fun and have his snacks and dance and things. And then these guys surrounded me. I think that they didn't try to physically attack me, but because I was so small and they were so big, I felt like, "Oh my God, these guys are going to do something to me."

Shankar Vedantam:

Like bullies everywhere, they knew exactly where to strike.

Arthur:

And they were like, "Are you gay?" I was like, "No, no, no, no." And then they were like, "No, no, no. We know you are gay." And then I was so scared. I was about to cry. And then my English teacher back then, she realized what was going on and she got them away from me. That was the first time that I actually felt like they could physically harm me.

Shankar Vedantam:

So as Arthur went off to college, he decided to invent a story. He felt he could use it as a shield.

Arthur:

And I said, I need to create a character that is more appealing than who I actually am.

Shankar Vedantam:

Growing up, Arthur had watched his family work with Jewish business people, and he had always admired their professional way of handling things.

Arthur:

And so the character that I created was a Jewish descendant of my grandfather that was escaping the Spanish Civil War. And so when people ask, me like, "Hey, who are you?" Instead of saying, "Yeah, I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere, hi," it was like, "No, yes, I come from...yeah, my family and blah, blah, blah." And I felt so cool.

Shankar Vedantam:

The story gave Arthur a new identity. He wasn't a gay kid from small town Mexico. He was a glamorous grandson of Jewish refugees who had survived persecution in Europe.

Arthur:

I think that it basically shielded me from homophobic pulling. I thought that if it ever came to that, that people would have a harder time discriminating me because I came from that background of persecution. But if I only said like, "Yeah, I'm gay and et cetera," I think that that exposed me much more to that ugly side of bullying and discrimination. So I think that this narrative, I come from that group that has already suffered that much, shielded me in a way.

Shankar Vedantam:

Can you say more about that? Because if you're suffering from one form of discrimination, it's not clear to me why identifying yourself with a second form of discrimination leaves you better off. It feels now like you're set back in two different ways. Why did you feel it would make a difference or did it actually make a difference?

Arthur:

I think that it made a difference because homophobic discrimination in Mexico is much more tolerated than antisemitism, for example. Openly discriminating a Jew is something that very few people would dare to do, but openly discriminating a gay person is something that happens on a daily basis everywhere. So I think that it left me better off. And even though I was playing the character of a gay Jew man, I was still feeling more protected in that character than if I had been purely gay, for example.

Shankar Vedantam:

Now, some people might challenge Arthur's beliefs about the extent of antisemitism in Mexico, but whether or not those beliefs were accurate, Arthur found his new backstory gave him confidence as he talked to friends. The long historical persecution of the Jews was now his story. People started to show him a certain deference.

Arthur:

So I would be like, "Yes, they're listening to me." Having survived and being here and facing you and speaking with pride about my family history and all those things, it made me braver in a way.

Shankar Vedantam:

Over time, the story morphed. Depending on the situation, Arthur would play up the victim and persecution angle. Other times he would use his invented identity as a badge of expertise, playing on stereotypes that Jews were good at business. As he went through college, he found his story had fresh uses. Other people might have glamorous vacations and expensive habits, but his story of trauma and survival also had cache. It was almost a form of currency. After he graduated, Arthur was working as an intern at the British Embassy. He was invited to a fancy end of year party.

Arthur:

And that was at the British residence, the house of the ambassador. And you can imagine how gorgeous it all was, the long tables, the beautiful meal and everything. And so we were all invited there, and I was so self-aware. I was like, "Oh my God, what am I going to say around the dinner table?" And I was sitting around with all the other interns and their expensive universities, and they started talking about their trips. And my dad did this, my dad did that. My mom traveled there, and I was just sitting at the table and was like, "Oh my God, what am I going to say?" And then eventually it was my turn to say something, and then I was like, "Yeah, my dad is going to close that business because we have a lot of connections in the community." And they were like, "What community?" And I was like, "The community, the Jewish community." And then they were like, "Oh my God, are you?" And then I was like, "Yes, I am." And in that situation I felt like, "Oh my God, it's there. It worked. It worked."

Shankar Vedantam:

It was at another job after this internship that Arthur realized his invented story contained both benefits and risks. He found himself regularly clashing with a coworker. They had never gotten along well. On this day, they disagreed over an invoice.

Arthur:

I had a number, she had another number, and then she was slamming the table like, "Enough, how come you never pay attention?" And et cetera. And I was like, "Do not talk to me like that." And she was like, "(Beep) Jew." And I was like, "What did you say?" And in that moment, I think that she knew that she had already crossed the line.

Shankar Vedantam:

Arthur realized that his invented story of victimhood contained the risk of turning him into an actual victim, but he also saw how the incident gave him the power to undermine a coworker whom he disliked.

Arthur:

I needed to accuse her. Yeah, I needed to accuse her. And I did tell my boss, you know what, this happened, but then instead of wanting her fired, I think that I wanted to get away from the situation. It was just too harsh, and I was just thinking, let's leave it here. And at the same time, I had already received my approval for studying in Australia, so I was like, "Enough, this is the end."

Shankar Vedantam:

And so you left that position and you went to Australia. Did you keep the story alive there?

Arthur:

No. No.

Shankar Vedantam:

And what happened?

Arthur:

I thought that I was already cool. I was there. I didn't think that I need that character anymore.

Shankar Vedantam:

In Australia, Arthur didn't have to invent a story about how he was an outsider. He was a gay foreign student from Mexico. He was obviously an outsider. He no longer needed to be the descendant of persecuted Jews.

Arthur:

Yeah, yeah. That's what happened. That's what happened. And then I made a ton of friends over there, fellow Mexicans and from all over the place. We're still in touch and that's exactly what happened.

Shankar Vedantam:

Arthur had discovered that his invented story of persecution gave him a number of advantages. On the surface, this is a paradox. Why would inventing hardships or trauma be an advantage? At a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, I came by research that explained one dimension of this paradox. Psychologist Jillian Jordan at Harvard divided volunteers into two groups. She offered each slightly different scenarios about a college student named Sarah, who invites some friends over to her dorm room.

Jillian Jordan:

One of her classmates, Gabrielle, asks to use her iPad to look something up, and she agrees. And then eventually, Gabrielle and all the other classmates leave and Sarah relaxes at home and watches a TV show on her iPad, and then she goes out. And in the neutral condition, that's the whole story. And in the victim condition, while she's out, we explain to participants that Gabrielle broke into her dorm room and stole her iPad. And so in both cases, she uses the iPad, she lends it to Gabrielle, she goes out, and then only in the victim condition does Gabriel actually break in and steal her iPad.

Shankar Vedantam:

Note that in both conditions, Sarah's behavior is exactly the same. The only difference in the scenarios is that in one, she is a victim of theft. In the other, she is not. Jillian asked volunteers whether they thought Sarah was a good person. Since Sarah's behavior in both scenarios was identical, there should have been no difference in how she was perceived by people in the two groups. But that is not what Jillian found when Sarah was a victim of theft...

Jillian Jordan:

She's considered by participants to be a more moral and a more trustworthy person than the neutral condition.

Shankar Vedantam:

Jillian and her colleagues call this phenomenon the virtuous victim effect.

Jillian Jordan:

So the virtuous victim effect is the finding that people tend to see victims of wrongdoing as more morally good people than non-victims who have behaved identically. When we think about what it means to be a morally good person, we typically think about it means you've taken actions that are morally good and you haven't taken actions that are morally bad. So I'm a morally good person if I help others, I'm kind, I'm trustworthy. I'm not a morally good person if I betray people, I spread nasty gossip, I'm never willing to help, I just think about myself.

And in this case, people's moral character is being influenced not by actions they took. We talked about how those are constant across conditions in our experiments, but rather by the ways that they're treated by other people. And I think this seems irrational in the sense that both good and bad people could be mistreated by somebody else. It doesn't really tell you something meaningful about my proclivity to behave morally to learn that somebody else treated me badly. And the way that I'm treated by somebody else can influence perceptions of my moral character.

Shankar Vedantam:

Arthur intuitively grasped this when he came up with a story of family persecution. People seem to think he was a better person because his ancestors had suffered adversity. You can also see the same phenomenon on a larger scale. In many political disputes, two groups will each try to claim the moral high ground by talking about how they have been wronged. In these situations, people are not making up traumas, but selectively focusing on traumas that show why they are deserving of sympathy. When the Israelis talk about how they are besieged by enemies who seek to destroy them, they're inviting us to see them as virtuous victims. When Palestinians focus on how they have been dispossessed by the Israelis, they are telling us that they are the virtuous victims. Julian told me researchers were increasingly interested in studying such escalating wars for the moral high ground.

Jillian Jordan:

I should say there's also a lot of cool work around this concept of competitive victimhood when there's a conflict between two groups and both sides wants to compete to paint themselves as the rightful or larger victim. Even without my research, we can tell that first of all, if two groups are accusing the other side of being the perpetrator such that they're the victim, you want to compete to be the victim because that means by definition that the other side is bad.

Shankar Vedantam:

When we come back, three girls learned what it feels like to play the victim and new research into the personality traits that drive such behavior. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Some time ago, a listener called in with an unusual story. We'll call her Paula. She told us that when she was in high school many years ago, she got close to two other students. We'll call them Sarah and Jessica. We're using pseudonyms at the request of the women. By the time Jessica, Sarah and Paula were in 10th grade, they were all considered high achievers. Paula was the athlete.

Paula:

I was definitely the jock in my school. If there was ever anything sport related, I was on the team. I was likely captain, MVP. That's just the reputation I'd carved out for myself.

Shankar Vedantam:

Jessica was a social activist.

Paula:

She was very invested in helping the environment, and so she actually started her own environmental youth group.

Shankar Vedantam:

And Sarah was a star who made stardom look effortless.

Paula:

She was very good at procrastinating, doing everything super last minute, but ended up becoming a straight-A student, was on all these committees and was beloved by everyone in our school.

Shankar Vedantam:

Sarah was also a thespian and acted in local community theater. Paula told me that the three friends felt like they were headed somewhere. They had talent and they had drive. One summer when the girls were 16, they went on vacation together. It was their first time traveling without their parents. They spent four days in a new city visiting museums, eating at restaurants, and touring local colleges. For their last adventure, they went to a popular amusement park.

Paula:

When we got there, it looked really grand, so there was just people everywhere. It was probably the most people I've ever seen in one place. The lines for all the rides were over two hours to get to the main rides, and so we're definitely a bit overwhelmed and feeling like we weren't going to be able to see all the things that we wanted to see on this trip.

Shankar Vedantam:

The girls had done some research beforehand to figure out what rides the park offered. As the day grew hotter, they set their hearts on some water rides.

Paula:

So a little bit more fun, not the drop-type rides. I don't really like those, but I like the ones that go on an adventure and there was water features with them, so that's why they were such a draw on this day because it was so hot. Everybody was wanting to go on the rides where you splashed into water.

Shankar Vedantam:

They got in line for their first ride. It really was two hours long, and as they waited and waited and it got hotter and hotter, their moods plummeted. If this is what they had to look forward to the rest of the day, they were going to be miserable. They could see the lines for the other rides were also really long.

Paula:

It didn't feel worth it, I guess, to have gone all the way to have gone our way all the way to this park. We were really excited for the day. And so I think we were a bit between frustrated and disappointed as well because we're waiting in line for this long time. We enjoy each other's company, but we also really wanted to experience everything there. So I think we were the combination of frustrated, disappointed, and a little desperate.

Shankar Vedantam:

The three girls looked at each other. They were driven, they were smart, and they wanted to find a way to skip the long lines.

Paula:

So we were brainstorming ways to get around this dilemma, this problem that was in front of us. And so we came up with the idea of, "Okay, well what type of people don't have to stand in line?" And we were like, "Okay, people who work here potentially, maybe they get a special pass or you have to pay more money." And then we saw somebody literally roll up in a wheelchair up the exit, and if you go up the exit, you just skip to the front of the line. And we just looked at each other. We're like, "Maybe there's something there."

Shankar Vedantam:

One of them threw out the idea to create a character with a disability who could get them to the front of the lines. Sarah, the actress, volunteered to take on the role.

Paula:

She actually seemed excited by the idea that she could use her acting skills. And so the rest of us came up with the story behind what was happening. And so myself and Jessica were family members, and so I looked a little bit more like Sarah. And so I was going to be Sarah's cousin and Jessica was going to be my friend.

Shankar Vedantam:

The girls knew they couldn't fake a physical disability, so they decided to have Sarah fake a neurological disability.

Paula:

Sarah, I think if I were to think about the type of disability it is, I would say that she was on the non-verbal autism spectrum would've been the performance, I guess. And so she was acting agitated from the heat. There was noise, the whole performance, she crushed it.

Shankar Vedantam:

Paula, Jessica and the new Sarah activated the next phase of their plan.

Paula:

And we had her sitting off to the side. And then I went up to the booth and I explained and asked questions, "Do you have any passes or anything that we can do for my cousin?" And she was on the bench visible, behaving in a way that made it a little bit more believable. And we had a towel over her head and we put water on it because we were trying to cool her down. And she was grunting and groaning and flailing her arms and everything while she was sitting and hitting Jessica a little bit. So it was a full auditory and visual performance.

Shankar Vedantam:

Despite Sarah's acting, the people at the ticketing booth said no to the request for special passes. It's possible, of course, that they had encountered other people who had tried to game the system.

Paula:

I could tell that the workers there, now when I think back, they were definitely our age. They would've been teenagers as well, but they were definitely skeptical. And so they said no. And so then I went over to my friend and we talked a little bit and came up with a game plan that Sarah and Jessica would come over with me to make it a little bit more believable.

Shankar Vedantam:

The three girls ramped up the pressure on the teenagers in the ticketing booth. Sarah continued to act disabled and distressed.

Paula:

She just was consistent. She was very good at keeping this whole charade up the whole time. She seemed agitated and hot. And after a little bit, I had her and Jessica go back and sit down again. And a big chunk of it was us going off and me fake consoling her and sitting on the bench with her. I think we were trying to make it seem a little bit more believable by not going anywhere and giving up. And I continued to negotiate with the workers.

Shankar Vedantam:

The workers pointed out the passes were meant for people who could not physically stand in line. Sarah could stand. She didn't need a wheelchair.

Paula:

We really had to position our argument that waiting in line in the heat was going to make her disruptive. I believe they ended up having to get a supervisor to come give us the pass. I think it probably took us about 20 or 30 minutes, the whole ordeal.

Shankar Vedantam:

So 20 or 30 minutes, I thought you were going to say two or three minutes. So 20 or 30 minutes, that's a lot.

Paula:

Yeah. We were very dedicated and committed individuals. When we had a goal in mind, we are very tunnel vision, tunnel focused on getting what we wanted out of this situation.

Shankar Vedantam:

The first thing they did after the supervisor interceded to give them the passes was to head over to the entrance to a water ride. They went right past a gigantic snaking line of hot, agitated people.

Paula:

And instead of standing in line at the start, we just walk in the exit, so where all the people come out after they finish the ride. Show them our pass, they just opened it up and we got first crack at sitting wherever we wanted. And it was amazing. We just did the same water ride three times in a row. We were thinking we were so smart, we were so elated, so excited, we were going to have the best day ever. We thought we were just so much smarter than everybody else.

Shankar Vedantam:

The only way to make the deception work, of course, was to stick to it. Sarah couldn't step out of character.

Paula:

I found it so entertaining that my friend had to stay in character and she stayed in character on the rides. So we're going through these drops and turns and everything like that, and she's fully expressing in this character the entire time. And so she would bring her arms forwards and flutter and flail them, cheering in elation and giggling and laughing. She was definitely having repetitive movements of joy. That's the part that if you have that flash bulb or that photographic memory, this thing that's imprinted on my brain is watching her perform joy while on the rides. And the overtone or the feeling that we were having at the time was we outsmarted somebody.

Shankar Vedantam:

The three girls stayed in the amusement park for several hours and went on every ride they wanted. Paula estimates they were able to go on 15 different rides, some of them multiple times. Without the passes, they might have made it to two or three. On the way home, Paula, Jessica and Sarah had a talk. They agreed not to tell anyone else about what they had done. In fact, they came up with a story of how tough the day had been.

Paula:

Yeah, we had a story that the lines were really long. We only went on a few rides. It was really fun, but we're really tired, that kind of thing. So we did have a chat about a story to make sure that we were all on the same page.

Shankar Vedantam:

It was only after a while that they started to rethink their actions.

Paula:

I think once we were coming home, it started to really sink in the gravity of the situation and how it's not really in line with who we are as people or who we want to be as people or how we see ourselves rather. And so it did take a while for it to fully sink in. I think it was definitely once we were back home, we started thinking that we had done something shameful.

Shankar Vedantam:

As an adult, Paula has sometimes thought back to those teenagers in the ticketing booth who were suspicious of Sarah's performance. She realizes that they gave in not because they were convinced by her story, but because they felt silenced by it.

Paula:

I don't know if they actually believed us or if it was just so uncomfortable to call somebody out for faking something like that because imagine if we weren't faking it, how horrible that would be for an employee to say, "You're faking it." So I think we probably put them in a really uncomfortable position, and so they ended up just agreeing.

Shankar Vedantam:

When we come back, the personality traits of people who cry wolf. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When Karl Aquino was six years old, all the kids at school were asked to share what they ate for breakfast.

Karl Aquino:

So I remember saying that what I had was a dish made out of pigs feet and banana blossoms, and that generated quite a bit of laughter from the other classmates.

Shankar Vedantam:

Karl's family had recently immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. The laughter made him feel like an outsider. It was the first of many such moments.

Karl Aquino:

They're imprinted in my memory and it's been hard to fully forget about them. They don't have obviously the same sting now or anything like that. I look at them more as a curiosity and a way of thinking about, well, what might the experience be like for other people?

Shankar Vedantam:

Much has changed in the US in the years since Karl immigrated here. Many schools now go out of their way to welcome students of diverse backgrounds and to embrace cultural differences. Anti-bullying programs are widespread. As a culture, while we are still far from perfect, we've gotten better at caring for the disadvantaged. People who experience hardships are encouraged to ask for help. Karl eventually became a psychologist. He started to notice how regularly students came to him with accounts of various limitations.

Karl Aquino:

I will get requests from students for accommodations for certain things because they're experiencing anxiety or depression or some other kind of psychological challenge.

Shankar Vedantam:

Karl was usually sympathetic, but he was also struck by how times had changed from when he was a student.

Karl Aquino:

I remember when I was younger, I would also be upset by these anxieties. I would worry about tests, and I just didn't go to my teacher and talk about it. So really that was, for me, a bit of an eye-opener that there's an increasing willingness to accommodate or be responsive to different claims that a student might make about hardship or challenge in life. I think it's actually a reflection of the fact that human beings appear to be increasingly concerned about alleviating each other's suffering.

Shankar Vedantam:

Partly as a result of these experiences and his own childhood experiences of feeling like an outsider, Karl got curious about the ways people ask for help. He wrote an article about this idea.

Karl Aquino:

It's a very simple idea. People want to help. How do they know that you need help? Well, you have to tell them somehow. By signaling that one is a victim, one is able to potentially get others, I'll call them benefactors, to provide that person with resources.

Shankar Vedantam:

Karl hypothesized that people who signal that their legitimate victims of harm would indeed attract help, especially if they also communicated that they were worthy of help.

Karl Aquino:

If you want to maximize the effectiveness of this signal of your need, it helps to combine it with being virtuous because it makes people more willing to help us. Now, you're more likely to help someone who you think has virtue than someone who you think is a moral reprobate or degenerate. Nobody wants to help that other person. And so it seemed very obvious that the maximal effectiveness of any kind of signal of need is to combine need being a victim with virtue. That's the basic idea.

Shankar Vedantam:

At this point, Karl was not thinking about people who fake hardships. He was just hypothesizing that virtuous victims were more likely to elicit help. As a way to empirically test his hypotheses, Karl devised a scale to identify people who tell others about their challenges and traumas. The scale involved a number of questions.

Karl Aquino:

And we ended up with a set of 10 items, 10 questions that reflect different ways that people might signal their hardship or disadvantage. I'll just read you a few here: discussed how my concerns and needs are not being heard by political leaders, shared how I don't feel comfortable with my body, discussed how I don't feel financially secure, told others that I get paid less based on my identity, explained how I don't feel accepted in the society because of my identity. Spoke about how people who share my identity are criminalized by society, expressed how people like me are underrepresented in the media and leadership, made it known that I can't move freely within or outside of my country.

Shankar Vedantam:

Once he had this questionnaire in hand, Karl was able to identify people who answered yes to one or more of these questions. He now started to look for clues about the motivations and traits of these people.

Karl Aquino:

So the next part was to see whether there are certain personality characteristics that might predict whether a person is likely to signal victimhood. And I just started playing around with the data. It's really just happenstance. I was trying to validate the scale in a sample, larger sample of students. And included in that data collection effort were other scales that my colleagues had thrown in.

Shankar Vedantam:

Karl looked to see if the people who self-identified themselves as victims were also likely to show up on other scales and measures. To his surprise, he found a connection with another scale that measured something completely different.

Karl Aquino:

And all I did is I basically looked at the correlation. It's just a very simple analysis out of curiosity. And I found out that the scale that we were developing was correlated with another scale, which measures what's called the dark triad of personality.

Shankar Vedantam:

The so-called dark triad consists of three personality traits you've probably heard about. None of them is very nice.

Karl Aquino:

Machiavellianism, basically whether you're willing to immorally manipulate others to get what you want. Narcissism, probably most people know, but that's a grandiose belief about yourself. You think you're superior to others. And then subclinical psychopathy, which is not the psychopathy that you associate with a serial killer, but really more of a, I would call it emotional shallowness or lack of remorse when you do bad things. And I had no idea that would happen, just saw the correlation. And there it was. It popped out. And I started thinking, "Hmm, that's curious. What might that show?" And it struck me that I wonder if people who are high in these traits are more likely to use these signals for personal gain.

Shankar Vedantam:

Karl had found a correlation, but that does not imply causation. So he and his colleagues ran a number of experiments to test if there was a real connection.

Karl Aquino:

We know from the literature on the dark personality that they are more likely to do things like lie or cheat to try to get what they want. And that's the third part of the paper was to show that the dark personality does predict a willingness to signal victimhood and virtue.

Shankar Vedantam:

In one of his experiments, Karl examined whether people were willing to paint a coworker in a bad light in order to make themselves look better.

Karl Aquino:

So in this task, we had people imagine that they were working together with another intern, and there was a competitive situation. They're competing for a job.

Shankar Vedantam:

After giving the volunteers a description of what the other intern had done, the volunteers were given an opportunity to offer a performance evaluation of the other person. They could stick to the facts or falsely say the intern had behaved poorly.

Karl Aquino:

Then we gave descriptions of things that intern might have done, such as they don't respect your suggestions, you think they might be saying things behind your back. And we found that people who were higher in the virtuous victim signaling scales were more willing to report these behaviors that weren't, in fact, stated as having occurred.

Shankar Vedantam:

These fictitious behaviors, in other words.

Karl Aquino:

Fictitious behavior, yeah. And we reasoned that because you know that you put them in this competitive situation that it's to their benefit to cast their rival in a less positive light.

Shankar Vedantam:

I want to stop here to underline something very important. Karl is not saying that everyone who talks about their hardships and limitations is a manipulator and narcissist. Indeed, many, perhaps most of the people who tell you they're experiencing limitations are doing so sincerely. But what Karl is saying is that some subset of the people who claim to be victims are likely pretenders, and these pretenders may be motivated by a desire to manipulate the empathy of potential benefactors.

Karl Aquino:

It's just another reminder that there are going to be times when one might be moved by sentiments to help another person, and that person might not be the kind of person you'd want to help because they might exploit you.

Shankar Vedantam:

So Karl, these behaviors are intersecting at this moment in our cultural life with the fact that we are living in a society that is increasingly interested, or at least many people say they're increasingly interested, in being and acting compassionate. So in other words, there's a supply of compassion, as well as a demand for it. And in some ways, what your paper is talking about is the intersection of these two worlds where there's a supply of compassion, there are people who genuinely are in need of compassion, but there are also people who are saying, given that there's a supply of compassion, how can I get some of it even if I don't deserve it?

Karl Aquino:

Yeah, that's a very good analysis. If you look at it in terms of a market, you want to reach the equilibrium where you're legitimately allocating resources to people in need, as opposed to allocating resources to people who don't really need it but being able to exploit this, what you called, surplus of compassion. One of the inspirations for the paper was I read an article in a Canadian newspaper about a woman who posted on GoFundMe that she had cancer.

News Anchor:

Family and friends rallied around the woman and a raffle was held to collect money, but police are now alleging the entire campaign was a scam and she didn't really have cancer.

Karl Aquino:

But I think because people very motivated to try to alleviate suffering, it can be sometimes easy for those who might have the dark triad personality, let's say, to use that for their own benefit.

Eyewitness:

She even went to extremes to shave her head and cut her skin and call them cancer bumps, take time off work for these fake surgeries that didn't actually happen. So it was extreme measures.

Shankar Vedantam:

If I see a GoFundMe page of someone who basically says they have cancer and I want to help them, but it turns out that they're merely exploiting me, that, in some ways, prevents me from actually helping the person who actually needs help, the person who actually has cancer and might not have the resources to deal with it.

Karl Aquino:

Exactly. You're diverting resources, attention, concern away from people in legitimate need to those who might be feigning whatever experience they're claiming they have. And again, we can say nothing in this paper about whether these people are not legitimately experiencing these things, but the inference that you're drawing is certainly, I think, one of the implications.

Shankar Vedantam:

Now there's a flip side of this, which is let's say for example, now I'm alerted to the fact that there are some unscrupulous people, or perhaps people who have dark personality traits who are likely or who are more likely to set up a GoFundMe page saying that they have cancer. And so now I have my skepticism up. I have my radar up to try and spot these cases, but of course, the truth is I can't really look at a GoFundMe page and tell very much about whether this is a legitimate case or not. Is it possible that this can inadvertently reduce my compassion overall? Because now I'm actually saying I'm skeptical of the people who are coming to me for help because I'm aware that some portion of them might be counterfeit or some portion of them might be pretenders. Is there a risk in some ways that this can in some ways reduce the supply of compassion in general?

Karl Aquino:

Yeah, I think certainly there is potentially that consequence, and I think this is one of the implications of the proliferation of victim signals is that because it's difficult to know exactly which ones are true or which ones are false. The more there are, the more likely some of them might be false just in terms of sheer probabilities. And those false ones will often be more prominent in people's minds. And yes, they will be then perhaps potentially more vigilant in the future, or more skeptical or less willing to indiscriminately offer their assistance in aid. I think that is one of the potential social welfare consequences of the increased signaling of victimhood.

Shankar Vedantam:

When we were children, many of us heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. He was a solitary shepherd with no one to talk to all day. So one day he thought of a plan to amuse himself. He would call out that there was a wolf and watch the people in his village get riled up. At first, this is exactly what happened in the fable. The villagers heard the boy's shouts and came running to help. When they saw there was no wolf, they chastised the boy for lying to them. But far from learning his lesson, he tricked them a second time. The villagers realized they could not trust the boy. The next time he cried out for help, there really was a wolf, but by now, the villagers were tired of this game and no one came to the boy's aid.

As human beings, all of us depend upon the help of others. It can be tempting at times to exaggerate our suffering or to invent hardships in order to elicit compassion and aid. At such times, it's worth remembering that there is a steep price to be paid for crying wolf. That price isn't just paid by benefactors who are tricked into offering help when it isn't really needed, the burden falls disproportionately on the people who really do need help the most when they discover there is no compassion left for them.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Brigid McCarthy, Annie Murphy Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, and Andrew Chadwick. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brains executive editor.

We're always on the lookout for interesting stories that reveal the complexities of human nature. Have you ever done anything that makes you look back and say, "Why in the world did I do that?" If you have a powerful personal story you are willing to share with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a short voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]. Again, if you have a powerful personal story about actions you took and perhaps regret with the benefit of hindsight, record a two or three-minute voice memo outlining the story and email it to us at [email protected]. Please use the subject line misgivings. We end the show today with a story from our sister show, My Unsung Hero. It comes from Heather Church. Heather will never forget the day many years ago when she walked into a busy clothing store in New York City.

Heather Church:

When I went in there, I went down to the lower level, taking the stairs and wearing a very long skirt and a pair of boots. My skirt got caught on my boot and it threw off my balance, and I felt my hand reach for the railing and miss it, and my body twisted as my boot tugged on my skirt, and suddenly I was falling down the stairs backwards. And then I heard steps, stomps, in fact, moving quickly towards me, and someone caught me. My head didn't hit those hard stairs, and I didn't suffer any injuries, and I don't know who that person is. That is my unsung hero. I don't know who they were, and I was so flustered at the time. I can't even remember their face, but I do remember what they did for me that day, and I remain grateful. Thank you.

Shankar Vedantam:

Listener Heather Church from New York. She tells us that she hopes that stranger at the store might hear this episode and understand how much their actions continue to resonate with her all these years later. If you like this episode and would like us to produce more shows like this, please consider supporting our work. Go to support.hiddenbrain.org. Again, if you find our work to be useful in your life, do your part to help us thrive, go to support.hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.