How to spot toxic people and take back control |
How to spot toxic people and take back control
These are the people who tend to backstab us at work, troll us online, and treat us abusively in our romantic relationships.
[Photo: Yusf Ait/Unsplash]
BY Next Big Idea Club
Below, Leanne ten Brinke shares five key insights from her new book, Poisonous People: How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life.
Leanne is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where she directs the Truth and Trust Lab. She has been studying deception, distrust, and dark personalities for the past 20 years.
Most people are far kinder—and more trustworthy—than we assume. The real danger comes from a small group of manipulative personalities who exploit our good nature. Once you understand how they operate, you can spot them early and take back control.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Leanne herself—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book.
1. Most people are better than you think
Imagine that I gave you $10 and asked you to make a decision: keep that tenner and go on with your day, or hand it over to a stranger you’ll never see again. If you take the latter option, that $10 will automatically quadruple. That stranger now has $40 and a decision of their own to make. They can keep it all for themselves or split it with you. Do you trust a stranger to double your money?
When researchers asked participants in a study this same question, only 45 percent said that they expected people to split the money. Researchers played out the scenario and found that nearly 80 percent of people actually shared their earnings. That’s right, the vast majority of people weren’t selfish or mean. They were kind and considerate enough to do the fair thing.
Another field study had research assistants drop off more than 17,000 “lost wallets” at hotel front desks and train station lost-and-founds around the world. Some of these wallets had no money in them. Others had about $15, and still others had nearly $100. Researchers waited to see how many people would try to return the wallets to their rightful owners. You might expect that the fattest wallets would be least likely to find their way home, but the opposite was true. The more money people found, the more likely they were to return it. People went out of their way not to feel like they were stealing.
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