Tyranny of the Disagreeable
Unpleasant people take charge and pleasant people help them
“Nice guys finish last.” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
These aphorisms reflect a common sentiment: unpleasant people tend to get what they want. From Wuthering Heights and The Count of Monte Cristo to Wall Street, Mean Girls, and The Devil Wears Prada, popular culture is full of characters who learn that being ruthless and self-serving is an effective path to success.
Is there evidence to support this attitude? If so, why does self-centered behavior work for some people but not others?
According to the Five-Factor Model of Personality used by many psychologists, a few things make all the difference.
The Psychological Profile of Leaders
The idea of the “Big Five” is that each person has a measurable level of five attributes that interact to shape behavior and form a personality profile.
Openness: Intelligence, creativity, problem-solving.
Extraversion (sometimes called surgency): Social aptitude, self-confidence, cheerfulness.
Conscientiousness: Reliability, persistence, decisiveness.
Neuroticism (sometimes called stress tolerance): Anxiety, insecurity, emotional reactivity.
Agreeableness: Empathy, consideration, trust, cooperation.
Research has found that, in terms of the Big Five, highly effective leaders often fit the following profile:
High in openness
High in extraversion
High in conscientiousness
Low in neuroticism
Importantly, agreeableness is not associated with leadership effectiveness.
The reason is simple: willingness to be disagreeable is an asset to leadership. There’s an evolutionary reason for this: if you have to go to war to protect your people, or layoff a bunch of workers to save the company, having somebody in charge who is willing to make the tough call improves your chances of survival.
The downside is this: since agreeable people don’t want to “be mean” or cause conflict, it’s easy for disagreeable people to take over. From the locker room to the board room, individuals willing to be disagreeable will do what it takes to get ahead, and their more agreeable peers will not oppose them.
Sometimes, this means that tyrants rise to power. At other times, it means that nations or cultures can be saved by leaders who are willing to do what’s right, even when it’s unpopular.
Case Study: Charles De Gaulle
Obvious examples of malevolent leaders with high levels of disagreeableness include Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, but can “good guys” be disagreeable? Absolutely!
A prime example of this is French leader Charles de Gaulle. He was universally considered annoying, abrasive, pushy, and arrogant (among other unpleasant qualities). But he was completely fearless, supremely self-confident, and never stopped promoting himself and his beloved France.
When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, de Gaulle, a general officer in the French Army, was disgusted. He despised the French government of Philippe Pétain for surrendering, and refused to serve the Vichy regime. Considered a traitor by the French administration, he fled to London with no money, no men, and no significant credentials. Nevertheless, through relentless self-promotion, he persuaded British Prime Minister Churchill and US President Roosevelt to recognize him as the leader of the Free French – a movement he created out of thin air, but which gradually became real due to his tireless efforts.
Fast-forward to the end of the war. Of the Allied troops who died to free France, only a tiny fraction were French. But le Général felt that France’s lost pride could only be recovered if the French believed their own countrymen had liberated them. To that end, he convinced President Eisenhower to hold back General Patton and the victorious American troops so that de Gaulle and his tiny army could be the first to march through the adoring crowds filling the streets of Paris.
If de Gaulle had been more agreeable, he might have either quietly served the Vichy government (as most of his compatriots did), or served in a support role to the Allied commanders. Instead, he became a legend in his own time. Why? Because he was disagreeable enough to stand up for what he believed in, while bullying and annoying the people around him until they did what he wanted.
High-Functioning Psychopaths
It might be disconcerting to learn that, as demonstrated by de Gaulle, willingness to be disagreeable seems to be a prerequisite for effective leadership. But an even more troubling implication of the Five-Factor research is that the psychological profile of a successful leader closely resembles that of a high-functioning psychopath.
Psychopaths do not suffer from fear or remorse, and stay calm under extreme pressure (all hallmarks of low neuroticism).
They are persistent, self-assured, and strategic (displaying high conscientiousness).
They often have an innate ability to charm and influence (traits of high extraversion).
They are also aggressive, self-centered, and unconcerned with morality or the feelings of others (indicating low agreeableness).
This certainly sounds like the same cocktail of attributes employed by de Gaulle and other leaders, but is it a universal prescription for success? According to researchers such as Robert Hare, the key ingredient for a “successful psychopath” is intelligence (high openness). Broadly speaking, psychopaths with low intelligence tend to wind up dead or in prison, while those with high intelligence are often found in positions of authority.
A quick note on fictional psychopaths: while films like American Psycho and the brilliant but short-lived TV show Profit depict corporate ladder-climbers willing to do absolutely anything to get ahead, these characters tend to be riddled with anxiety, self-doubt, and paranoia. These traits indicate a high degree of neuroticism, which is incompatible with high-functioning psychopathy.
The Problem with People-Pleasers
While de Gaulle was using his disagreeable nature to rally opposition to the Third Reich, his fellow countryman Philippe Pétain was doing the opposite: being agreeable to keep the peace, and cooperating with policies that included the oppression, imprisonment, and deportation of French Jews.
Pétain is a good example of the danger that can come from being overly agreeable – what’s commonly referred to as being a “people-pleaser.” That’s because the people-pleaser is the mirror-image of the psychopath. While the psychopath isn’t agreeable enough to care about anyone else, the people-pleaser is too agreeable to take a principled stand. Together, they often create a dysfunctional but symbiotic relationship that can have disastrous consequences.
People-pleasers aren’t just high in agreeableness. They are usually high in neuroticism and low in extraversion as well. This means they usually suffer from deep-seated insecurity, and instinctively seek approval and validation from confident, dominant individuals (such as psychopaths). The psychopath, on the other hand, takes advantage of the people-pleaser’s tendency to acquiesce in order to maintain harmony and avoid disapproval.
“Wait,” you may be wondering, “aren’t psychopaths scary?” They can be, but that’s actually part of their charm. Psychopaths are often able to manipulate the group environment so that they become the protector of the group. In this scenario, the only thing a people-pleaser has to be cautious about is displeasing the psychopath; in return, the psychopath will protect the people-pleaser from conflict with anyone else.
Thus, by providing reassurance and stability, while cultivating an “us against them” mentality, a psychopath can gain tremendous influence and control over people-pleasers. This tactic works in every kind of group – from families to corporations, and from street gangs to governments.
Because people-pleasers are more common than psychopaths, it does not take long for one psychopath to amass substantial influence over a significant number of people-pleasers. This is the familiar “everybody knew it was happening” phenomenon that inevitably seems shocking when revealed to outsiders: one key perpetrator being enabled by a throng of people-pleasers, simply because they don’t want to incur the leader’s anger or disapproval.
In a family, this dynamic can establish a pattern of deep-seated dysfunction. In a business, it can lead to an entire department or agency engaging in unethical or illegal activity. In WWII France, it culminated in an entire country cooperating with the Nazi regime.
What This Means
Once you see this dynamic, you can’t unsee it. Everywhere you look, you’ll notice low-agreeableness people dominating high-agreeableness people.
From dysfunctional families to dysfunctional nations, this pattern plays out everywhere. Sometimes, like the fictional Frank Underwood in House of Cards, the disagreeable leaders are psychopaths with zero fear or remorse. More commonly, they are just everyday jerks whose psychological makeup allows them to justify doing whatever they want while ignoring the effect their behavior has on other people.
Sometimes, as with Charles de Gaulle, the ultimate outcome of their bullying is positive. But, too much of the time, the result is exploitative, toxic, or dangerous. Vichy France isn’t the only example; virtually every atrocity can be traced to a dominant individual or group that was tolerated or aided by an acquiescent majority.
Within families, the same is true: harmful behavior often continues for years (or even generations) because other family members don’t acknowledge it and aren’t willing to confront the abuser.
What Do We Do?
Too often, the burden of reining in psychopaths and abusers falls on those individuals who fit the leadership profile, but are highly principled. Like de Gaulle, they are disagreeable enough to engage in conflict, but do so for ethical reasons instead of opportunistic ones. Unlike psychopaths, they have empathy; they are willing to be confrontational, but they do so for the benefit of others, not themselves.
Unfortunately, such principled leaders are rare, so those of us who tend to be people-pleasers can’t rely on “benevolent dictators” to protect us. It’s our responsibility to be more self-confident, more tolerant of stress and conflict, and more assertive regarding our own needs and values. We have to stop being doormats and minions, not just for our own good, but for the good of society as a whole.
Selfish, domineering individuals often pursue leadership roles (including unofficial ones, such as “social media influencer”). Whether they are successful in that pursuit depends primarily on choices made by people like you and me.
Ask yourself: when confronted by a psychopathic or disagreeable individual, will you be a team player, avoid making waves, and play along in order to bask in the approval of your leader and peers? Or will you speak up, do the right thing, and face the anger and disappointment of those whose feelings and opinions you care about?
We all want to think that, when it really counts, we’ll stand up for what’s right. But the fact is, most of us don’t. We look the other way, or we keep our heads down to avoid trouble. By being agreeable, we agree to let terrible things happen.
When in doubt, we should follow the example of Charles de Gaulle: act in accordance with our values, and accept the possibility that other people might be upset about it. We should do this – not to cause drama or provoke conflict, but to ensure that psychopaths and bullies aren’t able to seize control, either in the home or the workplace.
In short, if more of us were willing to be more disagreeable to the right people at the right times, we’d all be better off!
Would I stand up to a psychopath? I didn’t think so but Covid proved my bullshit detector was more powerful than my agreeable nature.
Psychopaths running nudge units failed on this one.
Degaulle was a traitor to France. Handed over Algeria to Communist Muslims. Said nothing when the British destroyed the French navy. Helped the Brits bomb France to smithereens. Very "agreeable" to the people who wanted to destroy France, for sure.