Brilliant But Cruel

Kent Blumberg (who writes a very thoughtful blog on leadership, strategy and performance) wrote me a couple emails this morning about the Fox TV show House. If you’ve seen it, you will recall it is about the grumpy and sometimes downright abusive Dr. Gregory House, who uses evidence-based medicine to find causes and cures where other doctors fail. Kent sent me this great snippet of dialog (from an episode called “Sex Kills”) that demonstrates how and why we continue to let assholes get away with their demeaning ways.

He wrote me:

“I just listened to the dialogue again, and wrote it down a bit more accurately than I had remembered it.  The husband of a patient is talking with one of House’s team members:

Husband:  “I assume that House is a great doctor.”

Dr. Chase:  “Why would you assume that?”

Husband:  “Because when you’re that big a jerk, you’re either great or unemployed.”

I’ve written before about how, in many organizations, if you are really big star, you are allowed to get away with being a really big jerk. But Kent’s dialog reminds me that, if you look at the evidence on the kind of people that we see as powerful and intelligent, that –- independently of how smart a person actually is –- when they act like an asshole, they are seen as smarter.  This “Brilliant but Cruel” effect was demonstrated in a study by  Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile. She did a controlled experiment with book reviews; some reviews were nasty and others were nice. Amabile found that negative and unkind reviewers were seen as less likeable but more intelligent, competent, and expert than those who expressed the same messages in kinder and gentler ways. She summarized her findings by noting, “Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism sounds superficial.”

I chafe against the notion that mean-spirited reviewers seem smarter than nice reviewers, but it also rings true. I confess that I’ve always admired the wit displayed in the nastiest book review I’ve ever read: Professor David P. Barash’s attack on Professor J. Philippe Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior, published in Animal Behavior about 10 years ago (Volume 49, pages 1131 to 1133 if you want to look it up).  Barash trots-out numerous factual criticisms, but the review is filled with delightfully snide comments, some that border on personal attacks. Take this gem “Rushton argues at length for what he calls the ‘principle of aggregation,’ which, in his hands, means the pious hope that that by combining numerous turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but, in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit.”  Or take the very last sentence, “Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book.”

I don’t know about you, but I find these sentences brilliant, but cruel!

So, if you want people to think you are smart, apparently you can feed their stereotypes by demeaning others. In Barash’s case, the attack might have been justified, but there are other times when people turn cruel for no good reason, except perhaps for personal gain. I should also warn you that although unleashing your inner asshole may help persuade people of your intellectual superiority, we also show in The Knowing-Doing Gap and Hard Facts that the climate of fear created by such nastiness undermines team and organizational effectiveness.  Potential victims become afraid to try (or even mention) new ideas and hesitate to report mistakes or problems out of fear that the resulting anger and humiliation will be aimed at them.

PS: The reference is: Teresa Amabile, “Brilliant but Cruel: Perception of Negative Evaluators,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19 (1983), 146-156.

Comments

[Annerose]

These comments have been invaluable to me as is this whole site. I thank you for your comment.

[John C. Randolph]

Shalizi's just jealous because Wolfram's rich.

-jcr

[Lance Knobel]

I'm sure you're right about the organizational problems caused by assholes. But negative reviews are certainly more memorable than positive ones.

My all-time favorite is cosmologist Cosma Shalizi's review of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/ . The headline, to give you an idea, is "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity".

[Jason Yip]

This post immediately made me think of The BileBlog, http://www.jroller.com/page/fate

[Matt Wyndowe]

This post was terrible.

(Sorry- I was going to write a positive comment about the post and how it certainly rang true to me; however, I'm working on sounding more intelligent, competent, and expert.)

[Bob Sutton]

Troy,

Thanks for such a thoughtful post. I think "take care of each other" covers so much territory about human existence it is astounding. It reminds me of a lovely little exchange between Kurt Vonnegut and his grown son, in Vonnegut's book A Man Without a Country. Vonnegut asked his son the pediatrician,"What is life all about?" The answer was "Father we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." I guess this things sometimes includes encounters with assholes.

Thanks again for the lovely comment.

[Troy Steinmetz]

Hi Professor Sutton. I stumbled across your blog and have found your discussion of assholes a very necessary and excitingly accessible way to talk about organizational culture.

This post brings up a great topic. I am instantly reminded of Keith Johnstone, the improv guru, who talks about status interactions in his masterwork, Impro.

Johnstone says that the quickest way to raise your status is to lower someone else's. This is because status, much like talent and intelligence, relies heavily upon perception and is a relative, not absolute, value. Status is not something one has, but rather something one does. It is performed, he says, as a defense mechanism.

In much the same way, while we have some indicators for intelligence and talent, these traits can often be performed and judged on a relative scale. (My mind instantly jumps to the MBA technobabble and wordsmanship in the business world today)

Interestingly, though, improvisers, when faced with assholes, do not become “victims …afraid to try new ideas.” Instead, they are trained to recognize the asshole and avoid him. Our no asshole rule is the heart of improv theory: “take care of each other.” It is our version of “first do no harm.” Therefore, it makes it easy and acceptable to shun the asshole, despite whatever talents he may have.

It all comes down to empowering your people to recognize assholes and get rid of them. If the organizational culture is well-defined in such a way to be an inhospitable environment for assholes, or status seekers, or intellectual charlatans, a team that requires a high level of collaboration will be better off, as trust and positive interaction will permeate.

[Pamela Slim]

This is so true! I found myself flashing back on so many instances of witnessing totally insensitive assholes get away with what amounts to emotional abuse of peers and subordinates all due to their perceived "critical creative value" to the organization. I also worked for many years with artistic masters from many different cultures who would sometimes stomp and scream at their students all in the name of beauty and art. (Somehow I forgave them more than the corporate dweebs since at least they had an indisputable talent and a track record to show it).

My favorite memory was team teaching a presentation skills class with another instructor who apparently thought that snide, condescending criticism would somehow improve her students' public speaking skills. The client who hired us to do the gig told me "You are too nice! you should be more like (anonymous name) and people will respect you more!" I stuck to my guns and gave specific, constructive and encouraging feedback to my students.

Whose students do you think gave better presentations? (ok, MINE!) :)

While I agree that beautifully written, cruel criticism is kind of titillating to read, when you think about the long-term effect on the recipient, it does nothing to improve an argument or product. Plus it just feels plain crappy.