« The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

480. The Psychology Behind "Nice Guys Finish Last" | Keith Campbell

2024-09-12 | 🔗

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with author, researcher, and professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, Dr. Keith Campbell. They delve deep into the weeds of narcissism, exposing the “good guy” fallacy; why alpha males attract more women; the axis of introversion, extroversion, and neuroticism as it applies to personality disorders; and the obsession with self-esteem which only fosters misery.

 

W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and several books, including “The New Science of Narcissism” and “Professor OCEAN: A small tale of personality’s Big Five.” His work on personality has appeared across print media and he has made numerous media appearances, from the “Today Show” to the “Joe Rogan Experience.” He wrote the popular TED-Ed lesson on narcissism and writes a Substack called “Explorations in Personality.” He holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and did his postdoctoral work at Case Western Reserve University. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughters.

 

This episode was recorded on September 4th, 2024

 

 

- Links -

 

For Keith Campbell:

 

On X https://x.com/wkeithcampbell?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  

 

Website https://www.wkeithcampbell.com/?_sm_nck=1

 

Substack https://substack.com/@wkeithcampbell

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.

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purchase at leaffilter.com/build. That's a free inspection and up to 30% off at LEAFFilter.com/build. See representative for warranty details. Promotion is 20% off plus a 10% senior or military discount. One discount per household. Hello everybody. So I had the privilege today of speaking with Dr. Keith Campbell, who is of psychology at the University of Georgia. Keith is a social psychologist, so he's interested in the relationship between the social psychology networks and the social behavior of people and their own individual being. He works at the nexus of social psychology.
Personality psychology, which is more centered on the individual person, and psychopathology, which is the study of pathological... Abnormal or otherwise counterproductive and painful behavior. His research focuses more specifically even on narcissism. And narcissism is part of a broader cluster of personality pathologies that are counterproductive with Regards to someone's success over long spans of time. In social circumstances. So if you're self-centered and you're narcissistic and it's all about you. Problem with that is that that's a good pathway to misery for you over any reasonable amount of time, although you may have some small punctuated victories. Extremely hard on the stability of your social relationships because the only people who want to be around a manipulative narcissist
For any length of time are, you know, disenchanted and demoralized masochists. And that that's not the basis for a productive and meaningful relationship. Relationship. And so that narrow self centeredness that's also hedonistic whim focus requires immediate gratification of needs and Wants. It's a very counterproductive way of conducting yourself over any reasonable span of time and >> Well, I was interested in talking to Dr. Campbell, partly because I've talked to some of his compatriots who've been working on But I'm also interested in the issue more broadly because I think that we're We've seen something of an epidemic of dark personality traits. Narcissism because of the explosion of social media, which enables... Anonymity, so it enables people to get away with things that
have attention in the short run, but that are socially counterproductive and counterproductive Future. So I wanted to talk to Dr. Campbell about narcissism, about his work on narcissism, about how it's conceptualized, about how it's best understood about how you detected about its relationship, let's say with leadership and status and self-esteem. And broader personality and well, the general social world. And so that's what we did. Dr. Campbell is the author of 200 scientific papers. That's a lot of papers. It's about the equivalent of 60 PhD theses, 60 or 70. So that's that's how much scientific work he's done. It's a lot. And several books including the new science of narcissism and Professor Ocean from the Big Five, openness.
Conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, ocean, a small tale of personalities, big five. In any case, that's what the discussion with Dr. Campbell focuses on. Yes. Well, Dr. Campbell, we might as well start by allowing you to introduce yourself to everybody and tell people What you do, what your specialty is, where you're working, all of that just to give them a general, well, generally introduction. Sure. My name's Keith Campbell. I'm a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia here in Athens, Georgia. And background are in social personality psychology. Expertise is primarily on the self, the nature of self and self enhancement. And in terms of personality, most of my work has been on the trait of narcissism, which is sort of the individual difference.