The Flex Scale

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The flex scale is the performative self elevation index. It's comprised of four cluster facets that correlated strongly with each other when we did correlations between the 10 facets that were determined in prison. So things like, I have a rich vocabulary. I go to the ballet. You know, do you go into opera? I just be seen. You go to art galleries just to be seen. Do you proclaim a taste in modern art just to be, you know, edgy? I don't know. Things like that. And by the way, by your own admission,. Like not you, but people who admit that you do this. We're hypothesizing as social media has become more integrated

In this episode we explore what narcissism is (and what is most-definitely is not).

There is a form of narcissism which has been, up until now, confused with psychopathy. But a new paper, the result of years of experiments, suggests narcissists are not psychopaths, and psychopaths are not narcissists.

In the psychological literature, narcissism comes in two varieties. Grandiose narcissists tend to really, truly love themselves and heavily manipulate their social environment for personal gain. Vulnerable narcissists don’t love themselves, not their true selves. Vulnerable narcissists love their image, and they are highly aware of the fact that it is an image and work very hard to prevent anyone else realizing that. According to the research explored in this episode, there is no such thing as a grandiose narcissist – that’s just another way to describe a psychopath.

Vulnerable narcissists like Don Draper in Mad Men cope with their insecurity by donning a mask, and then spend most of their lives protecting that mask out of a fear of what will happen if people ever see what it hides.