How Not to Be a Hot Mess - A Survival Guide for Modern Life - Craig Hase Page 0,9

in your everyday life, and more of the prosocial, happy-making stuff you’re probably also already doing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s kick this party off with a brief contemplation.

Please take a minute and think of a real jerk. This could be a stupid terrible jerk from your present life. It could be an awful disgusting jerk from your past. Or maybe even a historical jerk or a big-time political jerk. Whoever this jerk is, just make sure they really embody jerkiness for you.

Got your jerk? Good.

Now, I’d like you to start to catalog this person’s badness. In other words, what makes them such a jerk? Please think of all the qualities that make this individual particularly unbearable. What makes them terrible? What is it about your special jerk that makes you want to ring their neck or flee the building?

Have you let your imagination run wild? Got a good little list going?

Okay. Now you can gently snap out of your reverie and look around the room. Orient yourself. Shake off the dirty. I know it’s never fun to think about the Skeletors.

So let’s look together at that compendium of jerkdom you just assembled. What exactly was on that list of unforgivable attributes this particular jerk personifies?

My guess is there are all kinds of things. This person talks behind your back. Or they threw sand in your eyes when you were ten. Or they’re racist. Or just plain damned ignorant. Or a horrible bore who won’t let you get a word in at parties. Or they’ve done something truly terrible to you or someone you love.

But small or big, if you look closely, I think you’ll find that all jerks have one thing unswervingly in common. A jerk, put simply, is someone who causes harm.

BEING A JERK IS A REAL DOWNER

So jerks cause harm. They hurt others, in small and big ways. They cut you off in traffic or talk on the phone really loud in coffee shops or threaten the democratic norms you’ve always believed were intrinsic to the functioning of a civilized society. That’s why we don’t like jerks. Because they’re looking out for number one and triggering avalanches of chaos everywhere they set their feet to walking.

But are jerks happy themselves? Well, an expeditious jaunt through the history books tells us, undeniably, no. Jerks are the most miserable, paranoid, and all-around apprehensive sad sacks around. They might start out all right, sure. The early days of a Stalin or a Pol Pot are often suffused with purpose. But as they let the jerkiness overtake them, as they lock up their enemies and stomp out their critics on the way to whatever grand plan they’ve imagined for themselves and their nation, slowly but surely they end up isolated and anemic, essentially friendless, a power to be managed rather than loved.

And that’s the great jerks. Little jerks usually don’t even get that far.

Let’s have a look at some research to drive this point home. Unfortunately, psychologists don’t really go around calling people jerks (not in public anyway). Instead, they talk about things like pathological narcissism and a bunch of other fancy-pants names that essentially add up to someone acting like a no-good, insufferable pissant. Nevertheless, the research suggests that jerks don’t have a very fun time.

Take narcissists, for example. A narcissist is one special kind of jerky jerk. You know the type. She’s that blowhard in the office or at the gym or in your bowling club who really, really needs you to think she’s so very awesome. By definition, narcissists’ goals are all about them, they have a really tough time being part of a team, and they tend to take any statement that is not direct praise as an interpersonal affront.

Does that sound like a fun way to live? Definitely not.

In fact, psychologists have now established that narcissists—that is, people who are exploitative of others, self-centered, and quick to talk up their own game—have a terrible time with stress, struggle with commonplace setbacks, and can barely handle the ups and downs of everyday life. For instance, a study1 at the University of Michigan put undergrads through a stressful situation in the lab. They found that the more narcissistic the participants were, the higher their stress response. Another study2 found that, when confronted with everyday frustrations, narcissists produced more stress hormones than their less self-aggrandizing counterparts. Other studies have found that narcissists are quick to anger,3 surprisingly impulsive, and that they tend to engage in self-defeating behaviors