Are Toxic People Aware Of Their Toxicity?
Male Venomous Black Bush Viper Snake (Atheris squamigera)displaying fangs and aggression getty  There is a simple explanation for the recent rise of research into dark personality traits and toxic work behaviors, namely the fact that we are all frequently exposed to colleagues and bosses who have detrimental effects on our performance, productivity, and wellbeing. This begs an obvious yet rarely examined question: whether toxic people are generally aware or unaware of their toxicity. In a way this would provide some moral justification, as well as much hope for fixing the problem. One would assume that if lack of awareness is the issue then we may just sit down with toxic workers (and managers) to provide them with a much needed reality check, which would hopefully result in guilt, restraint, and long-term behavioral changes. That is, all we would need to do is to make them aware of their undesirable habits so that they can fix them and transition from toxic to non-toxic, and perhaps even rewarding to deal with. Alas, things are not as simple. In fact, an examination of academic research into counterproductive and toxic personalities indicates that while self-awareness may be lacking, it is far from enough to explain the toxicity of such personalities. Consider that even narcissistic individuals, who specialize in delusions of grandeur and reality distortion, are generally aware of their narcissism. So, the main problem with narcissists is down not so much to their lack of meta-cognition or knowledge of their own narcissism, but the fact that they dont care about it - or are even proud of it. This makes a mockery of interventions designed to provide narcissistic leaders with feedback on their arrogance, entitlement, and megalomania, and explains why interventions to challenge narcissists egos and provide them with a much needed reality check whereby they understand that they are not as good as they think will often backfire. Along the same lines, one would suspect that if any of the billionaires who are trying to out-macho their fellow billionaires by rocketing to space watched this video, they may become quite angry and defensive. By the same token, psychopathic individuals, who are generally callous, cruel, and destructive in that they enjoy breaking rules and having parasitic effects on groups, systems, and organizations (including societies at large), appear to be largely aware of their psychopathic tendencies. For instance, in some our own studies we were able to show that even when psychopaths are unable to feel pain or suffering when they see other people feeling pain or suffering, they are aware of it, and able to label others emotions accurately. In short, just like narcissistic people, psychopathic people are not antisocial and toxic because they are unaware of their psychopathic tendencies, but rather because they dont care about them enough to control them. And in many instances, they actually enjoy their own toxicity, so their moral deficits reinforce their cruel acts and legitimizes their destructive effects on others. You can safely apply the same logic to other, less overtly aggressive but equally problematic, forms of toxicity, such as passive aggressive people. If you have ever worked with conflict avoidant, leisurely, or politically manipulative individuals you will understand that they are perfectly aware of their snarky, snake-like, shrewd approach to managing relations. This is why they are perfectly consistent when it comes to saying one thing, but thinking another. The only way you can achieve this is by being perfectly aware of what you think, so you can focus on hiding it in order to avoid confrontation and fake niceness, and utterly guilt-free about your approach. In fact, people with this personality profile tend to engage in hyper logical rationalizations to justify their mischievous and Machiavellian tactics: Im only following orders, Im just pleasing my boss, or Im just avoiding risks and following the status quo. Unsurprisingly, people who are conflict averse end up generating a great deal of conflict in the long run. And for all the talk and celebration of authenticity at work there is a far bigger tax and punishment for saying what you really think, and staying true to your values, than for staying out of trouble and perfecting the art of deception and conflict avoidance at work. A final type that requires examination is the case of highly neurotic or excitable workers. These are people with low EQ, high emotional volatility, and poor anger management. They are impulsive and all over the place, and if you work for a boss with this personality you will probably struggle to remain engaged and perform to the best of your capabilities. Indeed, excitable and volatile (neurotic) leaders harm employee engagement and productivity. But here too the issue is not lack of awareness. In fact, neurotic individuals spend a great deal of time engaged in introspection and they ruminate more than most on their own feelings and behaviors. They are also more self-critical than the average person, and compared to most people they underestimate their abilities, are under-confident, and more likely to suffer from imposter syndrome. As we have noted, it is unfortunate that such individuals are generally ostracized when they can often fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity in their teams and organizations, and when in fact they are more genuine and transparent than the passive aggressive and fake people described above. By the same token, there is too much glorification and celebration of people who are nice and pleasant and conform to existing rules even when they are technically unimpressive or lack talent. To be sure, all progress in the world depends on those who are unhappy with the status quo to the point that their annoyance and constructive non-conformity fuels their desire to replace it with something better. Still, working for a volatile or explosive boss still sucks, and understanding that they are aware of their volatility yet unable or unwilling to control their rants, makes it suck even more. To conclude, while self-awareness is a really valuable competency in the world of employee and leadership development, and no coaching can be expected to pay off unless clients or coachees are aware of their toxicity and problem behaviors, we cannot really blame interpersonal problems on peoples lack of awareness, or justify toxic individuals by assuming that they are somehow unaware of their problematic tendencies. Sure, we can always hope to find ways to incentivize people to behave better, especially if they already know that their behaviors are counterproductive. But such incentives will work only if they outweigh the many rewards individuals get from behaving in their preferred toxic ways. All personal development requires finding ways to go against your natural personality, which in essence means becoming a less exaggerated version of ourselves. In order to even want to attempt this, we need to come to the realization that we are not the person we could or should be, which very few people are interested in doing (especially after a certain age).