psychologists confirm: the anti-Semites were right

American Psychological Association, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Difference 

Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities 

Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek, and Karl Aquino

University of British Columbia

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism—amoral manipulation—and a form of narcissism that reflects a person’s belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context.

Keywords: Dark Triad, unethical behavior, victim-signaling, victimization, virtue-signaling 

"The cry that one is a victim of injustice, oppression, intolerance, or any of the myriad reasons why people believe they are prevented from getting what they want in life has echoed loudly through the ages. It remains so today..... "

Ekin Ok

PhD Candidate in Marketing and Behavioral Science

Yi Qian, 

BA (Harvard), MA (Harvard), Ph.D. (Harvard) Associate Professor, Marketing and Behavioral Science Division

Brendan Strejcek

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, OBHRM & Marketing Areas

Karl Aquino 

BSc (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), MSc, PhD (Northwestern)

Richard Poon Professor of Organizations and Society at the UBC Sauder School of Business, Marketing and Behavioural Science Division

I found the paper months ago through something retweeted by Jilani, 

People who more often signal their victimhood are more likely to lie, cheat, and engage in other unethical behaviors in order to get ahead, even at others’ expense.

The archetypical anti-Semitic description of Jews.  Jilani of course used it as it was intended, against any and every other discontented subgroup that has faced or faces discrimination. 

The link in the tweet—I replaced it with a link to the APA page—takes us to Gwern Branwen; and Cory Clark herself is another trip, publishing with proponents of "human bio-diversity". It's two hops from Bo Winegard to Noah Carl to Richard Lynn. It took me 3 minutes to find the route. Do it yourself. And of course every one of the authors of the paper studies human behavior in the service of marketing, as specialists in the condescending happy-talk of "positive psychology", from Seligman to Pinker, Haidt and Lukianoff, and the whole sorry lot. None of that is to say anything about the research itself. The results are unoriginal and obvious: people do what they need to to survive. Scars last for generations; trauma is passed down. The history of how that was accepted, denied, and accepted again is more than anything the story of the rise and decline of ideology and ideal form. Psychology dealt with honestly is not a field for optimists.   

I thought I'd written something about Seligman before, but I think that was from my twitter days.

The above reminded me that Jilani is on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which includes the usual reasonable, acceptable, bigots, and at least one overt anti-Semite, though again of course, he defends Israel.

Jewish exceptionalism and the exceptionalist nature of Jewish civilization require an unconditional space for the continued evolution of their civilization. What’s good for Jewish civilization is good for humanity at large. Jewish civilization is an international treasure trove that must be protected.

Not all cultures are indeed equal. Some are abysmally inferior and regressive based on their comprehensive philosophy and fundamental principles—or lack thereof—that guide or fail to protect the inalienable rights of their citizens.

Given the voting patterns of Palestinians—towards Islamicism and terrorist organizations for the most part—that openly advocate and work for Israeli and Jewish destruction and annihilation, a strong argument can and ought to be made to strip Palestinians of their right to vote—period. The regional hostilities towards Israel in the Middle East are such that Israel must take those threats seriously. It must work for a coalition of forces to neutralize them.  

But we've come to the point when the creatures of the culture of neoliberalism begin to examine the world that made them.

 

Organization Studies,  Money Matters: Teflonic Identity Manoeuvring in the Investment Banking Sector, Mats Alvesson, Maxine Robertson

In this paper we address identity issues in relation to senior employees in the UK investment banking sector. Drawing on in-depth material, the study demonstrates their marginal concerns about identity issues or engagement in what is typically viewed as identity work. Instead they had what we refer to as an identity minimalism orientation and met potential challenges to identity with what we conceptualize as teflonic identity manoeuvring. In so doing they were able to deflect attention away from themselves, enabling them to circumvent identity concerns. These employees drew upon material resources, specifically money, to rationalize this disposition and social (in particular, dress codes) and discursive resources (around professionalism) to bolster and sustain this disposition.

Mats Alvesson 

Professor of Organizational Studies, Lund University

Maxine Robertson 

Emerita Professor of Innovation and Organisation, Queen Mary School of Business and Management

repeats. The relation of corporate to academic life over time, and the Americanization of the world.

Advertising and Happy Talk, Liberals Make Nihilism Attractive, Pedants and Children, Race, Make it Idiot-Proof, Politics, Philosophy, Culture, Israel/Palestine

The arguments are all in the manuscript. It's embarrassing to say this all the time but I do.