Seventeen: Brand Leadership And Psychosis
The author returns to the topic of narcissism - how people see themselves as being far better than they are, and have many psychological defense mechanisms that allow them to deny any evidence to the contrary and carry on in their deplorable behavior while having the sense that they are doing exactly the right thing.
The same concept applies to brands, or more specifically, to those individuals who manage brand reputation. They have the sense that their brand is better than it is and that everything they do under the aegis of the brand is flawless, while denying evidence to the contrary. That is, when the market regards a brand with disdain, there is the assumption that everything the brand and company are doing is just fine and that customers are deluded.
This is particularly pronounced in executives and corporate leadership: a high-ranking executive thinks very highly of himself, and the position to which he has been assigned merely serves to support the notion that he is a very important person and that everything he does is perfect - it is why he believes that he has been entrusted with leadership.
(EN: I tend to think the opposite is more often true: that a person in a position in leadership knows that he has made a horrible mistake, and is attempting to act as if he did not in hopes that others will not notice, or will assist him in escaping the blame for his bad decisions. This differs significantly from psychological delusion in that an individual is aware of reality and of his actions, and can be a great deal more determined and calculated in his defense strategy and tactics.)
Overcoming Distrust
If one accepts the premise that each person is the center of their own universe, self-serving with indifference to the interests of others, then social interaction seems entirely impossible. Interaction among individuals depends on mutual trust - to serve the needs of others and expect one's own needs in return. And this is the basis for the pessimistic model of society: self-interested parties who are willing to compromise to serve others only because they expect service from others in return.
Following this premise, people are mistrustful by default and need a reason to trust in others. Trust relies on assessing the ability and willingness of other people to keep up their end of the social contract - to be benevolent, and to return favor for favor. In this sense, people are regarded as much the same as objects - our willingness to walk across a frozen pond depends on our assessment of whether the ice is strong enough to hold our weight. Failure to exercise good judgment results in disaster.
While our criminal system punishes those who violate trust, our social values clearly reflect that the burden of judgment falls on the person who places trust in another - that is, if your trust is betrayed, it is your fault for having trusted.
Trust is essential to any human interaction. If a person is capable of acting on their own, they generally do - but if their goal cannot be accomplished by solitary effort, they are compelled to engage others. The question is: what motivates others to help? In rare instances, there are mutual intrinsic benefits - but in most cases we must provide an extrinsic benefit as incentive for them to render aid. The most obvious example is employment: a worker serves the interests of his employer because he expects to be paid.
Trust is essential in brand because it is an individual's trust in a brand that causes them to wish to interact with it. It is only by delivering on the promises made by a brand that it can expect customers to seek it out and purchase repeatedly. Once trust is violated, it is extremely difficult to regain.
Sidebar: Rational Trust and Antisocial Disorders
There is a sidebar about the prisoner's dilemma, a parable in which two suspects will go free if neither confesses, but each will receive a lighter sentence if they accuse the other - and without ability to communicate, they must trust in the character of the other prisoner. Naturally, it is in the self-interest of each to remain silent and hope the other does the same - but doubt about the other party's trustworthiness often leads suspects to confess, even though it is to their own detriment.
This leads to a consideration of antisocial disorders. Psychology considers any behavior that is detrimental to self or others to be disorderly. In essence, it is failure to recognize when there is a benefit to being trustworthy and trusting in others - and it is often based on the premise that one should expect good intentions of others by default.
(EN: Psychology is culturally relative. An individualistic society is more tolerant of self-centeredness than a collectivistic one, and even expects individuals to be circumspect in their dealings with others. Meanwhile a collectivist society expects an individual to be more selfless and to place his trust in others, regardless of any signal or evidence of their untrustworthiness.)
The diagnostic benchmark for an antisocial disorder consider the degree to which an individual exhibits egocentric behaviors and a lack of concern for the welfare of others. A long list is provided, which basically falls into four categories:
- Valuation - The degree to which a person feels that they are important and entitled or that others are unimportant and unentitled
- Trustworthiness - The degree to which a person can be counted on to keep the promises they make to others, even when it is to their own detriment
- Deceitfulness - The degree to which a person will lie to others in order to mislead or take advantage of them
- Empathy - The degree to which a person considers the welfare of others or feels guilt when he has harmed them
- Sociability - The degree to which a person seeks to interact with or avoid others.
- Rationality - The degree to which a person considers the consequences of their actions, both to self and to others
There are an array of define conditions that fall into the general category of antisocial personality disorders, but in general they seek to consider behavior to be dysfunctional when a person causes others to be harmed without good reason (benefit to self of equal or greater value) or when a person suffers harm for their failure to trust in others.
Loose Bits
There's rather a long and overly-detailed case-study about sexism, which is a form of selective anti-social behavior. As with racism, religious intolerance, and other such behaviors, the sexist regards a group of people (usually of the opposite gender) as being of less importance, and therefore feels entitled to exclude or exploit them.
Such a person may be both trusting of and trustworthy toward people outside of the stigmatized class but behaves in an antisocial manner toward those members of the class he has stigmatized. Alternately, a person may define a preferred class of people, whom he is willing to trust and act in a trustworthy manner toward, but behave antisocially toward anyone who is not a member of that preferred class.
(EN: From this assessment, it seems that the phenomenon is more of a rational disorder than an antisocial one - it is the assignment of qualifying or disqualifying characteristics to a category of people on superficial reasons.)