Chapter Two

Chapter Two – How to Recognize Authoritarian Behavior

In Chapter two we will be discussing how to recognize authoritarian behavior.  Plain and simple using our score cards and definitions these behaviors can be observed and noted.

Quick Summary – This chapter provides the basis for recognition Authoritarian behavior. First, covered will be a how to separate the signal from the noise.  Next, will be how to use score cards for what makes dark personality concepts in psychology.  We will use illustration and examples of these dark behaviors.  Thus anyone can use these keys to recognize these behaviors in the age of videos and live news.  Lastly, we will cover the use of misinformation and media suppression.

Warning – this is a draft and subject to change

How to separate the Signal from the Noise

In science and in spycraft, one difficulty has been how to separate deception from real action.  This concept is called “separating the signal from the noise”. Distractions come flying at us from all directions.  There are two kinds of problems according to Dwight D. Eisenhower, “the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent”.

Steps and guides

The first step to solving a problem is to recognize there is one – Zig Ziglar

Therefore we have to use steps and guides helping us to see critical information.

1. Filter out the noise
2. Tune in to the signal
3. Score cards as guides to see the signal

What is Noise?  Noise is any action that distracts you from what is actually happening in the world.  Therefore the signal concerns actions that are happening that are both urgent and important of your attention that you are being distracted from seeing.  Get it?  Most people don’t see well.  Consequently, to help seeing we developed the score cards as a check list.  They are our guides to see and hear the signal.

How To Use Qualitative Psychology Score Cards

The “Psycho Evaluation Krewe” developed easy ways to recognized bad behaviors.   We worked to make this simple and easy to use. We use guidelines that over lap a bit based on books by Hanna Arendt, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and defined by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002 as the Dark Triad.  Their paper is “The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy”, December 2002, Journal of Research in Personality 36(6):556-563 for reference purposes.  These are based experiment by Kowalski (2001).

A Few Definitions First

What is Qualitative Psychology?  Anything that’s qualitative has to do with the characteristics or features of something, rather than its quantity.  We do measure the quantity later, however, anyone by simple observation of the bad behaviors gets a feel for these characteristics by watching the bad behaviors seen in bad leaders.  By the way, psychology tests have been used starting with IQ tests in France (Benet 1890’s) and personality test like the Myers Briggs (1917-1923)

Next, what is the dark triad or dark tetrad ?  The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.  The Dark Tetrad also known as the Dark Quad adds sadism.  the Dark Tetrad. The concept was coined by Erin Buckles, Daniel Jones, and Delroy L. Paulhus in 2013. Paulhus is also the originator of the Dark Triad construct.

It is described as empirical evidence for the overlap behaviors of (a) Machiavellianism with psychopathy, (b) narcissism with psychopathy,  (c) Machiavellianism with narcissism and (d) different types of sadism.

Per Ruth Ben-Ghiat we see this in creating a strong  man image that is ruthless.  Therefore we can observe and measure it now days.  We don’t need to Goldwater Rule.  We have videos and news.

Note – We extracted these categories from various psychology papers and books.

The Dark Personality Score Card

The Categories for dark personality type – The dark Eighteen categories we can score on

These are the categories we observe and score on:

1. Manipulate others to get their way.
2. Best at using deceit, untruths, best at gaslighting and rewriting history
3. Uses flattery to get their way.
4. Exploit others towards their own end.
5. Lack remorse for their actions.
6. Venality – not concerned with morality to get money or the morality of their actions.
7. Callous and insensitive
8. Cynical
9. Want others to admire them.  Narcissistic supply
10. Getting others to pay attention to them
11. Seek prestige or status.  Use of show, bluster to show how strong or rich they are.
12. Expect special favors from others.
13. Co-factors of using sex and punishment (S&M, torture and prison)  Dark Quad
14. Uses ritual humiliation Dark Quad
15. Dislike those more skilled than them
16. Works to get rid of opponents Dark Quad
17. Special category hates LGBTQ people and minorities Dark Quad
18. Over turning and abusing democracy

Often this Strong man image is combined with what we call the Mack Daddy syndrome that overlaps the dark triad behaviors.

These are the Mack Daddy categories we score on:

1. Uses charm and flattery to get women (or men)
2. Uses his wealth to get women (or men)
3. Want women to admire them to feed their Narcissistic supply
4. Uses humiliation to chase off less desirable women
5. Uses sex to exploit others (domination)  Dark Quad
6. Uses sex as a honey pot to trap others (a honey pot is a term for entrapment)
7. Lack remorse for their actions
8. Co-factors of using sex and punishment (S&M) in relationships  Dark Quad
9. Uses good looks (use of plastic surgery – makeup – strongman image)
10. Lots of affairs and children by mistresses and wife’s > 2  Dark Quad

How we Score to Recognize Authoritarian Behaviors

We use a scale from zero to ten.  At Zero – subject shows no behavior in a category.  A score of five, the subject is showing about 50% of the time these bad behaviors from normal expected behavior.  For a score of ten, the subject is showing these behaviors 100% with proof.  Our scored are behavior based on video’s, court cases and testimony of victims or crimes.  Our only with the exception of “Uses sex as a honey pot to trap”.  We score this at twenty when found!

Examples that you need to look for as the following:

1. We look at Trump’s MO in sexual abuse per the E. Jean Carol case.
2. Number of affairs – Mussolini’s large number of mistresses
3.  Muammar Gaddafi female student sexual torture chamber as documented by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
4.  Elon Musk having 14 children and multiple affairs
5. We are not limiting this to just men – there is Catherine the great’s love affairs
6. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Putin use of sex tapes
7. Putin’s killing of opponents (shooting, push out of windows, poisons, and prison)
8. Use of lies, Gaslighting and rewriting history for control purposes.

Score card templates for the Dark Personality and Mack Daddy Score cards:

Dark Triad Score Card – with typical score

Mack Daddy Score Card – with typical score

We use the score cards as a check list for observing behaviors.  You score by observation from what is a “normal behavior” of people who do not have these behaviors.

Misinformation and media suppression Recognizing Authoritarian Behavior

Information, disinformation and misinformation.   We will go step wise thru the process of how we have gone from the information age to become the misinformation and disinformation age.  In the late 1960’s, the computer was the start of the Information Age.  It began in the mid-20th century with radio and television.  Later on the computer internet.  It was characterized by a shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technologies.

Prior to radio and television, we had the news papers.  During the news paper era, spreading information, disinformation and misinformation was a bit more difficult.  With radio, we could hear it.  As television programming developed we could see it much like the movies.  We had entertainment programs like “I love Lucy”.  The show writers and actors learned how to make shows a bit addictive.  Some shows flopped (bad writing and acting).  The TV stations and advertisers decided by money which shows were more addictive.  Thus began the daily Soap Operas that addicted housewives to the shows to sell soap and detergents.

Loss of the News high ground Recognizing Authoritarian Behavior

The news had a high ground in keeping to just information.  The FCC had control with a rule called the “Fairness Doctrine”.  If the national TV stations posted disinformation and misinformation.  They would loose their license to broadcast.  Therefore the end of their revenue and business.  Reporters and news were held to a very high standard.  So we come to Step 1.

For those who have read my discourse about Ronald Reagan.  He did the first step in his administration of removing the FCC “Fairness Doctrine”.  The next step number two was the rise of media types like ‘Rush Limbaugh‘.  He posed as a conservative but was using anger and fear to make people angry and mad.  In psychology, we learn that anger causes your body to release adrenaline.  Adrenaline is released as a fight or flight hormone that drowns out our high brain functions.  It also makes us feel powerful when we feel a threat like a lion jumping out to attack us.  In small doses anger is addictive.  It also causes your logical thinking to shut down over time.

Our higher Brain functions shut down with anger

This brings us to step number three.  Ira J. Roseman Ph.D. came up with a studies on motive consistent and motive inconsistent logic.  Anger has many causes, we see people and circumstances causing us pain.  Anger is a motive inconsistent emotion as we see people and circumstances causing us to not get what we want.  Therefore, we feel strong, but we did not get what we want!  This is the paper:

Roseman, I. J. (1984). Cognitive determinants of emotions: A structural
theory. In P. Shaver (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology
(Vol. 5, pp. 11–36). Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.

I read this paper in my counseling psychology classes.  It profoundly changed how I acted.  However, for most people they slowly lose the high brain logic functions due to anger.

The use of disinformation and misinformation

Fox news and others news/media an organizational people like Fox News, Alex Jones and Steve Bannon found citing opinions of disinformation and misinformation caused anger in listeners.  Starting with Reagan messing up the American economy.  Many people are angry at the environment they are in now.  Consequentially, their ratings went up as did the flow of money from advertisers like Exxon and soap sellers.

Using disinformation and misinformation

Disinformation and misinformation have been used by leaders for centuries.  Every history book worth reading has examples of wars started by disinformation and misinformation.  We see current leaders rewriting history like Putin with the invasion of Ukraine to Trump with what happened on January 6, 2021.  This is not new.

An example from the 1980 election

Ronald Reagan with his acting skills used disinformation and misinformation very well.  With his nice sales voice he told stories of welfare queens that were believable.  However, the welfare queen was a wild exaggeration.  Much like immigrants eating cats and dogs by Trump.

They are not the first, nor will they be the last one to use these tools.  The lines of king, dictators, tyrants and even good rulers have used these tools going back in time in the history books.  You just have to find history books that go into this detail. Just about every authoritarian type ruler depends on these informational tools.  In the 20th century, they were able to figure out a nice playbook for using bad information to their advantage.  They create the strong man image, use it to manipulate the masses with it. Your  anger to bypass your high logic brain functions is their gift to make you a minion.