Thank you for your excellent comments and questions! I'm very glad you found the newsletter to be, at least, not the worst possible account.
It's always a bit unwise to speculate in politics - recent elections in the Netherlands and Argentina have shown us why - but you are quite right: One has to hope the situation never arises when one has to choose between a mask-wearing unaccomplished, anonymous narcissist and any other candidate at all. Maybe they would turn out to be great, but it might be advisable to find out from a very long distance. Fingers crossed we never have to collect the empirical evidence.
Low self-esteem plus an unmasked state isn't going to be safe, necessarily. The Psychology literature just gives us reason to assume that, on the average, it might be less dangerous than the reverse. To be honest, if you happen to be the one wired to the electrodes, you're probably not likely to find any personality characteristics in your tormentor particularly reassuring! Best avoided altogether, probably. High self-esteem - especially when it is not objectively justified - is definitely not a reassuring quality to have, though. I know some psychologists who shudder rather at magazine articles and the like that promise to help you 'Raise Your Self-Esteem!'
Powerful stuff thank you for summarising so clearly and for the bullerpoints on experimental evidence. I almost wrote experimental bullet points but that has a slightly different spin and is not the meaning intended. So the most threatening circumstances would be put place a high self esteem thug wearing a mask in a position of remarkable power and influence? Imagine for example someone born into huge privilege ditching his first name and running for high office under a pen name and under the cloak of a circus personality? Are we quite sure that low self esteem in the unmasked state is safe though? May people commit atrocities to change their circumstances and in doing so hope to heighten their self esteem? It would not seem an impossible idea. Of course I appreciate you didn't say that low self-esteem wasn't a potential way to violent crime, only that it was by no means the common one.
Thank you for your excellent comments and questions! I'm very glad you found the newsletter to be, at least, not the worst possible account.
It's always a bit unwise to speculate in politics - recent elections in the Netherlands and Argentina have shown us why - but you are quite right: One has to hope the situation never arises when one has to choose between a mask-wearing unaccomplished, anonymous narcissist and any other candidate at all. Maybe they would turn out to be great, but it might be advisable to find out from a very long distance. Fingers crossed we never have to collect the empirical evidence.
Low self-esteem plus an unmasked state isn't going to be safe, necessarily. The Psychology literature just gives us reason to assume that, on the average, it might be less dangerous than the reverse. To be honest, if you happen to be the one wired to the electrodes, you're probably not likely to find any personality characteristics in your tormentor particularly reassuring! Best avoided altogether, probably. High self-esteem - especially when it is not objectively justified - is definitely not a reassuring quality to have, though. I know some psychologists who shudder rather at magazine articles and the like that promise to help you 'Raise Your Self-Esteem!'
Powerful stuff thank you for summarising so clearly and for the bullerpoints on experimental evidence. I almost wrote experimental bullet points but that has a slightly different spin and is not the meaning intended. So the most threatening circumstances would be put place a high self esteem thug wearing a mask in a position of remarkable power and influence? Imagine for example someone born into huge privilege ditching his first name and running for high office under a pen name and under the cloak of a circus personality? Are we quite sure that low self esteem in the unmasked state is safe though? May people commit atrocities to change their circumstances and in doing so hope to heighten their self esteem? It would not seem an impossible idea. Of course I appreciate you didn't say that low self-esteem wasn't a potential way to violent crime, only that it was by no means the common one.