The Jerk-Sweetie Spectrum

A central question of moral epistemology is, or should be: Am I a jerk? Until you figure that one out, you probably ought to be cautious in morally assessing others.

But how to know if you're a jerk? It's not obvious. Some jerks seem aware of their jerkitude, but most seem to lack self-knowledge. So can you rule out the possibility that you're one of those self-ignorant jerks? Maybe a general theory of jerks will help!

I'm inclined to think of the jerk as someone who fails to appropriately respect the individual perspectives of the people around him, treating them as tools or objects to be manipulated, or idiots to be dealt with, rather than as moral and epistemic peers with a variety of potentially valuable perspectives. The characteristic phenomenology of the jerk is "I'm important, and I'm surrounded by idiots!" However, the jerk needn't explicitly think that way, as long as his behavior and reactions fit the mold. Also, the jerk might regard other high-status people as important and regard people with manifestly superior knowledge as non-idiots.

To the jerk, the line of people in the post office is a mass of unimportant fools; it's a felt injustice that he must wait while they bumble around with their requests. To the jerk, the flight attendant is not an individual doing her best in a difficult job, but the most available face of the corporation he berates for trying to force him to hang up his phone. To the jerk, the people waiting to board the train are not a latticework of equals with interesting lives and valuable projects but rather stupid schmoes to be nudged and edged out and cut off. Students and employees are lazy complainers. Low-level staff are people who failed to achieve meaningful careers through their own incompetence who ought to take the scut work and clean up the messes. (If he is in a low-level position, it's a just a rung on the way up or a result of crimes against him.)

Inconveniencing others tends not to register in the jerk's mind. Some academic examples drawn from some of my friends' reports: a professor who schedules his office hours at 7 pm Friday evenings to ensure that students won't come (and who then doesn't always show up himself); a TA who tried to reschedule his section times (after all the undergrads had already signed up and presumably arranged their own schedules accordingly) because they interfered with his napping schedule, and who then, when the staffperson refused to implement this change, met with the department chair to have the staffer reprimanded (fortunately, the chair would have none of it); the professor who harshly penalizes students for typos in their essays but whose syllabus is full of typos.

These examples suggest two derivative features of the jerk: a tendency to exhibit jerkish behavior mostly down the social hierarchy and a lack of self-knowledge of how one will be perceived by others. The first feature follows from the tendency to treat people as objects to be manipulated. Manipulating those with power requires at least a surface-level respect. Since jerkitude is most often displayed down the social ladder, people of high social status often have no idea who the jerks are. It's the secretaries, the students, the waitresses who know, not the CEO. The second feature follows from the limited perspective-taking: If one does not value others' perspectives, there's not likely to be much inclination to climb into their minds to imagine how one will be perceived by them.

In considering whether you yourself are a jerk, you might take comfort in the fact that you have never scheduled your office hours for Friday night or asked 70 people to rearrange their schedules for your nap. But it would be a mistake to comfort oneself so easily. There are many manifestations of jerkitude, and even hard-core jerks are only going to exhibit a sample. The most sophisticated, self-delusional jerks also employ the following clever trick: Find one domain in which one's behavior is exemplary and dwell upon that as proof of one's rectitude. Often, too, the jerk emits an aura of self-serving moral indignation -- partly, perhaps, as an anticipated defense against the potential criticisms of others, and partly due to his failure to think about how others' seemingly immoral actions might be justified from their own point of view.

The opposite of the jerk is the sweetheart or the sweetie. The sweetie is vividly aware of the perspectives of others around him -- seeing them as individual people who merit concern as equals, whose desires and interests and opinions and goals warrant attention and respect. The sweetie offers his place in line to the hurried shopper, spends extra time helping the student in need, calls up an acquaintance with an embarrassed apology after having been unintentionally rude.

Being reluctant to think of other people as jerks is one indicator of being a sweetie: The sweetie charitably sees things from the jerk's point of view! In contrast, the jerk will err toward seeing others as jerks.

We are all of us, no doubt, part jerk and part sweetie. The perfect jerk is a cardboard fiction. We occupy different points in the middle of the jerk-sweetie spectrum, and different contexts will call out the jerk and the sweetie in different people. No way do I think there's going to be a clean sorting.

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I'm accumulating examples of jerkish behavior here. Please add your own! I'm interested both in cases that conform to the theory above that those that don't seem to.

Compare also Aaron James's theory of assholes, which I discuss here.

An Argument That the Ideal Jerk Must Remain Ignorant of His Jerkitude

As you might know, I'm working on a theory of jerks. Here's the central idea a nutshell:

The jerk is someone who culpably fails to respect the perspectives of other people around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with, rather than as moral and epistemic peers.

The characteristic phenomenology of the jerk is "I'm important and I'm surrounded by idiots!" To the jerk, it's a felt injustice that he must wait in the post-office line like anyone else. To the jerk, the flight attendant asking him to hang up his phone is a fool or a nobody unjustifiably interfering with his business. Students and employees are lazy complainers. Low-level staff failed to achieve meaningful careers through their own incompetence. (If the jerk himself is in a low-level position, it's either a rung on the way up or the result of injustices against him.)

My thought today is: It is partly constitutive of being a jerk that the jerk lacks moral self-knowledge of his jerkitude. Part of what it is to fail to respect the perspectives of others around you is to fail to see your dismissive attitude toward them as morally inappropriate. The person who disregards the moral and intellectual perspectives of others, if he also acutely feels the wrongness of doing so -- well, by that very token, he exhibits some non-trivial degree of respect for the perspectives of others. He is not the picture-perfect jerk.

It is possible for the picture-perfect jerk to acknowledge, in a superficial way, that he is a jerk. "So what, yeah, I'm a jerk," he might say. As long as this label carries no real sting of self-disapprobation, the jerk's moral self-ignorance remains. Maybe he thinks the world is a world of jerks and suckers and he is only claiming his own. Or maybe he superficially accepts the label "jerk", without accepting the full moral loading upon it, as a useful strategy for silencing criticism. It is exactly contrary to the nature of the jerk to sympathetically imagine moral criticism for his jerkitude, feeling shame as a result.

Not all moral vices are like this. The coward might be loathe to confront her cowardice and might be motivated to self-flattering rationalization, but it is not intrinsic to cowardice that one fails fully to appreciate one’s cowardice. Similarly for intemperance, cruelty, greed, dishonesty. One can be painfully ashamed of one’s dishonesty and resolve to be more honest in the future; and this resolution might or might not affect how honest one in fact is. Resolving does not make it so. But the moment one painfully realizes one’s jerkitude, one already, in that very moment and for that very reason, deviates from the profile of the ideal jerk.

There's an interesting instability here: Genuinely worrying about its being so helps to make it not so; but then if you take comfort in that fact and cease worrying, you have undermined the basis of that comfort.

The Moral Epistemology of the Jerk

The past few days, I've been appreciating the Grinch's perspective on Christmas -- particularly his desire to drop all the presents off Mount Crumpit. An easy perspective for me to adopt! I've already got my toys (mostly books via Amazon, purchased any old time I like), and there's such a grouchy self-satisfaction in scoffing, with moralistic disdain, at others' desire for their own favorite luxuries.

(image from http://news.mst.edu)

When I write about jerks -- and the Grinch is a capital one -- it's always with two types of ambivalence. First, I worry that the term invites the mistaken thought that there is a particular and readily identifiable species of people, "jerks", who are different in kind from the rest of us. Second, I worry about the extent to which using this term rightly turns the camera upon me myself: Who am I to call someone a jerk? Maybe I'm the jerk here!

My Grinchy attitudes are, I think, the jerk bubbling up in me; and as I step back from the moral condemnations toward which I'm tempted, I find myself reflecting on why jerks make bad moralists.

A jerk, in my semi-technical definition, is someone who fails to appropriately respect the individual perspectives of the people around him, treating them as tools or objects to be manipulated, or idiots to be dealt with, rather than as moral and epistemic peers with a variety of potentially valuable perspectives. The Grinch doesn't respect the Whos, doesn't value their perspectives. He doesn't see why they might enjoy presents and songs, and he doesn't accord any weight to their desires for such things. This is moral and epistemic failure, intertwined.

The jerk fails as a moralist -- fails, that is, in the epistemic task of discovering moral truths -- for at least three reasons.

(1.) Mercy is, I think, near the heart of practical, lived morality. Virtually everything everyone does falls short of perfection. Her turn of phrase is less than perfect, she arrives a bit late, her clothes are tacky, her gesture irritable, her choice somewhat selfish, her coffee less than frugal, her melody trite -- one can create quite a list! Practical mercy involves letting these quibbles pass forgiven or even better entirely unnoticed, even if a complaint, were it made, would be just. The jerk appreciates neither the other's difficulties in attaining all the perfections he himself (imagines he) has nor the possibility that some portion of what he regards as flawed is in fact blameless. Hard moralizing principle comes naturally to the jerk, while it is alien to the jerk's opposite, the sweetheart. The jerk will sometimes give mercy, but if he does, he does so unequally -- the flaws and foibles that are forgiven are exactly the ones the jerk recognizes in himself or has other special reasons to be willing to forgive.

(2.) The jerk, in failing to respect the perspectives of others, fails to appreciate the delight others feel in things he does not himself enjoy -- just as the Grinch fails to appreciate the Whos' presents and songs. He is thus blind to the diversity of human goods and human ways of life, which sets his principles badly askew.

(3.) The jerk, in failing to respect the perspectives of others, fails to be open to frank feedback from those who disagree with him. Unless you respect another person, it is difficult to be open to accepting the possible truth in hard moral criticisms from that person, and it is difficult to triangulate epistemically with that person as a peer, appreciating what might be right in that person's view and wrong in your own. This general epistemic handicap shows especially in moral judgment, where bias is rampant and peer feedback essential.

For these reasons, and probably others, the jerk suffers from severe epistemic shortcomings in his moral theorizing. I am thus tempted to say that the first question of moral theorizing should not be something abstract like "what is to be done?" or "what is the ethical good?" but rather "am I a jerk?" -- or more precisely, "to what extent and in what ways am I a jerk?" The ethicist who does not frankly confront herself on this matter, and who does not begin to execute repairs, works with deficient tools. Good first-person ethics precedes good second-person and third-person ethics.

Wanted: Examples of Jerkish Behavior

I'm working on theory of jerks and I need data. In the comments section, I'm hoping some of you (ideally, lots of you) will describe examples of what you think of as typical "jerkish" behavior.

Here's why: I'm working on a theory of jerks. This theory is aimed largely at the question of how you can know if you are, in fact, a jerk. (Do you know?) Toward this end, I've worked a bit on the phenomenology of being a jerk and on the "jerk-sucker ratio". Soon, I plan to propose a "jerk-sweetie spectrum". But before I get too deep into this, I'd appreciate some thoughts from people not much influenced by my theorizing. I want to check my theory against proposed cases. Also, I'd like to draw a "portrait of a jerk", and I need things to include in the portrait.

Favorite examples I will pull up into the body of this post as updates. (And I'll keep my ear out for examples via comments on this post as long as I actively maintain this blog, since comments filter into my email.) Also, readers who provide any examples that I incorporate in my portrait of a jerk will receive due name credit in the final published version of my planned paper on this topic.

But please: no names of individuals. And nothing that will clearly single out a particular individual. And if you sign your true name, please be careful to be sufficiently vague that you risk no reprisal from the perpetrator!

The anti-hero of my portrait will probably be an academic jerk, so academic examples are especially welcome. However, this jerk lives outside of academia too, and my theory of jerks is meant to apply broadly, so I need a good range of non-academic examples, too.

I've Googled "What a Jerk" as a source of examples to kick the thing off. Below are a few. No obligation to read them before diving in with your own.

From Alan Lurie at Huffington Post:

I turned to see a tall bald man looking down at me as the train pulled in to the platform. I let two people in before me, and that's when I felt the push. As we turned toward the seats I felt another push on my back, and again looked at the man, who now released an annoyed huff of breath. What a jerk! I thought. Does he think that he's the only one who deserves a seat? Then I felt a poke on my shoulder, and in a loud angry voice the tall bald man said, "What are you looking at? You got a problem, buddy?"

From Sarah Cliff (2001):

My AA, Maureen, flubbed a meeting time - scheduled over something else-and he really lit into her. Not the end of the world - she had made a mistake, and he had to rearrange an appointment - but he could have gotten the point across more tactfully. And she is *my* AA. (And I am *his* boss, and he did it in front of me.)

From Richard Norquist (1961):

I know a college president who can be described only as a jerk. He is not an unintelligent man, nor unlearned, nor even unschooled in the social amenities. Yet he is a jerk cum laude, because of a fatal flaw in his nature--he is totally incapable of looking into the mirror of his soul and shuddering at what he sees there. A jerk, then, is a man (or woman) who is utterly unable to see himself as he appears to others. He has no grace, he is tactless without meaning to be, he is a bore even to his best friends, he is an egotist without charm.

From Florian Meuck:

He is such an unlikeable character. You never invited him; he sat down on your sofa and hasn’t left since. He never stops talking, which is quite annoying. But it’s getting worse: he doesn’t like to talk about energetic, positive, uplifting stuff. No – it’s the opposite! He’s a total bummer! He cheats, he betrays, he deceives, he fakes, he misleads, he tricks, and he swindles. He is negative, sometimes even malicious. He’s a black hole! He promotes fear – not joy. He persuades you to think small – not big. He convinces you to incarcerate your potential – not to unlock it.

Update, 4:43 p.m.:

Good comments so far! I'm finding this helpful. Thanks! I'm going to start pulling up some favorites into the body of the post, but that doesn't mean the others aren't helpful and interesting too.

* At the gym a few weeks ago. A man there (working out) had probably 10 weights of various sizes strewn in a wide radius around him, blocking other people's potential work-out space. I asked him if the weights were his, and he said "no - the person before me left them here, and I DON'T PICK UP OTHER PEOPLE'S WEIGHTS." [from anon 02:55 pm]

* the professor who has hard deadlines for their students, but then doesn't respond or reply promptly themselves, or expects perfection in writing but then has a syllabus and other written materials full of typos. [from Theresa]

* Anyone who blames low-level folk for problems that are obviously originating many levels higher up (or to the side). For example, berating a clerk for the store's return policy, the stewardess for the airline's cell phone rules, the waiter for the steak's doneness, etc. [from Jesse, 01:50 pm]

* If I'm descending the stairs towards the eastbound subway platform and I hear an approaching train, then I'll generally speed up if I see that the train is eastbound and I'll slow down if it's the westbound train. If there's no one in front of me on the stairs but there are several people following me, they'll use my change of pace as a signal re. whether the approaching train is eastbound or westbound. No one agreed on this tendency or explicitly recommended it. It's just a behaviour that arose spontaneously and became standard. So, if, on seeing that the train is indeed eastbound I deviate from the norm and slow my pace, thereby leading others behind me to slow down and miss the train, I'd say I've engaged in jerkish behaviour [from praymont, Apr 17]

How to Tell If You're a Jerk

[excerpted from my new essay in Nautilus]

Here’s something you probably didn’t do this morning: Look in the mirror and ask, am I a jerk?

It seems like a reasonable question. There are, presumably, genuine jerks in the world. And many of those jerks, presumably, have a pretty high moral opinion of themselves, or at least a moderate opinion of themselves. They don’t think of themselves as jerks, because jerk self-knowledge is hard to come by.

Psychologist Simine Vazire at the University of California, Davis argues that we tend to have good self-knowledge of our own traits when those traits are both evaluatively neutral (in the sense that it’s not especially good or bad to have those traits), and straightforwardly observable.

For example, people tend to know whether they are talkative. It’s more or less okay to be talkative and more or less okay to be quiet, and in any case your degree of talkativeness is pretty much out there for everyone to see. Self-ratings of talkativeness tend to correlate fairly well with peer ratings and objective measures. Creativity, on the other hand, is a much more evaluatively loaded trait—who doesn’t want to think of themselves as creative?—and much less straightforward to assess. In keeping with Vazire’s model, we find poor correlations among self-ratings, peer ratings, and psychologists’ attempts at objective measures of creativity.

The question “am I really, truly a self-important jerk?” is highly evaluatively loaded, so you will be highly motivated to reach a favored answer: “No, of course not!” Being a jerk is also not straightforwardly observable, so you will have plenty of room to reinterpret evidence to suit: “Sure, maybe I was a little grumpy with that cashier, but she deserved it for forgetting to put my double shot in a tall cup.”

Academically intelligent people, by the way, aren’t immune to motivated reasoning. On the contrary, recent research by Dan M. Kahan of Yale University suggests that reflective and educated people might be especially skilled at rationalizing their preexisting beliefs—for example, interpreting complicated evidence about gun control in a manner that fits their political preferences.

I suspect there is a zero correlation between people’s self-opinion about their degree of jerkitude and their true overall degree of jerkitude. Some recalcitrant jerks might recognize that they are so, but others might think themselves quite dandy. Some genuine sweethearts might fully recognize how sweet they are, while others might have far too low an opinion of their own moral character.

There’s another obstacle to jerk self-knowledge, too: We don’t yet have a good understanding of the essence of jerkitude—not yet, at least. There is no official scientific designation that matches the full range of ordinary application of the term “jerk” to the guy who rudely cuts you off in line, the teacher who casually humiliates the students, and the co-worker who turns every staff meeting into a battle.

The scientifically recognized personality categories closest to “jerk” are the “dark triad” of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathic personality. Narcissists regard themselves as more important than the people around them, which jerks also implicitly or explicitly do. And yet narcissism is not quite jerkitude, since it also involves a desire to be the center of attention, a desire that jerks don’t always have. Machiavellian personalities tend to treat people as tools they can exploit for their own ends, which jerks also do. And yet this too is not quite jerkitude, since Machivellianism involves self-conscious cynicism, while jerks can often be ignorant of their self-serving tendencies. People with psychopathic personalities are selfish and callous, as is the jerk, but they also incline toward impulsive risk-taking, while jerks can be calculating and risk-averse.

Another related concept is the concept of the asshole, as explored recently by the philosopher Aaron James of the University of California, Irvine. On James’s theory, assholes are people who allow themselves to enjoy special advantages over others out of an entrenched sense of entitlement. Although this is closely related to jerkitude, again it’s not quite the same thing. One can be a jerk through arrogant and insulting behavior even if one helps oneself to no special advantages.

Given the many roadblocks standing in the way, what is a potential jerk interested in self-evaluation to do?

Find out what to do by continuing here.

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Coming soon: The Jerk Quiz!

Related essay: A Theory of Jerks (Aeon Magazine, Jun 4, 2014).

[image source: Paul Sableman, creative commons]

The Game of Jerk and Sucker (Freeway Version)

Almost no one who is a jerk thinks he's a jerk. So how do you know if you are one? The ordinary devices of introspection won't do the trick. You need to look, without blinkers, at your behavior. To do so, you need a situation where the line between jerk and not-jerk is clear and there are many others in essentially the same situation against whom to compare yourself.

Fortunately (or, rather, unfortunately) the freeways of California provide just such a situation. What I'm talking about, of course, is the guy who speeds by the long line of cars waiting in the congested exit lane and cuts in at the last second.

Some might doubt that this is jerkish behavior. Surely those are the very people who themselves cut in. But is that unorthodox opinion the cause of the aggressive driving or the (rationalizing, self-deceived) effect of it? Introspection, again, will be of no help here.

Consider Kant: Surely the maxim "skip the line to cut in at the last minute" is not universalizable. It's not a maxim that you could simultaneously will that everyone abide by, since their doing so would cause congestion in your own fast-flowing lane, exactly the kind of congestion you are aiming to avoid.

Or take a consequentialist tack: Does your cutting in at the last second maximize happiness or human flourishing? Well, you save time and you may feel good (perhaps even deliciously wicked), but you cost each of the many cars behind you a little time and you annoy those who see you scoot past; you may slow down your own faster-moving lane with your last-minute cut-in; and you increase the risks of an accident. It's hard to see how the calculus could be positive here, unless you have a very good reason for thinking your time is more precious than others'. (Maybe you're running late? Well, couldn't you have hit the road earlier?)

Or consider character examplars: Would Confucius cut in at the last minute? How would Jesus drive?

With this behavioral measure in hand, each of us can reflect on our jerk-sucker ratio. Suppose for every 48 cars that wait in an orderly way (the suckers) there are 2 who cut in (the jerks). If you are among those two, that puts you in the 96th percentile for jerks! On the other hand, if there are 15 cars cutting in and 35 waiting, cutting puts you only in the top 70th percentile. (If the ratio gets too balanced, though, the formula breaks down: 50-50 is just a jam, and 45-55 is probably just choosing one's lane wisely.)

Me, I find myself typically at about the 80th percentile. I'll wait patiently if almost everyone else is doing so -- but if enough people are cutting in, I'll break and run (or plan to do so next time around). But since I really loathe being either jerk or sucker, my preferred plan is to stay off the road!

Actually, at such times I think I would usually will the Kantian maxim. I'd be delighted if both lanes were equally plugged. Gladly, I'd sacrifice the jerk's time savings to avoid the jerk-sucker game entirely! But that still doesn't change the uncomfortable fact that, for the most part, I'd rather be in the 80th percentile for jerk than the 20th for sucker.

Now the question is, how well does this tendency to be self-serving carry across situations...?

The Phenomenology of Being a Jerk

Most jerks, I assume, don't know that they're jerks. This raises, of course, the question of how you can find out if you're a jerk. I'm not especially optimistic on this front. In the past, I've recommended simple measures like the automotive jerk-sucker ratio -- but such simple measures are so obviously flawed and exception-laden that any true jerk will have ample resources for plausible rationalization.

Another angle into this important issue -- yes, I do think it is an important issue! -- is via the phenomenology of being a jerk. I conjecture that there are two main components to the phenomenology:

First: an implicit or explicit sense that you are an "important" person -- in the comparative sense of "important" (of course, there is a non-comparative sense in which everyone is important). What's involved in the explicit sense of feeling important is, to a first approximation, plain enough. The implicit sense is perhaps more crucial to jerkhood, however, and manifests in thoughts like the following: "Why do I have to wait in line at the post office with all the schmoes?" and in often feeling that an injustice has been done when you have been treated the same as others rather than preferentially.

Second: an implicit or explicit sense that you are surrounded by idiots. Look, I know you're smart. But human cognition is in some ways amazingly limited. (If you don't believe this, read up on the Wason selection task.) Thinking of other people as idiots plays into jerkhood in two ways: The devaluing of others' perspectives is partly constitutive of jerkhood. And perhaps less obviously, it provides a handy rationalization of why others aren't participating in your jerkish behavior. Maybe everyone is waiting their turn in line to get off the freeway on a crowded exit ramp and you (the jerk) are the only one to cut in at the last minute, avoiding waiting your turn (and incidentally increasing the risk of an accident and probably slowing down non-exiting traffic). If it occurs to you to wonder why the others aren't doing the same you have a handy explanation in your pocket -- they're idiots! -- which allows you to avoid more uncomfortable potential explanations of the difference between you and them.

Here's a self-diagnostic of jerkhood, then: How often do you think of yourself as important, how often do you expect preferential treatment, how often do you think you are a step ahead of the idiots and schmoes? If this is characteristic of you, I recommend that you try to set aside the rationalizations for a minute and do a frank self-evaluation. I can't say that I myself show up as well by this self-diagnostic as I would have hoped.

How about the phenomenology of being a sweetie -- if we may take that as the opposite of a jerk? Well, here's one important component, I think: Sweeties feel responsible for the well-being of the people around them. These can be strangers who drop a folder full of papers, job applicants who are being interviewed, their own friends and family.

In my effort to move myself a little be more in the right direction along the jerk-sweetie spectrum, I am trying to stir up in myself more of that feeling of responsibility and to remind myself of my fallible smallness.

The Academic Jerk: A Wildlife Guide

This post originally appeared as "The Jerks of Academe" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 31, 2020. The awesome art was created by Lars Leetaru for the Chronicle and is used by permission.]

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This morning you probably didn’t look in the mirror and ask, “Am I a jerk?” And if you did, I wouldn’t believe your answer. Jerks usually don’t know that they are jerks.

Jerks mostly travel in disguise, even from themselves. But the rising tide (or is it just the increasing visibility?) of scandal, grisly politics, bureaucratic obstructionism, and toxic advising in academia reveals the urgent need of a good wildlife guide by which to identify the varieties of academic jerk.

So consider what follows a public service of sorts. I offer it in sad remembrance of the countless careers maimed or slain by the beasts profiled below. I hope you will forgive me if on this occasion I use “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun.

The Big Shot

The Big Shot is the most easily identified of all academic jerks. You can spot him a mile away. His plumage is so grand! (Or so he thinks.) His publications so widely cited! (At least by the right people.) His editorial board memberships so dignified! (Not that anyone else noticed.) You will never fully appreciate the Big Shot’s genius, but if you cite him copiously and always defer to his judgment, he’ll think you have above-average intelligence.

The Creepy Hugger

To those unfamiliar with his ways, the Creepy Hugger appears the opposite of the Big Shot. He will seem kind, modest, and charming, despite his impressive accomplishments. This is his alluring disguise. You will flee to him for comfort and protection after abuse by the other types of academic jerk. The Creepy Hugger with lecherous motivations is one variety, but not the only one, nor the most common. More frequently you’ll encounter the type who takes advantage of his power to extract favors and “friendship” that you would not otherwise give. His arm is around your shoulder while he complains about his colleagues. He invites you for beers that you feel obliged to consume in feigned bonhomie. You meet his family and are expected to be sweet and sociable. Because you are so nice, and because he seems so enamored of you, you proofread his drafts and help organize his office. Soon, he will be distracted by someone better and forget you exist – unless he can gain advantage by presenting you as his protégé.

The Sadistic Bureaucrat

You will recognize the Sadistic Bureaucrat by the little smile he can’t quite suppress as he informs you that your reimbursement application was not completed correctly. Your visa approval process is delayed. The only available time slot for your class is seven in the morning, and your sabbatical request is denied. He is really so sorry. But, he reminds you, the policies are clearly listed in the faculty manual. It would be unfair, don’t you see, to make an exception. Somehow, his friends don’t seem to suffer under the policies in quite the same way. The Sadistic Bureaucrat washes away his moral qualms about granting exceptions to others by relishing his great fairness and rigorous principle when applying the rules to you.

The Embittered Downdragger

You and the Embittered Downdragger agree that the Big Shot is not nearly as brilliant as he imagines – neither, the Downdragger adds, is that other scholar, whose work you rather admire. The Embittered Downdragger is distinctly unimpressed that you finally managed to publish in a so-called “elite” venue. And your great teaching evaluations? They prove only that you cater to student demand for easy A’s. The Embittered Downdragger has only published a few articles. His students complain about him. He serves no important administrative role. This is because he knows that the system is corrupt. He rolls his eyes at the award you just won and the invitation you just received, of which you had, until then, felt rather proud. His “no” vote can be relied on for every policy change, every new initiative, and every tenure case.

This list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive. Jerkitude manifests in wondrous variety and not all the species have yet been cataloged. Hybrids abound – for example, the past-his-prime Big Shot who is becoming an Embittered Downdragger.

If you spot one of these jerks in the wild – at a conference hotel, on the other side of the seminar table, at a campuswide committee meeting – react as if you had spotted a bear. They are dangerous, unpredictable creatures, best avoided if possible. Do not try to cuddle up close, thinking you can befriend them without getting hurt. Do not try to seduce them with treats. Walk as far away as possible. Jerks are best viewed from a distance, with telescopic lens.

If surprised up close by an angry jerk, stand tall, if you can raise yourself to intimidating height. If it’s a grizzly, though, play dead.

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But what if you are the jerk?

It’s generally difficult to recognize and acknowledge one’s vices. No one wants to see themselves as flaky or vain. We try to ignore evidence of such character deficiencies in ourselves, and we find rationalizing excuses. But if we look close enough and long enough we can wincingly recognize such shortcomings.

Self-knowledge of jerkitude is more recalcitrant. Big Shots will not see themselves as Big Shots – at least not that kind. Sadistic Bureaucrats and Embittered Downdraggers will rarely recognize the true shape and extent of their awfulness. We can admit, when pressed, that we are flaky and vain, but we can’t admit, not deep down, that we are the Creepy Huggers students whisper about in the halls.

Jerkitude, though it comes in many varieties, has a central defining feature: culpably failing to appreciate the perspectives of the people around you. The Big Shot fails to appreciate the intellectual merits of his colleagues. The Creepy Hugger fails to appreciate how the power dynamics of “friendliness” are experienced by those he wraps his arms around. The Sadistic Bureaucrat fails to appreciate the merit of most other people’s excuses and the difficulty of negotiating complex, unfamiliar rules. The Embittered Downdragger fails to appreciate the value of accomplishments beyond his own.

Illegitimately devaluing others’ goals and ignoring their opinions – this is the essence of being a jerk. It’s a peculiarly epistemic vice, one that works to prevent its own detection by painting the world in seemingly objective self-flattering colors and by thwarting the jerk’s ability to respectfully hear others’ critical feedback. Jerkitude flourishes in ignorance of itself.

But all hope is not lost. Though I doubt that the most horrible jerks among us will ever change their ways, the best chance to attain a glimmer of self-knowledge is to think phenomenologically – that is, to think about how the world in general looks through your eyes, and then to compare that vision with the world as seen by the jerk. Do you see the world through jerk goggles?

You’re important, and you’re surrounded by idiots! You can’t believe they gave that award to that absolute dolt. Her work isn’t nearly as good as yours. And why are you wasting time with this student? Can’t he see you have a ton of important things you need to get done? That new article should have cited your work here and here and here. Is the author ignorant? Is she intentionally downplaying how much she’s borrowing from you? Ugh, your colleague is making a case for Distinguished Professor, but you’re clearly more deserving. No need to read work by scholars you haven’t heard of. It can’t be good if they aren’t well known…. You’re thinking like a Big Shot.

You’re not like those other professors, formal and standoffish and so full of themselves. You’re an egalitarian. Your students are peers, and, well, you guess you’re kind of cool. It’s kind of big of you to step down the social hierarchy like this, relating so well with your inferiors – whoops, you didn’t mean “inferiors”! It’s fun that you can tease her, call her an “asshole” in a joking way, say her thesis work is totally stupid. She knows you’re just razzing her. It sure is nice of her to help you organize your office. You guess you do kind of deserve that, because – whoops! You mean of course you would do the same for her…. You’re thinking like a Creepy Hugger.

Box A correct. Box B correct. Box C, oh, tsk-tsk … no, no, no. This will need to be redone. You can’t approve it this way. They did it wrong, and the policies aren’t really under your control. Option A: If excuse is from a friend. Ah, you see the problem! Of course, we can get this fixed. The rules serve us, not us the rules. Mistakes happen – we’re human, after all. Option B: If excuse is not from a friend. The rules need to be applied consistently. It’s only fair to the others. Clear rules are what make the institutions work, and it’s important to be even-handed and careful. You’re sorry about all the trouble this is causing – though maybe in your secret heart not so sorry. Did you just now feel a little rush of pleasure at the power you exerted over them? No, of course not! Really it’s too bad they’ll have to return to their home country / not get sabbatical / lose the grant money…. You’re thinking like a Sadistic Bureaucrat.

Wow, you find this description of jerks to be so on target! You’re not like any of them! The whole system is rotten. Peer review is basically a scam. And the students – lazy complainers! None of them really deserve As, but with all the grade inflation you’ll have to give out a few good marks. You give sarcastic congratulations to your friends on their great success in the Game!... You’re thinking like an Embittered Downdragger.

I have drawn these four types as caricatures. We – you and I – know we’re not that awful … right?

But there’s a reason I find it so easy to imagine the inner life of these jerks. It’s my own inner life, sometimes. I catch myself thinking in these ways, and I worry. That sting of worry is the moral self-knowledge I treasure – the seeing that it is so, which makes it less so.

----------------------------------------------------------

For more:

A Theory of Jerks (Aeon Magazine, Jun 4, 2014)

A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures (MIT Press, 2019).

How to Get a Big Head in Academia (blog post, Sep 20, 2010)

Cheeseburger Ethics (Aeon Magazine, Jul 14, 2015)

Perils of the Sweetheart

Tonight in Palm Desert, I'm presenting my "Theory of Jerks (and Sweethearts)" to a general audience. (Come!) In my past work on the topic, jerks have got most of the attention. (Don't they always!) A jerk, in my definition, is someone who gives insufficient weight to (or culpably fails to respect) the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or fools to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers.

The sweetheart is the opposite of the jerk -- someone who very highly values the perspectives of others around him.

You might think that if being a jerk is bad, being a sweetheart is good. And I do think it's better, overall, to be a bit of a sweetheart if you can. But I'd also argue that it's possible to go too far toward the sweetheart side, overvaluing, or giving excessive weight to, the perspectives of others around you.

I see three moral and epistemic perils in being too much of a sweetheart.

First peril: The sweetheart risks being so attuned to others’ goals and interests that he is captured by them, losing track of his own priorities. Consider the person who never says “no” to others – who spends his whole day helping everyone else get their own things done, leaving insufficient time to relax or to satisfy his own long-term goals. The sweetheart might forget that he can also sometimes make his own demands. Sometimes you need to disappoint people. In the extreme, the sweetheart’s complicity in this arrangement becomes in fact a kind of moral failure – a failure of moral duty to a certain person who counts, who ought to be respected, who ought to be cut some slack and given a chance to flourish and discover independent ideals – I’m speaking here, of course, of the duties the sweetheart has to himself.

Second peril: Because the sweetheart has so much respect for the opinions of other people who might disagree with him, he can have trouble achieving sufficient intellectual independence. This is part of the reason that visionary moralists are often not sweethearts. The perfect sweetheart hates disagreeing with others, hates taking controversial stands, prefers the compromise position in which everyone gets to be at least partly right. But everyone is not always partly right. Southerners oppressing black people were not partly right. Physically abusive alcoholic husbands are not partly right. Some people need to be fought against, and the purest sweethearts tend not to have much stomach for the fight. Also, some people, even if not morally wrong, are just factually wrong, and sometimes we need a clear, confident, disagreeable voice to see this.

Third peril: To the extent being a jerk or sweetheart turns on how you react to the people around you, being too much of a sweetheart means risking being too captured by the perspectives of whoever happens to be around you – without, perhaps, enough counterbalancing weight on the interests and perspectives of more distant people. The homeless person right here in front of you might compel you so much that you set wrongly aside other obligations so that you can help her, or you give her money that would be more wisely and effectively given to (say) Oxfam. When you’re with your friends who are liberal you find yourself agreeing with all their liberal positions; when you’re with your friends who are conservative you find yourself agreeing with all their conservative positions. You are blown about by the winds.

If you know the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, the humor and conflict in the show often derives from SpongeBob's excessive sweetness in these three ways.

I’m not sure there’s a perfect Aristotelian golden mean here: an ideal spot on the spectrum from jerk to sweetheart. Maybe there’s one best way to be – partway toward the sweet side perhaps, but not all the way to doormat – but I’m more inclined to think that perfection is not even a conceivable thing, that one can’t be wholly true to oneself without sinning against others, that one can’t wholly satisfy the legitimate demands of others without sinning against oneself; that everyone is thus deficient in some ways.

Furthermore, when we try to correct, often we don’t even know what direction to go in. It’s characteristic of the sweetheart to worry that he has been too harsh or insistent when in fact what he really needs is to be more comfortable standing up for himself; it’s characteristic of the jerk to regret moments of softness and compromise.

(image source)

The Jerk Quiz: New York City Edition

Now that my Jerk Quiz has been picked up by The Sun and The Daily Mail, I've finally hit the big time! I'm definitely listing these as "reprints" on my c.v.

Philosopher James DiGiovanna suggested to me that the existing Jerk Quiz might not be valid in New York City, so I suggested he draw up a NYC version. Here's the result!

New York City Jerk Test

by James DiGiovanna

1. You have a fifteen-minute break from work, a desperate need for a cigarette, and a seven-minute-each-way walk to the bank on a very crowded sidewalk. Do you:
(a) Calmly walk the 14-minute round-trip handling the cigarette cravings by reminding yourself that you only have a scant 7 more hours of work, a 49-minute commute on the crowded and probably non-functional F train, and then a brief walk through throngs of NYU students before you can reach your undersized apartment for a pleasant 4 minutes of smoking.
(b) Curse the existence of each probably mindless drone who stands between you and your goal.
(c) Find a narrow space just off the main thoroughfare and enjoy 5 quick drags meant to burn your entire cigarette down to the filter in under 30 seconds.
(d) Light up a cigarette as you walk, unconsciously assuming that others can dodge the flaming end and/or enjoy the smoking effluvia as they see fit, if indeed they have minds that can see anything at all.

2. You are waiting at the bodega to buy one measly cup of coffee, one of the few pleasures allowed to you in a world where the last tree is dying somewhere in what was probably a forest before Reagan was elected. However, there is a long line, including someone directly in front of you who is preparing to write a check in spite of the fact that this is the 21st century. You accidentally step on this person’s toe, causing him or her to move to the side yelping in pain. Do you:
(a) Apologize profusely.
(b) Offer the standard, “pardon me!” while wondering why check-writers were allowed to reproduce and create check-writing offspring at this late point in history.
(c) Say nothing, holding your precious place in line against the unhygienic swarm of lower lifeforms.
(d) Consider this foe vanquished and proceed to take his or her place as you march relentlessly towards the cashier.

3. You are in hell (midtown near Times Square) where an Eastern Hemisphere tourist unknowingly drops a wallet, and an elderly woman wanders out in front of a runaway hot dog stand, risking severe cholesterol and death. Do you:
(a) Shout to the Foreign Person while rushing to rescue the elderly woman.
(b) Ignore the neocolonialist tourist and his or her justifiable loss of money earned by exploiting the third world and attempt to save the woman because, my God, that could be you and/or your non-gender-specific life partner someday.
(c) Continue on your way because you have things to do.
(d) Yell so that others will see that there is a woman about to be hotdog-carted, assuming this will distract the crowd from the dropped wallet, making it easier for you to take it and run.

4. You have been waiting for the A train for 300 New York Minutes (i.e. five minutes in flyover state time.) Finally, it arrives, far too crowded to accept even a single additional passenger. Do you:
(a) Step out of the way so others can exit, and allow those on the platform in front of you to enter the train, and then, if and only if there is ample room to enter without compressing other persons, do you board the train.
(b) Wait calmly, because when his happens, 9 times out of 10 an empty train is 1 minute behind.
(c) Mindlessly join the throngs of demi-humans desperately hoping to push their way into the car.
(d) Slide along the outside of the car to the spot just adjacent the door, then slip in the narrow space made when a person who is clearly intending to get back in the car stepped off to make way for someone who was disembarking to pass.

5. It is a typical winter day in New York, meaning at the end of each sidewalk is a semi-frozen slush puddle of indeterminate depth. Perhaps it is barely deep enough to wet your boots, perhaps it drains directly into a C.H.U.D. settlement. You see a family, the father carrying a map and wearing a fanny pack, the mother holding a guide which say “Fodors New York för Nordmen,” the blindingly white children staring for the first time at buildings that are not part of a system of social welfare and frost. They absentlly march towards the end of the sidewalk, eyes raised towards New York’s imposing architecture, about to step into what could be their final ice bath. Do you:
(a) Yell at them to stop while you check the depth of the puddle for them.
(b) Block their passage and point to a shallower point of egress.
(c) Watch in amusement as they test the puddle depth for you.
(d) Push them into the puddle and use their frozen bodies as a bridge to freedom.

-----------------------------------------

(I interpret James's quiz as a commentary on how difficult it is, even for characterological non-jerks, to avoid jerk-like behaviors or thoughts in that kind of urban context.)

For more on Jerks see:

A Theory of Jerks

How to Tell If You're A Jerk

The Jerk Quiz

Take this simple quiz to figure out if you're a jerk!

(George Musser and the folks at Nautilus thought it would be fun to have a quiz alongside my essay "How To Tell If You're a Jerk", but we didn't quite pull it off before release of the issue.)

The Jerk Quiz

1. You're waiting in a line at the pharmacy. What are you thinking?
(a) Did I forget anything on my shopping list?
(b) Should I get ibuprofen or acetaminophen? I never can keep them straight.
(c) Oh no, I'm so sorry, I didn’t mean to bump you.
(d) These people are so damned incompetent! Why do I have to waste my time with these fools?

2. At the staff meeting, Peter says that your proposal probably won't work. You think:
(a) Hm, good point but I bet I could fix that.
(b) Oh, Loretta is smiling at Peter again. I guess she agrees with him and not me, darn it. But I still think my proposal is probably better than his.
(c) Shoot, Peter's right. I should have thought of that!
(d) Peter the big flaming ass. He's playing for the raise. And all the other idiots here are just eating it up!

3. You see a thirty-year-old guy walking down the street with steampunk goggles, pink hair, dirty sneakers, and badly applied red lipstick. You think:
(a) Different strokes for different folks!
(b) Hey, is that a new donut shop on the corner?
(c) I wish I were that brave. I bet he knows how to have fun.
(d) Get a job already. And at least learn how to apply the frickin lipstick.

4. At a stop sign, a pedestrian is crossing slowly in front of your car. You think:
(a) Wow, this tune on my radio has a fun little beat!
(b) My boss will have my hide if I'm late again. Why did I hit snooze three times?
(c) She looks like she's seen a few hard knocks. I bet she has a story or two to tell.
(d) Can't this bozo walk any faster? What a lazy slob!

5. The server at the restaurant forgets that you ordered the hamburger with chili. There's the burger on the table before you, with no chili. You think:
(a) Whatever. I'll get the chili next time. Fewer calories anyway.
(b) Shoot, no chili. I really love chili on a burger! Argh, let's get this fixed. I'm hungry!
(c) Wow, how crowded this place is. She looks totally slammed. I'll try catch her to fix the order next time she swings by.
(d) You know, there's a reason that people like her are stuck in loser jobs like this. If I was running this place I'd fire her so fast you'd hear the sonic boom two miles down the street.

How many times did you answer (d)?

0: Sorry, I don't believe you.

1-2: Yeah, fair enough. Same with the rest of us.

3-4: Ouch. Is this really how you see things most of the time? I hope you're just being too hard on yourself.

5: Yes, you are being too hard on yourself. Either that, or please step forward for the true-blue jerk gold medal!

(As my scoring system suggests, this quiz is for entertainment and illustration purposes only. I don't take it seriously as a diagnostic measure!)

A Theory of Jerks

My theory of the jerk is out in Aeon.

From the intro:

Picture the world through the eyes of the jerk. The line of people in the post office is a mass of unimportant fools; it’s a felt injustice that you must wait while they bumble with their requests. The flight attendant is not a potentially interesting person with her own cares and struggles but instead the most available face of a corporation that stupidly insists you shut your phone. Custodians and secretaries are lazy complainers who rightly get the scut work. The person who disagrees with you at the staff meeting is a dunce* to be shot down. Entering a subway is an exercise in nudging past the dumb schmoes.

We need a theory of jerks. We need such a theory because, first, it can help us achieve a calm, clinical understanding when confronting such a creature in the wild. Imagine the nature-documentary voice-over: ‘Here we see the jerk in his natural environment. Notice how he subtly adjusts his dominance display to the Italian restaurant situation…’ And second – well, I don’t want to say what the second reason is quite yet.

[continue]

----------------------------------------------------

* Instead of "dunce" the original piece uses "idiot". In light of Shelley Tremain's remarks to me about the history of that word, I'm wondering whether I should have avoided it. In my mind, it is exactly the sort of word the jerk is prone to use, and how he is prone to think of people, so there's a conflict here between my desire to capture the worldview of the jerk with phenomenological accuracy and my newly heightened sensitivity to the historical associations of that particular word.

[illustration by Paul Blow]

Ethics in the First Person

Bernard Williams begins his classic Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy with a quote from Plato:

It is not a trivial question, Socrates said: what we are talking about is how one should live (Republic, 352d).

Williams highlights the impersonality of Socrates' question:

"How should one live?" -- the generality of one already stakes a claim. The Greek language does not even give us one: the formula is impersonal. The implication is that something relevant or useful can be said to anyone, in general... (1985, p. 4).

The generality of the question, Williams says, is part of what makes the inquiry philosophical (p. 2).

Williams' thought seems to be that philosophy starts impersonally and then works its way back to the personal question as a particular instance. But I'm inclined to think that to begin with the general question is to set off in the wrong direction. Good philosophy is self-critical -- grounded in a sense of one's own capacities for critique and especially one's limits and biases. Before painting the universe in your philosophical colors, know the shortcomings of your palette.

Yes, these are impersonal considerations for starting with personal reflection -- exactly what is needed to persuade someone inclined to start with the impersonal!

A simple conversion of "How should one live?" to "How should I live?" is one way to go. But to the extent you're moved by the thought that it's best to start with self-critical evaluation, a different type of starting place beckons.

For example: Am I a jerk? If yes, I should probably shut up about how others ought to live and work on myself. Being a jerk is not only a moral failing, but -- in my analysis -- also an epistemic one, a failure properly to appreciate the perspectives of others around you. A jerk ethicist not only is likely to be viewed by others as hypocritical or noxiously self-rationalizing but also works, I suggest, with an epistemic disability likely to taint his conclusions.

If I am part-jerk, then my next thought maybe ought to be whether I'm okay with that; and if I'm not okay with that, what might I do about it -- a very different line of thought, and a very different plan for self-adjustment than is likely to arise from impersonal reflection on how one ought to live. Similarly, I might reflect on: "Am I a loving husband?", "Do I engage in lots of self-serving rationalizations?"

You might object: Such first-personal questions carry presuppositions of exactly the sort philosophers should question, e.g., whether being a loving husband is a good thing to aim for. We should back up and consider the more abstract questions first, such as how ought people live in general. I reply: The answers to these more abstract questions also build in presuppositions, though less visibly to me the less light I shine on my own moral and epistemic failings.

Such first-personal moral epistemology is difficult and uncertain work. If I aim at a critical first-person ethics, I must take a hard look in the mirror, and I must think carefully about the relation between what I think I see and what is really there. I must vividly fear that I am not the person I previously hoped and thought I was.

This is a less pleasant task, I find, than the abstract task of figuring out how everyone in general should live, and a different kind of philosophical ambition.

The COVID Jerk [a new piece by me in The Atlantic]

boundaries of responsible behavior are less clear than they once were

We all know the type. First appearing in the spring of 2020, the COVID jerk strutted unmasked through the supermarket, exhaling clouds of risk on worried shoppers and employees, and daring low-paid workers to try to enforce the new policies. Flaunting their disdain for scientific consensus, they stepped close behind you in line, breathing on your shoulder, complaining about maximum-occupancy requirements.

The classic COVID jerk still thrives. But because highly effective vaccines have been available for a long while, and as the Omicron wave subsides, reasonable people will disagree about what now constitutes a jerk move. The boundaries of responsible behavior are less clear than they once were.

I have a theory: Jerks are people who culpably fail to appreciate the intellectual and emotional perspectives of others around them. Let me unpack this a bit.

[continued here, or email me for a copy for personal use only]

Moral Self-Knowledge by Looking at Others' Faces

Our own moral character is largely unknown to us. Lots of jerks think they're just swell. Lots of saints and sweethearts suffer from moral self-doubt. But a formulaic inversion of one's moral self-opinion doesn't work either: Moral pride and moral self-condemnation sometimes fit the facts quite well. I conjecture approximately a zero correlation between people's moral self-opinions and their actual moral character.

Moral self-knowledge is an unruly beast that cannot, I think, be trapped and held still for systematic examination, partly because moral self-examination is itself a moral act, tangled up with the very traits under consideration. The jerk will tend toward a biased self-examination; the sweetheart will be biased in a different way; and the conclusions one habitually reaches, on either side, can reinforce or undercut the very traits self-ascribed. "Oh, I'm such a sweetheart, so much nicer than everyone else around me" is not, in most circumstances, a thought that sits very comfortably on its bearer.

The usual method by which we consider our moral character -- trying an adjective on for size, as it were, and asking, "Is that me? Am I trustworthy? Am I kind? Am I gentle?" -- is, as suggested by both informal observation and psychological research, a method of little probative value. Maybe somewhat better is taking an icy look at objective data about yourself or asking for the frank opinion of someone whose judgment you trust -- but both of those approaches are also seriously flawed.

So here's another approach to add to the stock -- an approach that is also flawed, but which deserves attention because its potential power hasn't yet, I think, been widely enough recognized. Look at the faces of the people around you. Central to our moral character is how we tend to view others nearby. The jerk sees himself as surrounded by fools and losers. The sweetheart vividly appreciates the unique talents and virtues of whomever he's with. The avaricious person sees the people around her as a threat to her resources (time, money, but also possibly space in the subway, position in line, praise from her peers). The person obsessed with social position sees people who vary finely in their relative social standing. Or consider: What do you notice about others' physical appearance? This reveals something morally important about you -- something not directly under your control, a kind of psychological tell.

Or so I think it's reasonable to suppose. I'm open to counterevidence, e.g., by experience sampling beeper methods, combined with some plausible related measures of moral character. But psychological science isn't there yet.

Of course you can game it. You can sit around and work yourself into a blissed-out appreciation of all those wonderful people around you, congratulating yourself on your sage-like moral awesomeness. This is a misfire, especially if there's an implicit (or explicit) comparative dimension to your moral self-assessment as you do this. (If only everyone were as good at me at seeing how wonderful everyone is!) Or you can choose to recall situations, or choose to put yourself in situations, disproportionately suggestive of the type of moral character you'd like to see yourself as having.

But I don't think it's inevitable that we game the method. I find it interestingly revealing (and disappointing) to look at strangers in the store or acquaintances at a party, letting my relatively uncensored assessments of them float up as an indication not of anything about them but rather as an indication of something about me, that I view them that way.

You can also notice things post-hoc: You can catch yourself viewing people in the way characteristic of the jerk, or in the way characteristic of the avaricious person, or of the person focused on status or sexual attractiveness.

It needn't always be negative. Sometimes you can congratulate yourself on being the one person in line who seemed to treat the cashier as a person. Sometimes you can feel good about the fact that you find yourself feeling good about the people around you. But I emphasize the negative for two reasons. First, I suspect that non-depressed people -- perhaps, especially, relatively affluent Western men? -- tend to err toward having too high an opinion of their moral character. Second, there's probably something cognitively or morally unstable, as I've gestured at a couple times above, about using this technique primarily for moral self-congratulation.

[Jeanette McMullin King has reminded me of the poem "The Right Kind of People", which fits nicely with this post.]

Self-Knowledge by Looking at Others

I've published quite a lot on people's poor self-knowledge of their own stream of experience (e.g. this and this), and also a bit on our often poor self-knowledge of our attitudes, traits, and moral character. I've increasingly become convinced that an important but relatively neglected source of self-knowledge derives from one's assessment of the outside world -- especially one's assessment of other people.

I am unaware of empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the sort of thing I have in mind (I welcome suggestions!), but here's the intuitive case.

When I'm feeling grumpy, for example, that grumpiness is almost invisible to me. In fact, to say that grumpiness is a feeling doesn't quite get things right: There's isn't, I suspect, a way that it feels from the inside to be in a grumpy mood. Grumpiness, rather, is a disposition to respond to the world in a certain way; and one can have that disposition while one feels, inside, rather neutral or even happy.

When I come home from work, stepping through the front door, I usually feel (I think) neutral to positive. Then I see my wife Pauline and daughter Kate -- and how I evaluate them reveals whether in fact I came through that door grumpy. Suppose the first thing out of Pauline's mouth when I come through the door is, "Hi, Honey! Where did you leave the keys for the van?" I could see this as an annoying way of being greeted, I could take it neutrally in stride, or I could appreciate how Pauline is still juggling chores even as I come home ready to relax. As I strode through that door, I was already disposed to react one way or another to stimuli that might or might not be interpreted as annoying; but that mood-constituting disposition didn't reveal itself until I actually encountered my family. Casual introspection of my feelings as I approached the front door might not have revealed this disposition to me in any reliable way.

Even after I react grumpily or not, I tend to lack self-knowledge. If I react with annoyance to a small request, my first instinct is to turn the blame outward: It is the request that is annoying. That's just a fact about the world! I either ignore my mood or blame Pauline for it. My annoyed reaction seems to me, in the moment, to be the appropriate response to the objective annoyingness of the situation.

Another example: Generally, on my ten-minute drive into work, I listen to classic rock or alternative rock. Some mornings, every song seems trite and bad, and I cycle through the stations disappointed that there's nothing good to listen to. Other mornings, I'm like "Whoa, this Billy Idol song is such a classic!" Only slowly have I learned that this probably says more about my mood than about the real quality of the songs that are either pleasing or displeasing me. Introspectively, before I turn on the radio and notice this pattern of reactions, there's not much there that I can discover that otherwise clues me into my mood. Maybe I could introspect better and find that mood in there somewhere, but over the years I've become convinced that my song assessment is a better mood thermometer, now that I've learned to think of it that way.

One more example: Elsewhere, I've suggested that probably the best way to discover whether one is a jerk is not by introspective reflection ("hm, how much of a jerk am I?") but rather by noticing whether one regularly sees the world through "jerk goggles". Everywhere you turn, are you surrounded by fools and losers, faceless schmoes, boring nonentities? Are you the only reasonable, competent, and interesting person to be found? If so....

As I was drafting this post yesterday, Pauline interrupted me to ask if I wanted to RSVP to a Christmas music singalong in a few weeks. Ugh! How utterly annoying I felt that interruption to be! And then my daughter's phone, plugged into the computer there, wouldn't stop buzzing with text messages. Grrr. Before those interruptions, I would probably have judged that I was in a middling-to-good mood, enjoying being in the flow of drafting out this post. Of course, as those interruptions happened, I thought of how suitable they were to the topic of this post (and indeed I drafted out this very paragraph in response). Now, a day later, my mood is better, and the whole thing strikes me as such a lovely coincidence!

If I sit too long at my desk at work, my energy level falls. Every couple of hours, I try to get up and stroll around campus a bit. Doing so, I can judge my mood by noticing others' faces. If everyone looks beautiful to me, but in a kind of distant, unapproachable way, I am feeling depressed or blue. Every wart or seeming flaw manifests a beautiful uniqueness that I will never know. (Does this match others' phenomenology of depression? Before having noticed this pattern in my reactions to people, I might not have thought this would be how depression feels.) If I am grumpy, others are annoying obstacles. If I am soaring high, others all look like potential friends.

My mood will change as I walk, my energy rising. By the time I loop back around to the Humanities and Social Sciences building, the crowds of students look different than they did when I first stepped out of my office. It seems like they have changed, but of course I'm the one who has changed.

[image source]

Chatting about Jerks with Myisha Cherry

... on the UnMute podcast, episode #062 released last week!

Topics include:

* the nature of jerkitude and how it differs from assholery
* jerks and social privilege
* the good and bad aspects of moralizing jerks
* seeing the world through jerk goggles
* the difficulty of knowing whether you're a jerk
* the value of public philosophy

Here.

Myisha is a terrific interviewer who brings out the best in her many amazing guests. Check out the whole new season!

Jerks of Academe: A Field Guide

Just out in the Chronicle of Higher Education, with hilarious art depicting the four main types I profile: the Big Shot, the Creepy Hugger, the Sadistic Bureaucrat, and the Embittered Downdragger.

Unfortunately, it's paywalled. I'm trying to get permission to repost it here, but in the meantime please feel free to comment here or email me and I can send you a PDF for personal use.

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Jerks of Academe

This morning you probably didn’t look in the mirror and ask, “Am I a jerk?” And if you did, I wouldn’t believe your answer. Jerks usually don’t know that they are jerks.

Jerks mostly travel in disguise, even from themselves. But the rising tide (or is it just the increasing visibility?) of scandal, grisly politics, bureaucratic obstructionism, and toxic advising in academe reveals the urgent need of a good wildlife guide by which to identify the varieties of academic jerk.

So consider what follows a public service of sorts. I offer it in sad remembrance of the countless careers maimed or slain by the beasts profiled below. I hope you will forgive me if on this occasion I use “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun.

The Big Shot

The Big Shot is the most easily identified of all academic jerks. You can spot him a mile away. His plumage is so grand! (Or so he thinks.) His publications so widely cited! (At least by the right people.) His editorial-board memberships so dignified! (Not that anyone else noticed.) You will never fully appreciate the Big Shot’s genius, but if you cite him copiously and always defer to his judgment, he’ll think you have above-average intelligence.

The Creepy Hugger

To those unfamiliar with his ways, the Creepy Hugger appears the opposite of the Big Shot. He will seem kind, modest, and charming, despite his impressive accomplishments. This is his alluring disguise....

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Moral Mediocrity, Apologizing for Vegetarianism, and Do-Gooder Derogation

Though I'm not a vegetarian, one of my research interests is the moral psychology of vegetarianism. Last weekend, when I was in Princeton giving a talk on robot rights, a vegetarian apologized to me for being vegetarian.

As a meat-eater, I find it's not unusual for vegetarians to apologize to me. Maybe this wouldn't be so notable if their vegetarianism inconvenienced me in any way, but often it does not. In Princeton, we were both in line for a catering spread that had both meat and vegetarian options. I was in no obvious way wronged, harmed, or inconvenienced. So what is going on?

Here's my theory.

Generally speaking, I believe that people aim to be morally mediocre. That is, rather than aiming to be morally good (or not morally bad) by absolute standards, most people aim to be about as morally good as their peers -- not especially better, not especially worse. People might not conceptualize themselves as aiming for mediocrity. Often, they concoct post-hoc rationalizations to justify their choices. But their choices implicitly reveal their moral target. Systematically, people avoid being among the worst of their peers while refusing the pay the costs of being among the best. For example, they don't want to be the one jerk who messes up a clean environment; but they also don't want to be the one sucker who puts in the effort to keep things clean if others aren't also doing so. (See my notes on the game of jerk and sucker.)

Now if people do in fact aim to be about as morally good as their peers, we can expect that under certain conditions they don't want their peers to improve their moral behavior. Under what conditions? Under the conditions that your peers' self-improvement benefits you less than the raising of the moral bar costs you.

Let's say that your friends all become nicer to each other. This isn't so bad. You benefit from being in a circle of nice people. Needing to become a bit nicer yourself might be a reasonable cost to pay for that benefit. 

But if your friends start becoming vegetarians, you accrue the moral costs without the benefits. The moral bar is raised for you, implicitly, at least a little bit; but the benefits go to non-human animals, if they go anywhere. You now either have to think a bit worse of yourself relative to your peers or you have to start changing your behavior. How annoying! No wonder vegetarians are moved to apologize. (To be clear, I'm not saying we should be annoyed by this, just that my theory predicts that we will be annoyed.)

Note that this explanation works especially well for those of us who think it is morally better to avoid eating meat than for those of us who see no moral difference between eating meat and eating vegetarian. If you really see no moral difference (deep down, and not just because of superficial, post-hoc rationalization), then you'll see the morally motivated vegetarian just as morally confused. If they apologize, it would be like someone apologizing to you for acting according to some other mistaken moral principle, such as apologizing for abstinence before marriage. No one needs to apologize to you for that, unless they are harming or inconveniencing you in some way -- for example, because they are dating you and think you'll be disappointed. (Alternatively, they might apologize for the more abstract wrong of seeing you as morally deficient because you follow different principles; but that type of apology looks and feels a little different, I think.)

If this moral mediocrity explanation of vegetarian apology works, it ought to generalize to other cases where friends follow higher moral standards that don't benefit you. Some possible examples: In a circle of high school students who habitually cheat on tests, a friend might apologize for being unwilling to cheat. In a group of people who feel somewhat guilty about taking a short cut through manicured grass, one might decide they want to take the long way, apologizing to the group for the extra time, feeling more guilt than would accompany an ethically neutral reason for delay. On this model, the felt need for the apology would vary with a few predictable parameters: greater need the closer one is to being a peer whose behavior might be compared, greater need the more vivid and compelling the comparison (for example if you are side by side), lesser need the more the moral principle can be seen as idiosyncratic and inapplicable to the other (and thus some apologies of this sort suggest that the principle is idiosyncratic).

Do-gooder derogation is the tendency for people to think badly of people who follow more demanding moral standards. The moral mediocrity hypothesis is one possible explanation for this tendency, predicting among other things that derogation will be greater when the do-gooder is a peer and, perhaps unintuitively, that the derogation will be greater when the moral standard is compelling enough to the derogator that they already feel a little bit bad about not adhering to it.

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Related:

The Collusion Toward Moral Mediocrity (Sep 1, 2022)

Aiming for Moral Mediocrity (Res Philosophica, 2019)

Image: Dall-E 2 "oil painting of a woman apologizing to an eggplant"

A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures

... released today. *Confetti!*

Available from:

MIT Press, Amazon, B&N, or (I hope!) your local independent bookseller.

Some initial reviews and discussions.

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Preface

I enjoy writing short philosophical reflections for broad audiences. Evidently, I enjoy this immensely: Since 2006, I’ve written more than a thousand such pieces, published mostly on my blog The Splintered Mind, but also in the Los Angeles Times, Aeon, and elsewhere. This book contains fifty- eight of my favorites, revised and updated.

The topics range widely -- from moral psychology and the ethics of the game of dreidel to multiverse theory, speculative philosophy of consciousness, and the apparent foolishness of Immanuel Kant. There is no unifying thesis.

Maybe, however, there is a unifying theme. The human intellect has a ragged edge, where it begins to turn against itself, casting doubt on itself or finding itself lost among seemingly improbable conclusions. We can reach this ragged edge quickly. Sometimes, all it takes to remind us of our limits is an eight-hundred-word blog post. Playing at this ragged edge, where I no longer know quite what to think or how to think about it, is my idea of fun.

Given the human propensity for rationalization and self-deception, when I disapprove of others, how do I know that I'm not the one who is being a jerk? Given that all our intuitive, philosophical, and scientific knowledge of the mind has been built on a narrow range of cases, how much confidence can we have in our conclusions about the strange new possibilities that are likely to open up in the near future of artificial intelligence? Speculative cosmology at once poses the (literally) biggest questions that we can ask about the universe and reveals possibilities that threaten to undermine our ability to answer those same questions. The history of philosophy is humbling when we see how badly wrong previous thinkers have been, despite their intellectual skills and confidence.

Not all of my posts fit this theme. It's also fun to use the once-forbidden word "fuck" over and over again in a chapter about profanity. And I wanted to share some reminiscences about how my father saw the world -- especially since in some ways I prefer his optimistic and proactive vision to my own less hopeful skepticism. Other of my blog posts I just liked or wanted to share for other reasons. A few are short fictions.

It would be an unusual reader who enjoyed every chapter. I hope you'll skip anything you find boring. The chapters are all freestanding. Please don't just start reading on page 1 and then try to slog along through everything sequentially out of some misplaced sense of duty! Trust your sense of fun (chapter 47). Read only the chapters that appeal to you, in any order you like.

Riverside, California, Earth (I hope)
October 25, 2018