Social predators, basically people who are looking to victimize you in any way that doesn't necessarily involve taking any of your material things.
They are predators, people with low self-esteem are the easiest prey. They feed off those people to increase their own self-esteem and confidence by assuring themselves that they are better than the meek when they successfully show dominance over those people without any significant resistance.
Social vampire might be a better term, they are essentially keeping that type of person down by taking any self-esteem or confidence from them as it starts to grow, thus making their own self-confidence grow. Alice was a social predator in the OP scenario, she then felt guilty and decided that it was a negative trait, so she successfully worked through it to stop being a predator, and essentially spread that self-confidence to others by reassuring and being friendly to them. In military terms, she just became a "force multiplier".
^
You have to know lots about a person to start to get in their head and figure those things out, I'm good, but I can't do strangers. :P
Why do you think they start from your childhood and work their way up? It's not just because most psychological issues form from childhood, it's because they need to gather the most information possible in order to mentally build a profile of that person and begin to think like and understand the subject. Then you use a few benign "control" questions about certain situations where you predict what you think they would have done, and if they confirm it, you know that you are starting to get into their frame of mind.
It's essentially like building a house, you start with the childhood as a foundation, work your way up through to the present to build the walls, discuss their feelings about their present and future aspirations to build the roof. Once you've built that "house", you learn to live in it(by using all that knowledge to mentally build their frame of mind, or to learn to think like the subject or from their perspective.) Once you're living in the house, you use your own knowledge techniques to bring all the clutter out into the open and make the subject aware of it and why it's there, and then you help them clean it up. When rubbage in the house has been thrown out or cleaned up and the house is on it's way to being neat and orderly compared to what it was, you've succeeded in your mission.
edited 16th Jan '11 2:59:00 PM by Barkey
He's just described me pretty well with his own self-assessment. And a number of people I work with.
I wonder of there's a propensity for individuals like that to gravitate towards the armed forces?
edited 16th Jan '11 2:54:00 PM by casoid
Read up guys, I edited in lots more.
I think the armed forces connection is because it's methodical, strategic, and devoid of emotion. It's a sort of scientific and mechanical form of empathy.
The best analogy I can make is that it's like clearing a building occupied by the enemy.. You go in and systematically clear it room by room.. Sometimes you start at the top floor and work your way down, so the enemy gets pushed out of the building and into your killzone outside, or you start from the ground floor and work your way up so the enemy has no way to flee, either way you systematically clean the entire thing up.
edited 16th Jan '11 3:02:09 PM by Barkey
"Bob used to be kind of weak and whiny, and was basically pushed around and mocked by everybody. He's since toughened up and is a much more confident, independent person. It's basically impossible to offend Bob, and he's really in control of his life. He's also developed a disdain for people who are easily offended and people who can't stand up for themselves" - Bobby G
Then he'd be a hypocrite, because he too used to be that way.
edited 16th Jan '11 3:34:26 PM by neoYTPism
Part of it might be the way the stories were presented. Bob had a problem that was negatively affecting his life so he fixed it. Alice had a personality that was negatively affecting other people, but not necessarily her own life (plenty of assholes are successful in life), and she fixed it because she recognized it as a trait she did not wish to possess and thus corrected itself. It takes a lot more introspection and work to say "I'm not a good person, am I?" on your own than it does to say "I get beat up every week, how can I fix it?"
If Alice's story included, say, a string of bad breakups due to her assholishness, leading her to change so she could achieve something in life, I'd be less impressed. Instead "she decided she didn't want to be like that anymore"
Also New Bob is totally an asshole.
edited 16th Jan '11 3:40:47 PM by Yamikuronue
BTW, I'm a chick.New Bob is not an asshole, disdain does not equal being an asshole, at least not in what I imagine as disdain.
For me, disdain is a negative bias. I won't go out of my way to mess with people I disdain, I just don't want to be around them or really socialize with them. I won't be a dick to them unless they do so first, however.
I feel lots of disdain for people I perceive to be gang related or gang members. I have a negative bias for them, I don't particularly want to interact with them, and will actively avoid doing so. I don't like them.
I feel disdain for people who are meek and wimpy to an outstanding degree, I look down on them, though I don't pick on them either. I don't particularly want to talk to them because I don't respect people who don't respect themselves. But as I said, I won't screw with them. That's disdain to me, it can be looked at as hypocritical or even unreasonable, but all I can say is I'm being honest about how I feel and not attempting to justify it. That's something I look at as a negative trait as well.
To me, your actions dictate being an asshole. What I listed above could more be referred to as a passive aggressive dislike, not actually being an asshole.
@Josef:
I'm pretty sure that would be illegal, but if somebody wanted to talk to someone with a bit of a psych background and I had the free time, I could just be PM'd. It's a much harder process in just a text based medium though, way harder to tell when someone is hiding something when they have time to gather and structure how they convey their thoughts. That's the biggest impediment to a psychiatric analysis, the subject not being completely honest, although knowing they aren't being honest is also useful as it helps build your profile of the subject in question, as being dishonest or hiding a particular subject is a trait.
edited 16th Jan '11 4:12:08 PM by Barkey
Some interesting thoughts here. If I may, I'd like to draw attention to the fact that I didn't actually write up detailed descriptions of Alice and Bob; they're barely even flat characters. I didn't actually say that Alice's change of heart was out of a desire to be a better person, or that Bob goes out of his way to intimidate others, for instance.
I disagree. He used to be that way, but he changed because he didn't want to be that way.
Let's say that Alice has developed a dislike of jerkasses who antagonise other people for their own amusement. She used to be like this herself, but had a Heel Realization moment and turned over a new leaf. Is she a hypocrite?
Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The StaffI'd tend to like Bob more - simply because I have a thing for people who stand their ground, as long as they can reasonably defend why they stand there. But for me, the more interesting and decisive factor would be how their transformation happened. As I see it, there are three possibilities:
1. Epiphany. Both woke up one day and thought 'today I'm changed, a different man, so to speak'.
2. Learning. Over time, both gradually changed because they noticed that different behaviour awarded them with more of what they desired. Basically, how children learn social interaction.
3. Adapting. As above, with the difference that it was a more or less conscious choice to try out a new role in public because they thought it would be more rewarding.
To borrow the house metaphor, all three are about changing the walls and the roof. Type 1 would be waking up and thinking, 'the walls up to that point are made from wood, but from now on they'll be made of stone'. Type 2 would be 'hey, one day I'd like to have a nice, shingled red roof, I think I need to reinforce the walls and check if the foundation will hold', and type 3 would be painting the wooden walls from the outside, so they look like stone from a distance. Both type 1 and type 3 might be the best way towards the more interesting personality disorders. I'd respect both of them for type 2, simply because I admire constantly challenging, evaluating and testing your knowledge, believes and ideals.
I'd would be nice to know how old they are. Barkey might correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I remember, the current thinking in modern psychology and psychiatry is that personalities are hardened at a certain age and seldom change fundamentally after that.
Cheers, kurushio
edited 17th Jan '11 3:22:16 AM by kurushio
(Good gravy, I sound like a fence-sitter.)
This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...Well. I have a bit of a problem with people— especially guys— who have a problem with the easily-offended. My entire freaking family is like that, aside from my mum. All the men of this house (besides me, as far as I know) are big, strong, proud, and don't want to show any signs of weakness.
To go from being weak and bullied to strong, proud, and disliking when someone happens to be offended by a comment you make? That's not hard. That's just a common process of life. I almost went down that path, myself. It's much more difficult to NOT go down it, I've found. After all, any day now, you could be being bullied, being harassed and offended, then you could just "snap" and join them. Sure, it's not easy to go through, but it's certainly not difficult.
Alice impresses me greatly. To go from being a jerk to being nice? That takes perseverance. You'd have to try to deliberately not be like a jerk, which, in this case, is how you're terribly USED to acting. Though then again, I'm a female supremacist, so right from the start, I was rooting for Alice, but.. after giving it some thought, I would have come to this conclusion, all the same.
have not forgottenI'm much more impressed by Alice. If you suffer directly from your character flaw, as Bob does, it's easier to admit it's a flaw. And Bob's change was essentially selfish - only he really gains from it. (Now, if Bob was a parent who realized his pushoverness deprived his children of a Papa Wolf parent, then I'd be more impressed.) Alice, on the other, could easily have been gaining rather than suffering from her character flaw, and even if she was suffering, people like that seem less inclined to be introspective than doormats are. Alice examined her moral code, realized she was not living up to it, and decided to find a new way. Whereas Bob seems to have just switched sides. Alice also impresses me because I've been hurt by many pre-reform Alices, and always wished they'd change. (Actually, that reminds me of this one reformed pedophile I heard about. He impressed me quite a lot.)
I've never been an outright jerk, but I have had moments where I realized I did something that hurt someone else and was unnecessary. (For example, one time I was working with an autistic girl and we were supposed to go swimming. On other days she'd swam willingly, but this time she refused, and I think I pushed her way too hard to enter the pool. It turned out she didn't like that the water tasted salty, because once after swimming in a saltwater spring, she'd barfed.) It's a very scary admission to realize you've hurt, or even almost hurt, someone else. Whereas when I've realized I could protect myself from harm by changing my behavior, that wasn't scary at all - it was a relief. Bob, most of his suffering occurred pre-change, and the change probably didn't hurt much. Whereas Alice must have gone through a lot of shame and guilt, and it takes a lot of bravery to willingly dive into that rather than running from it.
If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.I guess we could compare the answers here to the responses to other threads about personal philosophical beliefs/religious views/sex/gender/sexuality/politics, etc. and see if there was any correlation.
Some people might find him less annoying now that he's less needy and more self-confident, though.
Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The StaffBob's transformation is not bad and I don't think he's an asshole, but I have to say I am both more impressed by Alice and like her more.
Why? Bob is doing the mental equivalent of weight-lifting: training his psyche to be more resilient. It's not an easy thing to do, but anyone who feels weak could get up and do it.
On the other hand, Alice is doing the equivalent of punching a hole in the wall before she starts weightlifting. The hard part of HER process is realizing that she ought to make a transformation at all, which means she can't train for it. She has to do it all at once, all by herself, which is much more impressive to me.
Okay not really, but I skimmed the posts after my first one.
I dunno why people are saying Alice is more impressive because she realized she had a flaw and changed it. I've gone from being really selfish and narrow-minded to (relatively) nice before, it's not hard.
I'd say Bob realizing he needed to change and then actually making himself change probably took more effort & intellectual finagling (depending on his age). His change likely required him to shift his whole worldview. Alice's may not necessarily have.
Hmm. Thinking it through I might like Alice more, but I find Bob much more admirable. Like mellon said it may have had to involve a massive overhaul of his entire world view and such a change is incredibly difficult. I'm going through such a thing myself so that may be a big part of why I find him admirable. Such a person represents what I want to become closer to being.
edited 21st Jan '11 3:25:45 PM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah-THREAD HOP-
I would probably like and respect Alice and Bob pretty much equally, though I might prefer Alice a bit more simply by virtue of their kindness. I can't really imagine how one would measure "impressiveness" though.
Personally, I'm more like Bob than Alice, though I've always been more along the lines of post-transformation Bob than pre-transformation.
Yet, as much as I disdain those who are easily upset/angered/offended, I also understand that almost everyone is like this, and that I'm just pretty luck that I wound up aligned like this. Thus, in practice I behave towards others like Alice; but am immune to offense like Bob.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! ~ GOD

Social what now?