Because the environmental crisis is so grave, and so many people either deny that the crisis exists or drag their feet in addressing the situation, some environmental activists have felt compelled to raise their voices louder and louder (while still maintaining a non-violent approach). In response, a trend may now be emerging in the field of psychology to label environmental activists as “aberrant”. This is, however, nothing new, as the field of psychology has been used in the past to label and marginalize those felt to be a threat to dominant culture values.
In the 1960s two psychologists stood out in their critiques of how psychology overwhelmingly reflected social norms and used claims of science and medicine to label people who violated these norms as “mentally ill”. These psychologists were Thomas Szasz, who wrote The Myth of Mental Illness and R.D. Laing, who wrote The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness.
According to these books, basically, many psychologists observe things that people do which conflict with their own dominant culture values. They consider this behavior to be “wrong” and the result of a psychological “illness”. They are often thorough at diagnosing the “illness” but not quite adept at curing it (because it does not exist as an illness). Yet, the diagnosis itself can lead to social stigma and has a de facto effect of socially isolating the norm-violator. To Szasz and Laing, psychology could be used, and was used, as a form of social control. Here is the perfect example.
As psychologists in the past were overwhelmingly White, male, heterosexual and middle class, they served as the protectors of American status quo values. For example, homosexuality apparently used to bother them a lot. So, in the 1950s and 1960s many therapists offered “conversion therapy” and homosexuality was labeled as a mental illness from 1952 until 1987 by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. During the period of time that gay folks began openly fighting for their human rights, the APA classified them as aberrant. Gay folks stepped forward and the psychology guys were right there as an obstacle.
Environmental activists are stepping forward, the numbers are growing, they are becoming more forceful and psychologists are going to be right there to try and knock them down? Again, Szasz and Laing argued that psychological “illnesses” were determined solely by social standards, not medical standards. In reality, they were not, however, illnesses, they were transgressions of norms. After psychologists identified a serious transgression of a norm, then they went hunting for symptoms and causes of this “illness”. Interestingly, they rarely found cures (thank goodness), but they settled for social stigmatization.
As in any hypocritical situation, things only go so far. They did not do this in regard to the psychology of criminology, because if people committed crimes due to mental illness, it would be ridiculous to punish them and we would have to abandon all of our wonderfully lucrative prisons for mental hospitals or, better yet, preventive treatment through economic and social reform. No “criminal” would be responsible for his/her actions. So, now-a-days you get people with schizophrenia or brain lesions who are found guilty of committing crimes as if they chose to do what they did. Psychologists generally have remained passive on this issue.
So now let us jump forward to the ‘dark triad’ theory of what really, deep-down inside, might motivate people to care about, and to take action to preserve, the environment. Little did we know that those of us who want our planet to live may have sinister motives we are not even aware of.
A paper will soon be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences titled “The Dark Side of Environmental Activism”. The author is from an Institute of Psychology at a German university. The methodology section was not available to me in the news release so I am a little hampered in my assessment of the paper. But one of the things that was clearly and forcefully articulated by the mainstream press was a title like this: “Dark personality traits linked to engagement in environmental activism.”
One of the reasons I am addressing this paper is that it led to a news feed which could have a negative political impact on a positive, non-violent movement. That’s nothing new either. This dark triad theory (myth) is being picked up by news organizations possibly as a way to question the motives of folks who want to do something good about the welfare of the environment. The narrative is that it has been determined by a psychologist that environmental activism can be the result of nefarious individuals with various “dark” and hidden motives. It is your basic “Red Scare” tactic camouflaged as psychology.
When I studied psychology as an undergraduate, I was told by experimental psychologists, who regularly used the scientific method, that this type of “old-fashioned” psychology was on the way out. I was told psychopharmacology was the future and that folks who were suffering pain due to psychological conditions would not be judged as aberrant, but they would be given effective treatment and medication to relieve their suffering. Judgment and stigmatization were going to be a thing of the past, healing pain was the future. To learn that the old-fashioned stuff is alive and strong and can be used by conservatives to try to undermine a necessary social movement triggered my response.
This link provides the access I had to the article in question: The dark side of environmental activism – ScienceDirect The author states that he is compelled to present a study like this because “…the potential ‘dark side’ of environmental activists’ personality has been neglected.” Well, stuff that does not exist is, I would argue, often neglected. The author goes by the supposition that a “dark side” exists without offering any empirical proof. Where is the hard science? Where is anything other than one’s own subjective value judgment? Can a psychologist see clearly into a person’s head or heart and spot this alleged malevolence? No, it is the psychologist pretending he can see inside a person’s head and heart and telling you whether this person is good or bad, in his/her own quite limited opinion.
This “dark side” is pure assumption, pure value judgment, but that might be enough for some psychologists, given their tradition of making stuff up to explain what they do not like about people who do not live the way they do. The author continues, “The goal of this study, therefore, was to examine associations between environmental activism and two sets of aberrant personality constructs – the dark triad and left-wing authoritarianism.” Both are bogeymen.
The dark triad is alleged to be a combination of three character traits: Machiavellianism (scheming to get power), narcissism (self-absorption and feelings of importance), and psychopathy (anti-social, egocentric behavior).
The author concludes that, yes, there’s Machiavellianism in the environmental movement as people have to be organized and opinions and attitudes must be challenged and changed. Until I read this paper, I had no idea that was a bad thing. “Similarly, there should be a positive association between narcissism and environmental activism, particularly due to narcissists’ tendencies regarding moral superiority and authority (i.e., influencing other people to prioritize the environment).” It seems to be his opinion (I don’t see any hard science anywhere around here) that environmental activists like to virtue signal, gain status and dominate each other.
Frankly, if you believe that, or want to believe that, that is just fine with me. If you want to get up on a soapbox in Hyde Park in London and shout this out to the masses, that’s fine too. I am not certain it is, however, either socially constructive or science.
Another paper is quoted in this paper to assert that activists need to “get their thrills”. Even another paper is mentioned which asserts that folks who are anti-sexual assault activists are, you guessed it, narcissists. Furthermore, if you believe in corporate responsibility and/or buy organic food, they may have to put you on their psychological watch-list too. Frankly, all of this is better served on a soapbox at Speakers’ Corner than anywhere else.
This is extremely troubling. I really thought this type of pseudo-science was on its way out. But then again, I never thought we would see the rise of the extreme right-wing we have experienced since 2016.
So, psychologists can create a context where virtually any good deed you might want to do can come along with an accusation of dark triadism. e.g. “Why do you volunteer at the homeless shelter? Oh, human suffering bothers you? No, you are a virtue signaler who wants to dominate people, but only after you engage in nefarious Machiavellian schemes to promote yourself at the shelter. You want power and want to feel important! Stop doing good things and be a diligent consumer of goods and entertainment which will make you obese and satisfied. That’s the type of world my type of psychology is shooting for!”
Let me just grab a few names here. Harriet Tubman, Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Norman Borlaug (agronomist who developed a type of grain which has saved millions from starvation), Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, my sweet grandmother Lilian who never got angry at me in her life…So some psychologists would have the audacity to state that these were virtue signalers who wanted to dominate others? This is what we are heading toward with this kind of pseudo-science psychology.
We are heading toward a “dark” psychology here, based on biases and not science, where people with high-sounding academic credentials create a false belief that NOBODY ever does anything good for the right reason. If you do something good, there is something wrong with you. This is where this type of psychology leads us and each of us can tell from our own experience of being kind, having people being kind to us and doing good things in the world for all the right reasons, that there is usually ZERO correlation between good intentions and “dark triadism”. Some psychologists seem to be seeing ghosts and specters and demons instead of doing science.
All of this amounts to a facile ad hominem argument. It is an attempt to discredit an approach to social wrongs and a methodology to address problems that threaten all of us. It seems impossible to verify these theories empirically and they may be projections of dread and dislike toward attitudes or people that make certain researchers uncomfortable. The news reports clearly made it seem as if the environmental movement is permeated by narcissists, but most intelligent people in the world, I would wager, acknowledge the need for environmental change and support actions to increase awareness of this issue.
There may be bad actors in good movements. I doubt they are as prevalent as it sounds when you splash the statement out there that “Dark personality traits are linked to the environmental movement.” This is like some demagogue yelling, “Communists pervade the State Department!” Very simply, it is irresponsible and counter-productive to a meaningful social dialogue on saving the environment or the methodology used to awaken people to the seriousness of this issue.
The author of the study claims his findings can be used in recruiting people for the environmental movement. I guess he meant “weeding people out”. No, no thank you. I do not think the environmental movement or any positive social movement will accept this “recruitment strategy”. In a world where we need more and more positive social actors, this type of study clearly contributes nothing of constructive value.
For reference:
When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder | Psychology Today
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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