#rob henderson

By: Rob Henderson

Published: Apr 22, 2026

Many people now believe that words can cause lasting harm.

This belief has grown strong enough for some to justify violence. A recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that more than 40% of Gen Z respondents said it can be acceptable to use physical violence to prevent someone from giving a speech.

A newly published paper led by Samuel Pratt at UCLA seeks to measure this belief directly. The researchers built what they call the “Words Can Harm Scale,” a survey asking people how much they agree with statements like, “I could be left emotionally scarred by something I read.”

The first finding is that this belief is stable. People who score high on the scale tend to score high again two weeks later. Some people simply see words as more dangerous than others do, and this appears to be a fixed trait.

Who holds this view? The pattern won’t surprise many readers. As the researcher put it, “People higher in the belief that words can harm tended to be younger, female, non-White, and politically liberal.” They “rated themselves as higher in intellectual humility, empathy, moral grandstanding, and the belief in the importance of silencing others.”

People who believe words can harm report stronger concern for others and a greater desire to protect the vulnerable. At the same time, they exhibit lower emotional stability and a greater tendency to see themselves as victims in everyday conflicts. Moreover, they report higher levels of anxiety and depression.

In other words, people who view themselves as highly compassionate also tend to be more volatile and psychologically fragile. This combination has real effects on society. The researchers find strong links between believing that words can harm and supporting policies that limit speech.

Importantly, the belief that words can harm predicts support for censorship better than straightforward measures of political ideology.

Why? The answer lies in how people think about harm. When something is seen as harmful, it becomes a moral issue. We don’t simply dislike it. We want to stop it. If words are seen as a form of injury, then restricting speech feels like protection as opposed to censorship. Of course, we should be careful here. The study doesn’t prove cause and effect. There are at least three ways to interpret the findings.

The first is that experience shapes belief. People who have faced harsh or abusive speech may come to see words as dangerous. This aligns with the finding that the groups more likely to believe words can harm also report more exposure to hostile language.

The second is that belief shapes experience. If you hold the belief that words can harm you, you may react more strongly to them. You may feel more stress and pull back from more uncomfortable situations. Over time, that could make you less resilient, thus explaining the link between fragility and the belief that words can harm.

The third interpretation is that a deeper trait drives both of the aforementioned tendencies at once: People see words as more dangerous and feel more stressed and less resilient in their everyday lives.

What should we take from all this? One lesson is that the debate over speech is, at its core, not merely about politics. It’s also about psychology. Indeed, a 2025 report from the Manhattan Institute found that mental health appears to influence political ideology more than political ideology influences mental health, with increases in psychological distress predicting a subsequent shift toward political liberalism.

Another lesson is that good motives can have mixed effects. Concern for others is admirable. But when it leads to a broad view of harm, it can justify extreme limits on speech, thereby shielding people from the ordinary stress that arises from social interactions. The same outlook that drives empathy may also erode resilience.

There is a certain irony in the finding that the most empathic people support the least tolerant policies. Compassion, expressed through a broad and ever- expanding conception of harm, becomes a mechanism for control. The path forward requires something other than empathy: the willingness to let others be offended.

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Abstract

As artificial intelligence advances, some are beginning to welcome a future without work. But giving everyone a universal basic income won’t reveal most people’s inner Mozarts. It will make them profoundly unhappy.

In his 2020 book “Suicide: The Social Consequences of Self-Destruction,” the sociologist Jason Manning points out that those who lose their jobs are more likely to kill themselves compared with those who had not lost their jobs. This effect was particularly strong for men. If losing a job can do that, we should think carefully about what happens when an entire society is organized around not having one.Iscriviti

People say they want comfort but feel better when tasked with challenges that match their skills. Free time sounds appealing, but it has no built-in structure. You have to shape it yourself, and most people let time pass them by rather than use it to cultivate their skills or interests.

This helps explain a strange pattern. Between 1965 and 1995, the typical adult gained about six hours of leisure each week due to technological advances, adding up to roughly 300 hours a year. People could have used that time to learn new skills or build meaningful things. Instead, most of it went to watching more television. Today when we are unexpectedly rewarded with free time, most of it goes to scrolling.

A small share of people, unshackled from the burden of work, use their free time to create, build and explore. But for most, that isn’t what happens. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described what he called “the paradox of work.” It gives us satisfaction and a sense of self-worth. Yet when asked, we generally say we want to work less and have more leisure time.

Sigmund Freud had a simple answer to the question of happiness: “Work and love.” Find meaning in what you do and in the people around you, and you are already close to a good life. Happiness comes from earning your way, supporting yourself and taking care of others. Work isn’t a barrier to a meaningful life. It is part of what makes it possible. A society that removes the need to work risks removing one of the main sources of meaning in life.

By: Rob Henderson

Published: Aug 27, 2020

A new study led by Ekin Ok at the University of British Columbia has found people who signal virtue and victimhood are more likely to have dark triad personality traits.

The dark triad comprises narcissism (entitled self-importance), Machiavellianism (strategic exploitation and duplicity) and psychopathy (callousness and cynicism). People with dark triad traits can be seductive.

A study led by psychologists at the University of Durham found that women rated the same man as more attractive when he had dark triad traits. The dark triad man was about one standard deviation more attractive than an ordinary man.

In psychologist Justin Lehmiller’s book Tell Me What You Want, he reveals the most fantasized-about superhero among women is Batman. In contrast, gay men preferred Superman and Captain America. One possible reason that women like Batman is because he would score higher on dark triad traits compared with other superheroes.

Another study by researchers Carrie Haslam and V. Tamara Montrose found that although narcissistic males do not make good partners, women aged 18 to 28 desire them more than other men. The researchers asked women about their dating experience and desire for marriage. They wanted to see whether these factors influenced their attraction to narcissistic men.

They found that young women with more dating experience and a greater desire for marriage were more attracted to narcissistic men. They write, “Despite future long-term mating desires which are unlikely to be achieved with a narcissistic male and possession of substantial mate sampling experience, females view the narcissistic male as a suitable partner.”

Dark triad traits appear to be advantageous in some contexts.

In their recently published paper, Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities, the authors suggest that Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy might be beneficial for obtaining resources.

In their introduction, they acknowledge that being viewed as a victim can lead to a loss of esteem and respect. But, they continue, in modern Western societies being a victim doesn’t always lead to undesirable outcomes. Sometimes, being a victim can increase one’s social status. And justify one’s claim to material resources.

They argue that “contemporary Western democracies have become particularly hospitable environments for victim signalers to execute a strategy of nonreciprocal resource extraction.”

One reason: Strong egalitarian values lead many in the West to believe that any differences in outcomes are illegitimate.

Another is that one of our key values is the alleviation of human suffering. Saying that you don’t have as much as others and that you are suffering for it, can be a shrewd way to obtain material resources.

The researchers examine victim signaling, which they define as “a public and intentional expression of one’s disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations.” They also examine virtue signaling, defined as “symbolic demonstrations that can lead observers to make favorable inferences about the signaler’s moral character.”

They argue that signaling both victimhood and virtue would maximize one’s ability to extract resources. People feel the most sympathy for a victim who is also a good person.

The researchers developed a Victim Signaling Scale, ranging from 1 = not at all to 5 = always. It asks how often people engage in certain activities. These include: “Disclosed that I don’t feel accepted in society because of my identity.” And “Expressed how people like me are underrepresented in the media and leadership.”

They found that Victim Signaling scores highly correlated with dark triad scores (r = .35). This association held after controlling for gender, ethnicity, income, and other factors that might make people vulnerable to mistreatment.

Participants also completed a questionnaire that measured Virtue Signaling. They rated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with statements about moral traits like being fair, compassionate, and honest. A sample statement is “I often buy products that communicate the fact that I have these characteristics.”

They also found that Virtue Signaling was significantly correlated with dark triad scores (r = .18).

They replicated this association in a follow-up study. This time they used a different, more robust, dark triad scale. They then found a stronger correlation between the dark triad traits and victim signaling (r = .52).

The researchers also found that victim signaling negatively correlated (r = -.38) with Honesty-Humility. This is a personality measure of sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty. This suggests that victim signalers may be greedier and less honest than those who do not signal victimhood.

Beyond measuring responses to questionnaires, they also had participants play a game. Basically, it was a coin flip game in which participants could win money if they won.

Researchers rigged the game so that participants could easily cheat. Participants could claim they won even if they didn’t, and thus obtain more money.

Victim signalers were more likely to cheat in this game. The researchers again found that these results held after controlling for ethnicity, gender, income, and other factors.

Regardless of personal characteristics, those who scored higher on dark triad traits were more likely to be victim signalers. And may be more likely to deceive others for material gain.

The researchers then ran a study testing whether people who score highly on victim signaling were more likely to exaggerate reports of mistreatment from a colleague to gain an advantage over them.

Participants were told to imagine they worked with another intern. And that they were competing to land a job. Participants were told, “You keep noticing little things about the way the intern talks to you. You get the feeling the other intern may have no respect for your suggestions at all. To your face, the intern is friendly, but something feels off to you.”

Then participants engaged in the feedback performance of the intern. Then they completed the Victim Signaling scale.

Victim signalers were more likely to exaggerate the negative qualities of their competitor.

They were more likely to agree that the intern “Made demeaning or derogatory remarks,” or “Put you down in front of coworkers.” Nothing in the description of their colleague indicated that they performed these actions. But victim signalers were more likely to report that they did.

As the authors note, real victims exist. And they have no intention of deceiving or taking advantage of others.

Still, alongside victims, there are social predators among us. In whatever milieu they find themselves in, they will enact the strategies that maximize the rewards of material resources, sex, or prestige.

People with dark triad traits will tailor their strategies to obtain these benefits, depending on their social environments.

Today, those with dark triad traits might find that the best way to extract rewards is by making a public spectacle of their victimhood and virtue.

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Abstract

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits-Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy-more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism-amoral manipulation-and a form of narcissism that reflects a person's belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person's willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context.

Full PDF: https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ok-et-al.-2020.pdf

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By: Rob Henderson

Published: Feb 6, 2026

This week, the Stanford junior Elsa Johnson revealed in The Times that many of her fellow students were claiming they were disabled to receive accommodations like extra time on tests, excused absences and the best housing on campus. Johnson admitted that she had used her own endometriosis diagnosis to secure housing and academic perks.

“The truth is, the system is there to be gamed,” she wrote, “and most students feel that if you are not gaming it, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.”

The result? We are gradually teaching young people corruption under the guise of compassion.

Just look at the numbers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 18 per cent of male and 22 per cent of female college undergraduates report having a disability. Among non-binary students the figure jumps to 54 per cent. The figures are especially striking at elite universities.

Writing in The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch reported that more than 20 per cent of undergrads at Brown University and Harvard University were registered as disabled. At Amherst College the figure exceeded 30 per cent. At Stanford it approached 40 per cent. The rise is sharpest at the most selective schools, with only 3 to 4 per cent of students receiving accommodations at community colleges.

In her piece, Johnson argued that anyone who did not cheat was putting themselves at a disadvantage. “Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice,” she wrote. “The students are not exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them?” Yes, you can.

Something has shifted about American attitudes towards rules, especially among members of Gen Z. A 2020 survey from the American Enterprise Institute found that relative to older adults, young people are less likely to agree with the statement: “It is more important to always follow the rules even if it means you may be less successful.” At the same time, young people are more likely to say it is acceptable to get ahead even if it requires bending or breaking the rules. The trend points towards a lower-trust society, where rules are seen less as shared guardrails and more as inconvenient obstacles to work around.

The Atlantic reported that some elite schools may soon have more students receiving disability accommodations than those who don’t. A decade ago this would have sounded absurd, but as students and parents have come to recognise the benefits of disability status — extended test time, flexible deadlines, priority housing — the numbers have surged.

Many educated elites have long excused rule-breaking among people in more disadvantaged communities, arguing that the system is stacked against them — so why wouldn’t they try to level the playing field? Now, bizarrely, they are extending that same moral leniency to themselves.

The irony is that students at America’s elite universities are among the most privileged people to have ever lived. Admission alone places them among the future leadership class. Yet once inside the gates their advantage-hunting continues, with many searching for new ways to climb higher.

And today victimhood can function as a strategy. It can open doors, unlock resources and confer moral authority.

A 2021 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology supports this theory, showing that victim status can elevate one’s social standing in modern Western societies, increasing sympathy, expanding influence and justifying claims for material support.

The study showed that people with “dark triad” traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were more likely to attempt to acquire resources through victim claims. But beyond the scope of the study, it is also possible that habitually framing oneself as disadvantaged can cultivate narcissism, manipulativeness and disregard for others. Behaviour shapes mindset just as much as mindset shapes behaviour.

As a result America’s elite-education system is vulnerable to exploitation, especially among those who have the knowledge and resources to navigate it. A 2019 investigation found that many affluent parents had paid thousands of dollars for private psychological testing. These clinicians face a built-in incentive: families are customers, and a diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety can deliver academic advantages. A decade ago, as an undergraduate at Yale, I learnt that several students were claiming to be “dyslexic” to successfully skip compulsory language-course requirements. All were from well-off backgrounds.

The system offers perverse incentives that are difficult to resist — unless you are a person of immense character.

Years ago, a friend I served with the US Air Force was injured on the job. His injury was real but temporary. He knew, as many veterans do, that disability claims had been rising — such incentives are not confined to elite college students, but extend to former service members as well. He could easily have applied for long-term benefits upon discharge, but he chose not to. As soon as he recovered, he returned to work. He wanted to put the experience behind him rather than organise his life around it.

He went on to do well. But for hundreds of thousands of others the incentive to exaggerate one’s difficulties is too tempting — especially in a culture that offers excuses and asks: “How can you blame them?”

In the end, this all comes with a hidden cost. Institutions meant to cultivate excellence are training students to find advantage in fragility. And the habits and values learnt on the college campus rarely stay there. Eventually our culture will adopt these values, as we increasingly turn into a society of grift.

[ Via: https://archive.md/PkQNU ]

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By: Elsa Johnson

Published: Feb 2, 2026

In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room — a prizedsingle in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford.

I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year.

That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her “a disability accommodation”.

She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as “disabled”.

Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.

A recent article in The Atlantic reported that an increasing number of students at elite universities were claiming they had disabilities to get benefits or exemptions, which can also include copies of lecture notes, excused absences and access to private testing rooms. Those who suffer from “social anxiety” can even get out of participating in class discussions.

But the most common disability accommodation students ask for — and receive — is the best housing on campus.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where competition for the best dorm rooms is fierce, this practice is particularly rife. The Atlantic reported that 38 percent of undergraduates at my college were registered as having a disability — that’s 2,850 students out of a class of 7,500 — and 24 per cent of undergrads received academic or housing accommodations in the fall quarter.

At the Ivy League colleges Brown and Harvard, more than 20 per cent of undergrads are registered as disabled. Contrast these numbers with America’s community colleges, where only 3 to 4 per cent of students receive disability accommodations. Bizarrely, the schools that boast the most academically successful students are the ones with the largest number who claim disabilities — disabilities that you’d think would deter academic success.

The truth is, the system is there to be gamed, and most students feel that if you’re not gaming it, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

That’s why I decided to claim my legitimate illness — endometriosis — as a disability at Stanford.

When I arrived on campus two and a half years ago, I would have assumed that special allowances were made for a small number of students who genuinely needed them. But I quickly discovered that wasn’t true. Some diagnoses are real and serious, of course, such as epilepsy, anaphylactic allergies, sleep apnea or severe physical disabilities.

But most students, in my experience, claim less severe ailments, such as ADHD or anxiety. And some “disabilities” are just downright silly.Students claim “night terrors”; others say they “get easily distracted” or they “can’t live with others”. I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.

That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability. It is a painful condition in which cells from the uterus grow outside the womb. I’m often doubled over in agony from the problem, for which there is no known cure, so I decided to ask for a single room in a campus dorm where I could endure those moments in private.

The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.

As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for.

In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little scepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.

While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system. Take Callie, a recent Stanford grad with ADHD and Asperger’s who agreed to be quoted under a pseudonym. Callie was diagnosed with her conditions in elementary school; in return, Stanford granted her a single room for all four years, plus extra time on tests — and a few more perks.

“In college, I haven’t had that many ‘in real life’ tests as opposed to take-home essays,” Callie told me. “When I did use the extra time, I felt guilty, because I probably didn’t deserve the accommodations, given the fact I got into Stanford and could compete at a high academic level. Extra time on tests — some students even get double time — seems unfair to me.”

But at Stanford, almost no one talks about the system with shame. Rather, we openly discuss, strategise and even joke about it. At a university of savvy optimisers, the feeling is that if you aren’t getting accommodations, you haven’t tried hard enough.

Another student told me that special “accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest”. Academic accommodations, they added, help “students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground”.

The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate.

And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures — including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from “mushroom mix”.

Administrators seem powerless to reform the system and frankly don’t seem to care. How do you prove someone doesn’t have anxiety? How do you verify they don’t need extra time on a test? How do you challenge a religious dietary claim without risking a discrimination lawsuit?

I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?

[ Via: https://archive.md/tml92 ]

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This is the study Rob is referring to:

Abstract

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits-Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy-more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism-amoral manipulation-and a form of narcissism that reflects a person's belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person's willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context. 

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