Bullying—going against our innate nature—may use kindness to manipulate. Kindness is called “nature’s medicine” by researchers because it produces the hormone oxytocin which is now recognized to have significant healing and health properties. In contrast, bullying takes the medicine of kindness and makes it toxic. As documented in The Bullied Brain, bullying generates the stress hormone cortisol in the perpetrator and victim. If cortisol is being frequently released into the brain and body, it’s damaging and puts health at risk.

Those who bully target victims, while at the same time, they offer kindness to higher-ups and to beneficiaries. Those on the receiving end of kindness frequently defend those who bully. When reports of abusive behaviour come in, the carefully groomed higher-ups and beneficiaries insist the reports of maltreatment are wrong. They only know the kindness side of the one bullying. They have not learned that kindness is one of the bully’s deceptive weapons.

The split-personality presentation of bullying and kindness confuses the brain, which cannot understand how someone can be kind and compassionate while simultaneously destructive and cruel. The brain cannot understand and therefore it produces what Dr. Shawn Achor terms “counter-facts” in order to try and make sense of the glaring contradiction. When someone reports that upstanding, kindly Mrs. So and So is abusive, the leader receiving the report might try to process this contradictory information by creating counter-facts to explain it.

The reporting victims end up being faulted for being “too sensitive,” “misunderstanding the situation,” “hysterical,” “not telling the truth,” or “falsely reporting.” The report receiver decides that “they’re in fact the one who caused the negative behaviour,” “they’re jealous or envious,” or “they’re trying to harm the one they have reported on.” Generating counter-facts is why we have the term “victim-blaming.”

Affective and Cognitive Empathy

Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen is an expert in affective and cognitive empathy. His research reveals that the dark triad who bully others frequently have traumatized brains from abuse and neglect. Specifically, their affective empathy is eroded. Affective empathy is our capacity to walk in someone else’s shoes. It’s the foundation of kindness.

If affective empathy is eroded, it makes it easy to hurt and humiliate others. Those who lack affective empathy can mimic being caring and kind, even though these impulses are not actually being experienced on an emotional level. The dark triad is adept at imitating emotions and actions such as kindness by drawing on their cognitive empathy.

Cognitive empathy is the ability to read someone like a book. It cognitively or intellectually understands the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others, but does not feel their pain. Cognitive empathy knows what makes people tick, but it sees them in a more objective way, like you might see a clock.

Those in the dark triad, lacking in affective empathy, see others as pawns in their game. They manipulate others targeting them with bullying or showering them with kindness. Targets are maltreated while higher-ups are respected and fawned upon. The behaviour changes depending on what the dark triad wants others to do to satisfy their desire to win and manifest power. They are kind to those who will protect and enable their harm, at the same time as they are cruel to those whom they seek to coerce and control.

Empathy Is Tribal and Compromised by Power

Anyone in a position to receive bullying and abuse reports needs to be educated in how the dark triad uses kindness to manipulate. Understanding empathy and its relationship to healthy and unhealthy kindness is critically important. We have discussed affective and cognitive empathy. We know how the dark triad manipulates our own kindness and understanding to cover up the harm they do. Ironically, we succumb to an impulse to protect them against reports of their wrongdoing. We believe them and their claims to being wrongly accused when in fact they are the ones doing wrong. Note how confusing it is for the brain because the dark triad deals in confusion and uses it to control the crisis.

As demonstrated in Dr. Helen Reiss’ research, it’s also important to know that empathy is tribal. We unconsciously give more empathy, kindness, compassion to those who are like us (who look like us, are in the same financial bracket, have the same education, follow the same beliefs, etc.). Evolution wired into our brains alert when we interact with someone different because back in time, this could protect us from invaders.

In the 21^st century, this is extremely outdated and can lead to us unconsciously putting others into the “out-group,” which is one of the ways the dark triad manipulates us. They make us see others as enemies. They encourage our tribal empathy so that we become complicit in their injustice and cruelty.

In order to avoid this trap, we need to practice with regularity the application of our empathy to all, not just select groups. We need to be kind to everyone, not just those we are encouraged to see as the in-group. Our tribal empathy is one of the key reasons why diversion, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are needed.

Reiss also details the way in which empathy is in an inverse relationship with power. In other words, the more power a leader has, the less empathy they have. Those in leadership need to have a wingman (wing-person) who is an empath and can enhance their decisions by adding empathic caring and kindness. Power alone does not make the best decisions. Knowing how to manage empathy means we can ensure kindness is medicine and not poison.

Empathy Management Is Key

Find out if you are dealing with the dark triad. You will see a pattern of split-personality emerge. The targets will report the unkindness and the higher-ups and beneficiaries will report the kindness. This is a red flag you are dealing with the dark triad and he or she should be removed. You can support them, but leaving the individual in place can infect the whole organization or community and cause serious harm.

Those who have eroded empathy, namely those in the dark triad, do not repair and recover from kindness alone. Your own impulse to be kind and caring is exactly how they will manipulate you into enabling them to harm others. As Drs. Paul Babiak and Robert Hare explain, psychiatric experts can quickly find themselves doubting their own perceptions when face to face with the dark triad. We are all at risk.

Seven Steps to Protect

• Balance those in positions of power with those who are highly empathic.
• Do not fall prey to the perpetrator’s manipulations around tribal empathy. No one is an enemy.
• Avoid generating counter-facts to explain reports of abuse.
• Conduct an anonymous survey to find out if you are dealing with a split-personality.
• Resist the impulse to give second chances. This can lead to complicity.
• Overcome your brain’s confusion by understanding you are dealing with a split-personality (affective/cognitive).
• Seek support from Mental health practitioners to assess and protect others from the contagion.

Empathy and kindness must be given to all. When kindness is medicine, there are no targets, no higher-ups, and no beneficiaries. There is no split-personality. Kindness by its nature is inclusive. There is no out-group.