10 Things Narcissists do to Appear Smarter than They Really Are

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can provide examples of what narcissists do to make other people believe that they are more intelligent than they actually are one of the characteristics of narcissism is presenting oneself as greater more important and just plain better than other people narcissists rarely give ground on this grandiose sense of self-importance in any area but they are particularly sensitive to the areas of intelligence and outward appearance these are two areas where they rarely concede that other people may have an advantage over them here of course I'll be focusing on the area of intelligence and I'll answer this question by looking at the 10 things narcissus do to convince people that they are smart the irony of many of these items is that they actually make the narcissus look less intelligent so these are things that narcissists do that they believe makes them look more intelligent but they don't necessarily actually make them appear smarter so I'll get started here with item number one this is the narcissist correcting other people's grammar now of course context is important here sometimes correcting somebody else's grammar is actually doing them a favor or it's required as part of one's job what I'm talking about here is correcting somebody's grammar when you don't have to or whit's impolite to do so what I find interesting about this particular strategy on the part of the narcissist is a situation that occurs sometimes where the narcissist knows somebody who's chronically using a word incorrectly and the narcissist has to decide between making themselves look good so correcting the person's grammar and getting that narcissistic gratification or letting the other person continue to look bad because that could also benefit the narcissist for example imagine a person has to regularly refer to the title of a scholarly article let's say they want to refer to a person who wrote an article about major depressive like a review of major depressive disorder that's the title of the article the correct way to say that would be this person wrote an article titled a review of major depressive disorder but perhaps the narcissist sees a person who says this person wrote an article entitled a review of major depressive disorder now this is a usage of the word entitled we sometimes see but it is technically incorrect the correct way to say that would be titled not entitled the article isn't entitled to anything it has a title so the narcissist has to decide between telling the person that they're using that word incorrectly and again they can feed their own narcissism through doing that or not telling them believing that they look foolish by doing that even though again it's kind of a minor error to the narcissist every mistake that somebody else makes is a major mistake now another reason the narcissist might fail to tell that person about that incorrect usage would be to use that against them later so one mistake is as good as many mistakes from the point of view of some way that the narcissist is trying to be judgmental towards or criticized so what I mean by this is the narcissist really wants to have something to hit the other person with so instead of the narcissist saying you use this word in title incorrectly one time they can say you've been using the word in title incorrectly for years so they're sort of saving up the mistakes to get that embarrassment factor higher so again this just creates an interesting situation the narcissist has to choose really what type of satisfaction they try to get in this area of correcting other people's grammar moving to item number two this is using words incorrectly of course the irony here is that the narcissist tries to correct other people's grammar but they often use words incorrectly themselves this is particularly true of technical jargon outside the narcissist field they often pick up on words that are used in other fields that people wouldn't recognize and they try to use those words themselves to make themselves look more intelligent they know that only a small number of other people would pick up on that so again it kind of makes them distinct makes them special I find that much of the time this happens when the narcissist here's somebody that they respect use an unusual word then the narcissist tries to figure out the meaning of that word from the context or from what the word sounds similar to other words that are similar sounding of the narcissist would know they are so desperate to impress that they don't bother to look up what the word actually means before they use it right so we see kind of an impulsive 'ti piece here and of course a high level of self-confidence because they are so important because they are so great they can't make a mistake so they must be using the word correctly I've seen many examples of this in the mental health field specifically there are a number of words used in the mental health field that aren't particularly common and daily usage and what really stands out to me is when the narcissist uses the word in a way that's way off rather than a common or understandable mistake in terms of using that word so a couple of examples that I've seen there's this word phenomenological I've seen a narcissist use this to mean phenomenal like phenomenological is a better version of the word phenomenal of course it doesn't mean that it's the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from a first-person point of view it's a pretty common word when talking about qualitative research another word I've seen misused by a narcissist is ideological I saw an example where somebody said that it was related to eating I guess because of the first part of that word ideological actually of course ideological means causing or contributing to the development of a disorder right so they just hear the word and they make an assumption about what it means and again without researching it they just start using it item number three they try to talk about areas where they believe other people don't have a lot of knowledge this is a popular tactic with the narcissist they will study one area that they believe that another person wouldn't know anything about and then they'll keep moving the conversation back to that area for example let's say that a person doesn't know a lot about cooking I can connect with this example because I don't have any experience with cooking I couldn't tell you anything interesting about that topic so any level of knowledge about cooking is going to seem impressive from my point of view so in a situation like that when the narcissist figures this out they talk a lot about cooking because they know they can make mistakes and the other person is not going to know any better the narcissist can look smart and not really have to know a tremendous amount about that topic again they'll studied a little bit but they don't really have to know a lot about it maybe some of the technical jargon like I talked about before and a few of the things they learn they put that together and make themselves out like they're an expert in that area what I find really interesting in these situations is when the conversation is interrupted by a third party who does know something about that area all of a sudden the narcissist doesn't want to talk about that topic anymore they no longer seem smart and they run the risk of their own limited knowledge being exposed so they just change topics or leave the conversation item number four the narcissist supports a position even though the evidence is against it this is a fairly common tactic narcissist tend to over commit to ideas that protect their ego so really narcissism doesn't necessarily have a relationship to openness to experience a narcissist can be high in this trait they can appreciate the arts they may be intellectually curious they can certainly have a lot of fantasy but they still have a blind spot when it comes to their own value and importance a grandiose narcissist tends to be rigid in terms of their thinking in this area now a vulnerable narcissist does tend to process criticisms and they feel shame and resentment but they still often defend a bad position either way so the narcissist will find information maybe even from a scholarly article that supports their position perhaps it supports an idea that they've been in favor of a long time so I'll use an example of a made-up therapy ABC therapy let's say that this therapy helps people recover from feelings of sadness so the narcissist is committed to the idea that ABC therapy is successful they go out and they find information that supports their commitment to this modality this is called confirmation bias someone doesn't have to be a narcissist to do this but the narcissist takes it one step further when they clearly see evidence that refutes their theory they know that their theory is now unsupported but they don't want to make it appear like they committed to an idea that wasn't correct for them if they change their mind they believe that's going to be viewed as a weakness they're going to look less intelligent because they committed to an idea that was later found to not be correct even though changing one's mind in the presence of new evidence is actually a sign of intelligence it's flexible thinking when the narcissist is unable to win on the basis of evidence they switch to other tactics which brings me to the next item item number five attacking people who have different views than them instead of arguing based on actual evidence let's say the narcissist knows that they can't win a particular argument they will attack the people who support the opposite position often they'll try to find one mistake that the other person made and then over generalize that to every situation for example they look at someone who once misspelled a word and they say if that person can't spell that word right I wouldn't trust them with anything that person made a mistake therefore they've lost all credibility I've heard this many times from narcissists losing all credibility can of course happen but it's not an everyday event but if you talk to a narcissist you get the impression that people lose all credibility all the time right perhaps even several times a day right so it's just taking again one small mistake and trying to really stay with that to undermine somebody's credibility and this is simply for the purpose of the narcissist not having to admit that their position is unsupported now moving to item number six this is blaming someone else for their incorrect belief so sometimes even the narcissist can't deny they have backed a poor position they have made a mistake and instead of owning that instead of learning from that they blame someone else and they believe this makes them look more intelligent when of course it really doesn't so they might say something like I was given misinformation or that person who gave me this information was trying to make me look bad or something like there was a conspiracy to make me look foolish right anything with just simply owning the mistake which would be a lot easier and I think would make them look a lot better item number seven is fairly straightforward this is simply using words like logic and reason like simply saying those words makes their argument better right it sounds good but it really doesn't help somebody's argument so if a narcissist is arguing they might say look I'm just attempting to be logical let's just be reasonable I'm the voice of reason or I only make logical decisions again they're just saying these things they're just saying essentially I'm right they're not really backing it up with any evidence but by including the words logic and reason they're trying to get the high ground in the argument just saying those words of course is not enough to establish an argument right to use logic and reason you have to do more than saying hey I'm using logic and reason but again this is what the narcissist does moving to item number eight this is when the narcissist discounts constructs that are connected with intelligence and these are constructs the narcissist doesn't have there are a lot of different ideas connected with intelligence and that's what I'm really talking about here for example if the narcissist is not successful and they see another person who is successful and of course we know success is associated with intelligence the narcissist will say success is just a matter of luck so though discount that another person is successful if they see someone who has a higher level of education they might say well anyone can get a piece of paper right just again being dismissive of these elements associated with intelligence they also make incorrect assumptions about the types of intelligence there are several types of intelligence but the narcissist only values the types of intelligence that they believe that they half I've seen this play out before between verbal and performance right two major types of intelligence so if the narcissist has a lot of verbal intelligence a high level of crystallized knowledge they'll say oh that's the only type of intelligence that matters or if they have high cognitive reasoning skills they'll say only performance matters so they're not going to take all of the parts of intelligence and say they're all valid unless they have every part unless they have a high score in every type of intelligence another thing kind of related to this is when they see someone who's incredibly smart like if somebody has an IQ above say 130 or 135 they'll say oh well if people are that smart that comes with deficits right and sometimes when people are extremely intelligent if they have a really high IQ we do see some social problems associated with that not all the time but some of the time we do and the narcissists really focus on that they'll focus on that deficit they'll say well without social skills the intelligence can't be used so again just discounting the actual level of intelligence and trying to find some flaw associated with it right just to get it out of the picture they don't want to face the fact that some people are highly intelligent and what really bothers them is that some people are more intelligent than them speaking of intelligence that brings me to item number 9 narcissists lie about their performance on intelligence tests now this is kind of a sensitive area because few people will challenge someone who states their IQ publicly right it's not polite to challenge somebody who says something like that but when there is a need to challenge the narcissist when it is appropriate we see kind of interesting things come up about their IQ claims right interesting stories and responses they can't seem to tell you what intelligence test they took that yielded the IQ they claimed half they might say oh it was a long time ago I don't remember they don't know why they were given an IQ test now there aren't a large number of reasons somebody would receive an IQ test it's a fairly restricted of reasons most people who have taken an IQ test remember why it was administered they would at least remember the context in which it was a mister like was it administered in a school setting for example they also don't tend to understand the typical ranges or even just the limits of intelligence tests when it comes to like the IQ score they don't understand how these ranges work functionally speaking if somebody has an IQ of 120 or 130 it doesn't really matter how much higher that score gets people in those categories tend to function similarly so if somebody has an IQ of 120 they're gonna function pretty similarly to someone with an IQ of 130 140 or even higher so narcissists failed to appreciate that distinction and the actual limit of an IQ test depending on the IQ test is somewhere around 160 some go up as high as 170 and in certain situations we see tests that go up a little bit higher but it doesn't really get much higher than that in terms of the upper limit of what the tests can actually return as a result but I've heard narcissists say they have an IQ of 200 250 800 and even 15,000 that's a lot of IQ points that's enough to supply like a whole group of people right 15,000 there's no IQ test that has that type of result possible and of course really none that even go up to 200 right 200 is out of the capability of the test what's more even conceptually somebody can't really have an IQ higher than 200 right we don't know what the highest IQ in the world would be but one theory is that it really can't be much higher than 200 so even if a test was capable of returning a result higher than that it wouldn't really matter nobody's gonna score higher than that level the last part of this item 9 with the lying about intelligence part is the narcissist doesn't remember who administered the test either which again seems a little bit unusual when you put that together with all the other memory failings that I've talked about I've heard narcissist say well it was some person right like that really narrows it down as if I suspected it was not a human being it actually gave them the test although somebody's IQ is 15,000 who knows maybe an alien life-form came to another planet and gave them some special high Q test that we don't have available here this takes me to item number 10 the last item here this is pretending to understand material they clearly don't understand and would have no reason to understand so the narcissist really pretends to know everything there's no subject they haven't studied they will not be outdone you rarely hear something like I don't know the answer to that I'll have to go and look into it rather they immediately provide you with an incorrect answer right so the phrase that comes to mind here is with a narcissist you rarely have to wait for an answer but it's always the wrong answer right so if you're gonna get the wrong answer you might as well get it quickly and that's something the narcissist does well if they take the time to do their homework to look into something that's admitting they don't know everything and that's not acceptable to the narcissist interestingly this tactic can actually work in the short term right for the narcissist this one can pay off if they pretend to know everything and they're only being questioned for 10 seconds or 20 seconds some people might believe though they really do have knowledge about a broad variety of topics it's the depth that isn't there right if somebody talks to them for five minutes or ten minutes they start to realize this personally doesn't know everything they claim to know so those are 10 things that narcissists do to appear smart again with many of these items we can look at them and see that they're not really gonna work for the narcissist the narcissist believes in those strategies but they might not actually pay off they might not actually make the narcissist appear to be smarter but either way these are elements that we see and as I mentioned some of them are quite common when encountering a narcissist and dealing with these types of situations sometimes it's better just to disengage right like in terms of arguing and talking about their IQ and all this a lot of times it just makes more sense to move away from the situation and kind of let them do what they're going to do narcissus will go to great lengths to ensure that they protect that ego and that can be hazardous for people around them I know whenever I talk about topics like narcissism and how narcissists appear there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 1,464,271

Keywords: narcissists trying to act smart, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, covert narcissism, shame, anger, aggression, hypersensitivity, introverted, defensive, avoidant, anxious, depressed, socially awkward, neurotic, shy, manipulative, blame-shifting, gaslighting, self-esteem, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, lack of empathy

Id: OMkrosLHIEs

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2020