Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Why are they so funny?

They represent the whole spectrum of the problems with authenticity.

People who think they're funnier than they actually are,

who have no inhibitions, who are cringy in their behavior.

We laugh.

It's cathartic because we don't have to work for them.

And maybe we did it in the past, and now we appreciate that we don't.

Yeah, and so the traps are, you know, they're traps because when people try to follow them, either they will experience some conundrum and a kind of paradox, and it's not so easy to navigate these traps if you try to action them.

And the other possibility is that actually it worsens their interpersonal competence and behavior.

So the first one is always be honest with yourself and others.

As I just said, being overly honest with yourself, actually the term for that is depressive realism.

delusions tend to be rewarded in most areas of life.

Like, for example, you don't get a job or you don't get a promotion, far better to blame your boss or the company than yourself.

And when it comes to being honest to others, I mean, if you're going to be brutally honest with others, you're not going to be trusted by others.

You're going to be seen as an agent of stress.

And, you know, when people come and tell you, hey,

What could I have done better with my presentation or my pitch?

You know, what they want is affection, not, yeah, you suck and why didn't you prepare, right?

So there are cultures, of course, of like radical candor and transparency, but there are mostly horrible places to work for.

Second trap would be don't worry about what others think or don't listen to others.