What’s the “opposite” of NPD? Food for thought: If mania and depression correspond to equal-and-opposite distortions of valence signals, then what would be the opposite of NPD, i.e. what would be a condition where valence signals stay close to neutral, rarely going either very positive or very negative? I don’t know, and maybe it doesn’t have a clinical label. One thing is: I would guess that it’s associated with a “high-decoupling” (as opposed to “contextualizing”) style of thinking.[4]
I listened to this podcast recently (link to relevant timestamp) with Arthur Brooks. In his work (which I have done zero additional research on and have no idea it’s done well or worth engaging with), he divides people into four quadrants based on having above/below average positive emotions and above/below average negative emotions. He gives each quadrant a label, where the below/below ones are called “judges”, which according to him are are “the people with enormously good judgment who don’t get freaked out about anything”.
This made sense to me because I think I’m squarely in the low/low camp, and I feel like decoupling comes extremely natural to me and feels effortless (ofc this is also a suspiciously self-serving conclusion). So insofar as his notion of “intensity and frequency of emotions” tracks with your distribution of valence signals, the judges quarter would be the “opposite” of NPD—although I believe it’s constructed in such a way that it always contains 25% of the population.
I listened to this podcast recently (link to relevant timestamp) with Arthur Brooks. In his work (which I have done zero additional research on and have no idea it’s done well or worth engaging with), he divides people into four quadrants based on having above/below average positive emotions and above/below average negative emotions. He gives each quadrant a label, where the below/below ones are called “judges”, which according to him are are “the people with enormously good judgment who don’t get freaked out about anything”.
This made sense to me because I think I’m squarely in the low/low camp, and I feel like decoupling comes extremely natural to me and feels effortless (ofc this is also a suspiciously self-serving conclusion). So insofar as his notion of “intensity and frequency of emotions” tracks with your distribution of valence signals, the judges quarter would be the “opposite” of NPD—although I believe it’s constructed in such a way that it always contains 25% of the population.