The Single Most Important Determinant of Your Health That No One Mentions

Many factors coalesce to determine your health.  We all know, and regularly hear, for instance, that we should exercise, eat healthfully, and sleep properly.  Almost always, each of those recommendations is presented singly or contained within a list.  But, almost never, are those health practices described in an integrated fashion, or are their inter-relationships practically explicated. This post will provide one simplified example of that, and will do so in the context of the American crisis du jour.

That latest crisis presently is being expressed in the headlines across the nation that feature New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.  We don't yet know how much is true, but the scandal has been of sufficient gravity for him abruptly to have resigned his position.  I very briefly will relate what I know based on what has been reported by two teams: Brian Mann/Rachel Martin and  Jane Mayer/Ronan Farrow.  According to them, Schneiderman has been accused of physically abusing four women with whom he had had relationships.  The accusations included his slapping and becoming "sexually aggressive," "demeaning" and "threatening."  One accuser, Manning Barish, recounted an occasion when Schneiderman "yanked" her across a street at which time she protested that he was making her jaywalk.  She reminded Schneiderman that “Jaywalking is against the law,” to which he allegedly replied,, “I am the law," referring to the fact that he literally was the top law enforcer of the entire state of New York.  Two supreme, tragic ironies of the situation: First, according to Jane Mayer/Ronan Farrow, before Barish disclosed her own personal accusations of abuse, she had advocated outspokenly for women who accused then Democrat Minnesota senator Al Franken of sexual misconduct.  And, second, prior to the personal allegations against him, Schneiderman had investigated sexual abuse allegations against the movie producer, Harvey Weinstein,

  

So, what does this have to do with health?  I believe, everything.  The people with whom you associate exert a tremendous "pull" on you.  As Schneiderman, they can, to your detriment, "yank" you across the metaphorical street in their direction.  Research suggests that you tend to adopt  behaviors relative to those with whom you relate.  That includes your exercise, eating, and sleeping, and other habits.  The relationship affect is especially strong between you and your intimates.  Here is more validation of the motherly admonition to "watch out whom you associate with." 

The Me-Too movement exposed health dangers sometimes associated with cross-gender relationships, particularly threats involving sex and aggression.  People involved in destructive relationships are likely to have trouble with exercise, eating, sleeping, and healthful behaviors in general.  The Schneiderman case is important because it underscores that highly intelligent and highly successful people are not immune from health-destructive interpersonal relationships.  Do you believe for one minute that any of the four women and Schneiderman, himself, have been behaving healthfully? Certainly not in a mentally healthful way.  And, as we all know, poor mental health is another number one cause of poor physical health.  I doubt that any of them are exercising, eating, or sleeping properly right now.

The benefits of some interpersonal relationships, and especially of bogus intimacies, simply are not worth the price.  If four women have challenged the sexual and aggressive behaviors of the New York Attorney General, all women should be cautious regarding their intimate relationships.  Sometimes that caution can be a matter of life or death, but it always is a matter of health or illness.

The bottom line is that all your relationships critically affect your physical and mental health in virtually any or all spheres.  And no relationships are as important than your intimate relationships. People want to improve their social standing, regardless of whether they are low-, middle-, or upper-class.  That usually means interacting closely, and often dependently, with others who you believe can help enhance your status.  However, you need to decide at what cost you seek that improvement.  Corrosive relationships might provide you a fleeting sense of improved status while substantively impairing your health.  As we see today, women too often endure sickness-inducing cross-gender interactions and abuse that have been a regular feature of society since antiquity. 

References

Martin, R. &  Mann, B. (2018).  Schneiderman Allegations.  NPR Morning Edition, Morning News Brief, May 8,  4:59 A.M.

Mayer, J. &  Farrow, R. (2018).  Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse.  New Yorker, May 7.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/four-women-accuse-new-yorks-attorney-general-of-physical-abuse

Facebook and Health

Facebook presently is being scrutinized due to its role in political hacking.  However, Facebook can threaten not only the health of our collective democracy, but the health of our individual citizens.

Physical health is detrimentally impacted when we are immobile in front of our Facebook page.  Prolonged sitting can contribute to ailments, such as hypertension, high blood sugar, and obesity.  On the other hand, using one of the now popular elevated desks that enables us to view Facebook while standing is only a partial solution.  Research has shown that prolonged standing increases our risk for lower extremity blood clots, back and foot pain, and high LDL cholesterol.  Our bodies are not designed to be in any static position for long.  Our bodies are meant to be in dynamic motion, stillness alternating with movement.  Even during sleep, almost all of us instinctively manage to strike the proper balance between lying still and shifting around in bed.

Facebook also influences our mental health.  Very often, a primary viewing motivation is to check-up on our friends and other acquaintances in order to keep score.  Are they faring better than I am?  Why don't I have what they have? What are they doing?  How can they afford a  new car?  Mine already is too old, 5 years!  They are going to Paris, again.  Last year they went to Rome.  I only had one week at a nearby lake.     

The aforementioned use of Facebook reinforces in us an outer-directed locus of control.  Rather than confidently choose our own goals and priorities, we let reference groups or "popular people" set the agendas.  When Facebook posts invade our consciousness too often, we selectively compare ourselves to the best features of our friends' postings.  We think about every single thing that comprises each individual friend's posted life.  Then we aggregate the best features of our composite friends' lives, as they have posted them, and find ourselves lacking.  

A Facebook, outer-directed life does not only incite your jealous longing for what you believe your friends have.  Equally destructive is that it can cause you to ignore or minimize that which you do have.  You focus too much on the "wonderful" things posted, and too little on the costs of those wonderful things.  For instance, people with the most expensive material goods and grandest vacations must pay for them.  Perhaps they must work incessantly, and give short-shrift to family.  Perhaps they use their expensive material goods and grand vacations to fill emotional voids.  

Of course, Facebook need not be all bad.  You can use it in reasonable ways that do not compromise your physical or mental health.  Friends' postings can help you find ways to enrich your life that do not depend on competing with them, that enable you to maintain an internal locus of control, and that allow you to be conscious of what you have, not just what you don't have.

Be mindful that every minute spent on Facebook also is a minute lost in alternative activities.  Discipline your Facebook use.  Know when to start, and when to stop.  Have alternative activities readily available.  If you take control of Facebook, you can make the site work for you, and not against you. 

Choosing and Losing

To make a meaningful healthful lifestyle change, one chooses to enact some new behavior or behaviors.  On the face of it, that seems simple enough.  To make such a change, a person rationally would deliberate about what, when, and how to do that which would make her/him healthier.  The process might involve identifying a missing health-promoting practice and adding it.  Everything to gain and nothing to lose, right? 

That, of course is wrong.  Every meaningful choice presumes a significant loss.  If there were nothing to lose, everyone effortlessly would implement every healthful behavior as soon as it is found to be healthful.  And today especially, we readily are told what is “good” and “bad” for us.  In fact, commercial and social media barrage us with all kinds of facts and figures advocating the best health practices.  In a past blog, I have discussed information overload, so let’s limit ourselves today to that which we gain, and that which we lose when we make a significant behavior change that impacts our health substantially.

First, consider the obvious fact that we create a lifestyle over time.  Therefore, lifestyle behaviors have been reinforced and habitual.  They mostly are automatic.  We don’t think about them.  Second, many of the automatic lifestyle behaviors are triggered by cues totally outside our selves.  For instance, if you walk past a concession stand on your way to work, you might grab a donut and cup of coffee merely because you and they are there at a convenient time.  Third, the automatic behaviors satisfy a need, regardless of whether you are aware of the need or not.  Although we could continue to enumerate the many reasons for our current lifestyle habits, the point has been made that unconscious habits are a major element.

That brings us to the issue of losses.  By definition, whenever we make a meaningful decision, we are choosing something and not choosing something.   Not choosing means that we are “losing” whatever is not chosen.  New choices also are likely to require us deliberately to forgo something to which we had been accustomed, such as deciding to discontinue purchasing the donut that usually accompanied our coffee.  When we are aware of the loss involved in a healthful decision, we can steel our self against the loss, and successfully mourn it.  But when we do not realize that the healthful decision presumes a loss, we are vulnerable to a host of factors that militate against maintaining the healthful choice.  Some of the factors render us unable to implement the new healthful behavior for more than a brief period, and some make us discontinue the behavior later after it only seemed to have become a “good habit.”

Whenever you contemplate or begin to implement a healthful change then, be aware that you are making a decision with one, two, or more major implications:  You will lose out on whatever is included in all the other alternatives that you did not select; you will have to discontinue any existing behaviors that conflict with the new one; or some combination of losing opportunities and/or of discontinuing existing behaviors.  There will be a loss of some kind, so be ready for it.

Aging Well

In the ultra-young-person-oriented United States, aged people have been the butt of jokes.  For instance, they often are dismissed as being demented, delusional, or generally out-of-touch with whatever is current.  Similarly, the elderly regularly are described as being feeble, resentful, or depressed.  And the definition of aged has been determined by whoever has the podium at the time.  Jack Weinberg of the 1960s Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley is credited with the most absurd extension of ageism in his statement, “We have a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over 30.”  Not surprisingly, that slander subsequently was adopted by other activists and the press who widely disseminated the instruction:  Don’t trust anyone over 30.

In keeping with the anti-aged tradition, many Americans believe that elderly people tend to be generally depressed and isolated.  Where is the evidence?  N. J. Shook and colleagues (2017) investigated the issue.  They reminded us that, as a group, contrary to popular opinion, older adults often report less negative and more positive emotion than do younger adults.  This previously identified phenomenon has been called the “well-being paradox” to underscore how unexpected the finding had been.

The Shook investigation supported the belief that aged people can feel very well.   Consistent with previous studies, it revealed that their older subjects did experience more positive emotion than did the younger subjects.  However, both groups evidenced equal amounts of negative emotion.  The research also produced a new insight: the aged were higher in mindfulness.  That is, elderly subjects focused more on the here-and-now than did the younger ones.  Shook proposed that it was their higher mindfulness that accounted for the elderly persons’ superior positive emotion.

One might speculate about the connection among positive emotion, mindfulness, and aging.  Just like persons of all ages, the elderly cannot change their past or predict their future.  But they can exert reasonable control over the present moment, deciding what to think, what to do, and where to go.  That sense of control is empowering and emotionally elevating.  Perhaps aged persons with a positive attitude have developed an unconscious inclination to remain in the moment as a means of compensating themselves for the fact that they have less time left on earth.

Certainly, no single study definitively answers any issue as complicated as well being.  Neither does it prove that the elderly are happy-go-lucky.  As we all know, some aged are demented, delusional, generally out-of-touch with whatever is current, feeble, resentful, depressed, or isolated.  But so are some younger persons.  The point, of course, is that no one should stereotype anyone due to any single factor, including age.  Since we believe what we expect, it is easy to dismiss an elderly person as “losing it” if they forget someone’s name, and to excuse that same slip when committed by a young person.  The problem, as I see it, is that ageism is much more automatic and tolerated in America than are most other forms of prejudice.

Regardless of your birth date, you are aging, and that is infinitely better than is the alternative.  I suggest that you would do well to be mindful of that.

References

Shook, N. J., Ford, C., Strough, J., Delaney, R., & Barker, D. (2017). In the moment and feeling good: Age differences in mindfulness and positive affect. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3(4), 338-347. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000139

“Don’t trust anyone over 30” – or under 30 (or over 40)

http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2015/06/dont-trust-anyone-over-30-or-under-30.html

Choosing and Deciding

   

Enduring health is incremental and cumulative.  Outside biblical accounts, chronically and significantly sick people don't awaken one morning completely healed. Health-inducing behaviors need to be enacted rationally, frequently, and consistently to overcome natural physical entropy.

All this means that you need to develop and maintain behaviors that promote health and minimize illness.  You probably know, however, that most human behavior is automatic.  All else being equal, you will continue the helpful or harmful behaviors that have become your habits.

To take control of your health, you must make the best decisions that you can.  It is not a matter of choosing; it is a matter of deciding.  Choices too often are non-reflective, using heuristics --rules-of-thumb-- rather than careful thought.  Psychologists typically use the expression "fast and frugal" to emphasize the quick, effortless aspect of heuristics.  And given the pervasiveness of heuristics, research is devoted to that subject.

As one example, consider the work of S. Bobadilla-Suarez and B. Love (2017).  They questioned whether heuristics could be fast, frugal and still effective.  Their investigation compared a Tallying heuristic with a Take-the-Best heuristic. The former primarily involved culling a larger amount of information and then quickly choosing what seemed to lead to the best choice, and the latter, quickly searching a smaller amount of information only so long as needed to discover a reasonable answer.  

Applied to health practices, a Tallying heuristic might involve superficially skimming a list of weight reduction programs to choose the program with the most features shared among them.  By contrast, a Take-the-Best heuristic might involve skimming the same list in a search for the one that permits the dieter to consume the most calories.

Bobadilla-Suarez and Love found an effectiveness trade-off, such that either strategy could confer an advantage, sometimes favoring speed and other times, efficiency.   In some contexts, Tallying was more effective while Take-the-Best was faster, or vice versa.  Although either strategy might work in one given context, neither simultaneously included both a speed and efficiency advantage.

You may not be surprised that speed sacrifices efficiency and vice versa.  But when you make your automatic, heuristic choices, you probably are not mindful of that trade-off as it occurs in real time.

It is unrealistic to think that you will or should abandon all heuristic thinking.  After all, heuristics help reduce the effort required to make decisions.  However, many health decisions demand more than quick choices; you need to deliberate among your options, both to select the best ones and to overcome established unhealthful habits.

In short, you need to deliberate carefully before settling on heuristic choices.  To do so, consider the sources of your candidate heuristics.  Many heuristic preferences amount to instinctually imitating the behaviors and choices of your friends, acquaintances, or celebrities.  Even if you have created your own personal relatively autonomous heuristic choices, you should evaluate them objectively.  Some that you have created never worked properly, and some have worked properly in the past, but not now.  The bottom line is this: Your health is too valuable to manage via pure, automatic heuristics.  Take time to deliberate.  That, at minimum, gives you a chance to affirm or revise your heuristics to make them more compatible with a healthful lifestyle.

Reference

Bobadilla-Suarez, S., & Love, B. C. (2018). Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(1), 24-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000419

It's Not You. It's Only Your Brain

Read a book, watch a film, talk to a person about a mental problem and you probably will learn that whatever ails you emotionally is due to something amiss with your brain.  That is true whether you express concern about your personal functioning or interpersonal relationships.  And because it is a brain malfunction, you must medicate or reprogram your brain in order to heal.

That approach to mental health is what I call the "disembodied brain perspective" (DBP).  It implies that your brain operates independent of the rest of your body and mind.  The DBP provides an ideal rationalization for inappropriate or troublesome behavior.   Personal responsibility no longer is an issue.  You smacked your child during a neurological short-circuit.  Don't worry about doing anything to remedy  that behavior; just rest so that your brain is not hyper excited next time.   DBP also is your family doctor's best friend.  If you come to the office with vague feelings of discomfort, she/he can write you a quick prescription so that the two of you believe that the visit and fee were warranted.

How much sense does DBP make?  Suppose you have a tooth ache and feel depressed.  You snap at your spouse and kick the dog.  Then you go to the dentist who fixes your decayed tooth.  One hour afterward, you feel great.  You apologize to your spouse and give the dog a heaping helping of  Kibbles and Bits.  Does that mean that brain dysfunction caused your tooth ache and the dentist repaired your brain?

Anyone with half a brain knows that we have a whole brain and a whole body, both of which are inextricably integrated.  To anthropomorphize, your brain feels poorly when your body feels poorly and vice versa.  Most of what you do to enhance brain health enhances bodily health.  And most of what you do to enhance bodily health enhances brain health.

When you perceive a problem, reject the DBP.  Instead, take personal responsibility via a simple ABC solution.  "A" equals "affect."  Learn how to control your emotions.  "B" is "behavior."  Perform some real world actions that reduce, minimize, or eliminate the problem.  And  "C" stands for "cognition."  Examine your thought processes, take steps to understand the roots of the difficulty, and reframe your perception of it—from an incapacity that troubles you to a challenge whose partial or total solution can be achieved by thinking it through.

For a thorough discussion of ABCs, consult a cognitive behavioral therapist or CBT self-help manual.  By doing so, you eventually will become empowered to solve virtually all but your most severe problems.

Reference

David Westbrook,‎ Helen Kennerley,‎ & Joan Kirk (2011). An Introduction to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.  Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA

       

Meaningfulness and Healthfulnesss

Everyone at some point has asked themselves about the meaning of their life.  That question was much easier to answer in past centuries and decades. The religious could be content to know that their purpose was to "serve God."  The secular could believe that they were born to care for their family and/or community.  Religion and a shared moral code provided a reassuring and calming influence for its subscribers.  Unfortunately, contemporary America provides much less direction toward a meaningful life than it did in the remote past.

Reassurance and calm always has contributed to physical and mental health.  In bygone days, those who truly believed in the divine and in the social good had more incentive to comport themselves properly, since standards of proper behavior were more widely shared.  For instance, back then, all but the most non-religious people recognized the benefits of a life that avoided the seven deadly sins - pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.

Even today, one readily can imagine benefits from avoiding the seven.  Among other things, we could  anticipate something like the following: Absence of pride would decrease esteem problems.  Absence of greed would facilitate the distribution of scarce resources.   Absence of lust would fortify marital bonds. Absence of envy would enable us to feel more content and to appreciate better what we do have.  Absence of gluttony would reduce our waistlines and minimize our need to work relentlessly to get things we really don't need. Absence of wrath would lower our blood pressures and promote family and community unanimity.  And absence of sloth would help us come much closer to achieving our potentials.

Today those who make assiduous efforts to avoid the seven deadly sins inadvertently fashion a meaningful lifestyle.  By actively behaving to avoid the corrupting influences of the seven, people create implicit or explicit goals and standards that facilitate well-being.  One simply cannot engage consistently in unhealthful behaviors while committing the deadly sins.

Religion and community concern of course are not the only motivators to avoid the sins.  Even a purely selfish desire to live healthfully can prompt one to avoid pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Whatever the reason for the avoidance, if it encourages a meaningful life, benefits accrue.  Stephanie A. Hooker, Kevin S. Masters, and Crystal L. Park (2017), in fact, render empirical support to the idea that a global sense of meaning reduces the likelihood of illness and death.  "Meaningful," they defined, as a life that their subjects felt had a comprehensible purpose with positive social implications. After scrutinizing the data, the researchers did conclude that a strong sense of meaning in life was correlated with improved coping skills, more health-promoting behavior, and reduced stress.

What "meaning" do you ascribe to the meaningfulness study?

Reference

Hooker, Stephanie A.; Masters, Kevin S.; Park, Crystal L. (2017).   A Meaningful Life Is a Healthy Life: A Conceptual Model Linking Meaning and Meaning Salience to Health.  Review of General Psychology, July 06 , 2017, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000115

From Healthful Intention to Healthful Action

We all have moments when we would like to do something, whether that is going to the gym or calling our mother.  But what gets us from the liking to the doing?   First, we must be aware of the liking.  Second, by definition, during our state of liking to do something, we almost certainly are doing something else that needs to end, or at least be radically reduced.   Third, we must desire the future behavior more than the current behavior or other competing behaviors.   That is, we must expect a payoff for switching to the future behavior.  Fourth, we must have the competence necessary to perform the activity to reach the goal associated with the liking.  And fifth, we must have sufficient energy to perform the activity to reach the goal associated with the liking.

Your good health intentions depend on the same set of conditions described above.  How often have you said “I’d like to exercise more often,” but never actually did so?   Are you aware of what you would like to do for yourself health-wise?  I mean explicitly aware, not implicitly aware.  Do you know what you currently are doing that is competing with your good health intentions?   Do you expect that behaving healthfully truly will be more rewarding than your customary behaviors?   Are you confident that you know how to implement the activity required for the healthful payoff?  And finally, are you willing and able to exert the energy needed to enact the healthful behavior?

Good intentions can break done at any of the five steps.  So you must be cognizant of all of them and of how each specifically affects you personally.

Let's take a concrete example.  Suppose you want to reconnect with a friend whom you haven't seen in six months, and who lives an hour and a half away.  The only day you both have free is Saturday.  But Saturday is your usual grocery shopping day.  You should ask yourself a series of questions.  Is seeing your friend more important than shopping on Saturday?  Do you know how easily you can get to her house and how you two probably will send your time together?  Are you willing to dedicate three travel hours to reconnect with someone whom you haven't seen in six months.  In essence: Is this relationship sufficiently rewarding and important to you that you are willing to "put yourself out" to re-establish the connection?

The re-connection opportunity might be a minor or major factor in your life.  And that obviously also will impact your decision to act relationship-wise rather than merely to intend to act. Moreover, it could be a one-time decision, or the prelude to more regular Saturday visits to your friend.  The important issue is that every physical health or mental health decision can be viewed through a similar lens.  The more you understand your unique decision process, the more you will be in control of your lifestyle.  It is well worth your time and effort to think about the five steps.

     

References

McCusker, P.  (2016).  Don't Rest in Peace: Activity-Oriented, Integrated Physical and Mental Health.  New York: Amazon Createspace.

Kruglanski, A. W. (2017). Motivational phases on the road to action. Motivation Science, 3(3), 196-207.

What You Talk About, Who You Talk With, and Their Affects on Your Health

Talk can be a blessing or a burden that affects your physical and mental health accordingly. The mere act of talking often drives up your blood pressure; the mere act of listening often lowers it (Lynch, 1985).  And we all know from everyday experience that the content of some conversations definitely upsets us emotionally, and others definitely calms us.  Moreover, since our body and mind are inextricably connected, whatever raises the pressure within our body does the same within our mind, and vice versa.

So, when it comes to our health, talk is not cheap; it’s costly.  Your conversation partner and conversation topic can make a world of difference in your return on health investment.

Some people almost literally have nothing good to say.  When around them, all you hear are their complaints and problems.  Their negativism can prime you to dwell on your own dissatisfactions.  That is, you not only get caught up in their difficulties, but you unwittingly are conditioned to look for difficulties in your own life.  Their toxic influences linger long after you cease talking to them.  This is a "show me your company and I'll tell you who you are" consequence. 

When it comes to the content of conversation, anything is possible.  However, the most common areas of conversation relate to the four constants of mental life: body, environment, thoughts, and feelings (BETF).  These four always are exerting their influence on us, and always begging for our attention.  It is natural, therefore, that BETF dominate our conversations (McCusker, 2004). So, the most healthful conversations likely will occur when you are speaking with a relatively healthy person in a relatively comfortable environment.  Having the constants of body and environment optimized to the extent possible, you can direct your attention toward selecting topics most likely to encourage positive thoughts and feelings, and steering clear of topics likely to instigate negative ones.

The health information that receives the most attention in our culture concerns diet and exercise.  Professionals and media regularly attempt to influence us in both regards.  And that certainly is warranted.  However, during a physical exam, did your doctor ever ask how well your conversations are going?  Have you ever seen a public service announcement advising to improve your health by improving your conversations?  Yet, your conversations play a central role in orienting you toward or away from health promoting behaviors.

What you talk about and who you talk with can make the difference between physical and mental health versus physical and mental illness.  Take control and reap the benefits.

References:

Lynch, J. (1985).  The language of the heart: The body's response to human dialogue.   New York: Basic Books

McCusker, P. (2004).  Conversation: Striving, surviving, and thriving .   Lincoln, NE:  iUniverse   iUniverse  

  

Who Is Deceiving You ?

In the past two decades, psychology has evolved from a primary emphasis on human psychopathology to one mostly focused on positive mental health.  The redirection has much to be said for it.  We certainly want to understand as much as possible about happiness and what promotes it, and we would like to spread mental health as widely as we can.

However, as so often happens in science, a new focus causes a profession to ignore the old ones, as though there is nothing more to learn there.  When that happens, the earlier field ceases to develop, and then begins to atrophy.  We do better with a middle ground that embraces the new while continuing to refine the old.

Given the unprecedented, wide dissemination of influence and persuasion techniques, then, psychology would be remiss in failing to develop its ability to identify and counter persons who use influence and persuasion in ways iniminicable to the common good.  There is merit in learning who the manipulators are, and how they operate.  For that reason, I have chosen to write today about Daniel N. Jones and Delroy L. Paulhus’ latest research.

Jones and Paultus (2017) investigated deceit as practiced by "Dark Triad" persons who traffic in manipulation and exploitation.  Those referred to by that term evidence some combination of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and they are among the most prolific peddlers of destructive influence.

Each of the three Dark Triad subtraits predispose one to a particular form of influence asociality.  The narcissist is inclined toward persuasion that lifts his status, the Machiavellian, that which confers power onto him, and the psychopath that which promotes his impulsive desires.

Jones and Paultus mentioned the well-established fact that the three Dark Triad subtypes all engage in interpersonal exploitation.  Although all those within the subtypes tended to be dishonest, each subtype handled their deceit a little differently.  The narcissist were the most inclined to engage in self-deception, presumably to justify their nefarious behavior while maintaining some semblance of self-esteem.  The Machiavellian and the psychopath, but not the narcissist, behaved deceitfully even when the deceit required them to lie intentionally and blatantly.  When deceit exposed them to an obvious risk of punishment, the psychopaths were not deterred, but the narcissists were.  The Machiavellians, on the hand, usually refrained from deceit when punishment was a definite risk, but not so when they were ego-depleted.  For the Jones and Paultus study, ego depletion meant that subjects had to focus their attention while expending their energy blocking-out significant distractions.

For your mental health sake, you must be on-guard to resist Dark Triad subtypes.  The narcissist, Machiavellian and the psychopath all are prepared to deceive you in order to achieve their self-serving ends.  But the three do not always use the same methods.  To avoid being manipulated and exploited, be aware of their predilections.  One other thing not mentioned thus far: Dark Triad people initially often are perceived by others as physically and interpersonally attractive (Holtzman, 2012).  They know how to present themselves in ways to maximize the likelihood that you will give them a chance to implement their deceptions. Don't let them do it.

References

Holtzman, N. (2012). "People With Dark Personalities Tend to Create a Physically Attractive Veneer". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 4: 461–467. doi:10.1177/194855061

Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2017). Duplicity among the dark triad: Three faces of deceit. Journal 

of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 329-342.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp00001392461284