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President Brian Sandoval: Welcome back, Wolf Pack Family to season four of Sagebrushers. I'm your host, Brian Sandoval, a proud graduate and president of the University of Nevada. Each episode of Sagebrushers, which by the way was our University's first nickname, we take a closer look at the people history and future of our University. We explain why the University, ever since its founding in Elko in 1874, has been about so much more than ourselves and why we remain Nevada's best experiment in understanding who we are and what we are capable of achieving.

We have an exciting lineup of guests this season from all around campus. So let's get started. From romance schemes to catfishing to workplace fraud, the study of manipulation has never been more in demand. Today, we'll meet with a professor who explores the dark side of human nature, its impact on others and how to help businesses understand and address these issues. Dr. Jones' research primarily focuses on how toxic personality traits predict unethical behavior across different environments. On a lighter note, he's also spent years developing the construct of emophilia, the dispositional tendency to fall in love easily and often. Today's podcast is being recorded in the @One of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Dr. Jones, I'm fascinated by your research and cannot wait to dive into this conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Dan Jones: Thank you for having me.

Sandoval: I'm really excited about this episode. So to kick us off, you are a social psychology scholar based in the College of Business, specifically as a professor of management. Can you explain the value of teaching personality and social psychology to our future business leaders?

Jones: Absolutely. The most important thing I think social and personality psychology bring to the understanding of business is that students can understand themselves. I think it's very critical students understand that everybody's going to come from different perspectives. Everybody's going to have different predispositions towards behavior. So as a result, you're going to have people who excel when they understand themselves and the situations in which they thrive. So understanding themselves and understanding each other, particularly in class, I teach them about Kurt Lewin, the historical social psychology figure, who argued that all behaviors function of the person, the environment and the interaction between the two. So not only understanding that not everybody's going to react the same way in every single environment, but not every single environment is going to impact everybody the same way. And understanding those nuances in the business world will empower them to excel both in their own personal intrapersonal journey as well as the journey with their coworkers and those around them.

Sandoval: And that is brilliant. I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't aware that we had these types of classes on campus, so I think it's a fantastic advantage for our business students. And you talked about them learning about themselves, but when they get out into the real world, it would be a benefit as well. Correct?

Jones: Absolutely. Yeah. I've had students repeatedly tell me that negotiating difficult situations with bosses, coworkers, subordinates, once they leave the class, has been a real advantage of teaching the principles of management courses and organizational behavior courses from that psychological perspective.

Sandoval: So it seems like a force multiplier for their emotional intelligence.

Jones: Absolutely. While I don't teach any sort of courses or empowerment on emotional intelligence specifically, I certainly try to equip them to understand how to know themselves and know the individuals around them and be able to negotiate those situations with the most efficiency, compassion and maximum impact possible.

Sandoval: You research what's known as the dark triad and run the Corporate Climate Lab, a research group dedicated to studying interpersonal harm and deception. Could you explain what the dark triad is for our listeners?

Jones: Sure. The dark triad is simply shorthand for three of the most frequently researched personality traits. When it comes to interpersonal harm, there's nothing comprehensive about the dark triad, and it stands for the three traits of Machiavellianism and subclinical forms of narcissism and psychopathy. So we all have traits, traces of these traits in us, some more than others, some less than others. They vary in more or less a normal distribution within the population with about 8% to 10% having problematic scores at the higher end. Really what the dark triad does is,M I see it as a starting point. So when somebody enters an organization or a group, what types of situations would they be willing to commit interpersonal harm? Because the core that ties these three together is they're all callous and they're all manipulative. They don't care about you and they don't care about the truth.

And so they'll engage in whatever they need to engage in to get to their end goals, but their end goals will differ. So a narcissistic person is often a slave to their ego, and they'll do whatever it takes to promote that sense of superiority to the public. Whereas Machiavellianism is the most misunderstood trait, and that's really associated with strategic manipulation and focusing on instrumental gains, whatever course, ethical or unethical they need to chart. And then individuals high in psychopathy are slaves to their impulses. So they focus on immediate gratification. They have very little concern for the harm that it causes, and if it feels good, they'll go ahead and do it. So the motivations and the situations under which they'll engage in harm can differ drastically, but the actual harm they commit looks deceptively similar. So a lot of scholars have called into question whether these traits are really different, and they indeed are, but you have to look at their motivations and the situations under which they're willing to, well, they're going to engage in interpersonal harm.

Sandoval: Wow. So if I took your class, it would help me to recognize that in myself, but also recognize it in others in the workplace, and perhaps know how better to manage that if you encounter someone like that.

Jones: That's exactly right. So I have several students come up to me after class and say, "Dr. Jones, I'm really worried I might be narcissistic, or I have these Machiavellian tendencies." And my first response is generally, if you're concerned about it, you don't have the callousness associated with the traits. So I'm proud of you that you still consider other people and you're concerned about the ethics of your behavior. That tells me you're not hopelessly out of reach in terms of these traits. And I teach them to know themselves. So if you know you have a tendency to talk too much about yourself, go with the three plus one rule for every three questions or every three statements or every one statement you make about yourself, ask three questions to the other person and learn about them and hold your feet to the fire in terms of interpersonal relationships.

If you know you tend to be more entitled or you tend to boast yourself up, try to engage in cognitive strategies that tamp that down and facilitate an understanding and a humility that would help facilitate your future success. The other thing that I would say about knowing yourself and knowing others is that if you do know that you're dealing with somebody who might be extremely narcissistic or somebody who's Machiavellian, I do have a TED Talk, a TEDx Talk I gave here in Reno on handling manipulators. And there are techniques that you can do to manage those relationships. And there's some great books out there as well that can help you manage those relationships. But the most important message I would send if you're dealing with a narcissistic boss is think strategically. At the end of the day, if they are abusive and you didn't do anything wrong, it's not your fault, but you do have to manage that situation, especially if you can't get away. So think of some techniques and strategies that would help you maneuver around those situations.

Sandoval: So here's a chance for a shameless plug. I assume you can find that TED Talk on YouTube.

Jones: Absolutely. There's a TEDx Reno link. It was April of 2024, and it is, "Manipulate the Manipulator." I forget the exact title, but yeah, it was about understanding manipulation.

Sandoval: Okay, wonderful. So your expertise is also pivoted into helping companies and individuals become less vulnerable to cybersecurity and phishing attacks. Phishing being P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G?

Jones: Yes.

Sandoval: Discuss that, please.

Jones: Absolutely. It actually started with a colleague of mine at UT El Paso, Chris Kiekintveld, who was doing some really groundbreaking research on game-theoretic algorithms and situational components of cyber attacks. I sat him down one day and I said, "Gosh, wouldn't it be great if we integrated knowledge of the attackers into these strategies you're working on?" And so we got an Army Research Laboratory grant, which I actually brought here to UNR in my first couple of years, and we continued to work together finding that Machiavellian individuals will definitely approach system infiltration from a more stealthy strategic patient approach. Whereas individuals high in psychopathy are much more brute force. They'll bombard people with packages, they'll engage in very aggressive cyber hacking type techniques and get out with what they have immediately. So understanding attack patterns can help us understand the personality behind the keyboard. And recently we have shifted our focus now to looking at the psychology of persuasion and how to inoculate and prevent persuasive phishing emails, which is really what phishing emails are, to not find their way to get a toehold in somebody's psychology. So we've actually recently, we just concluded a National Science Foundation grant looking at inoculating people to phishing persuasion and getting them to see and feel what the person's trying to do ahead of time so that they can recognize the emotions and the reactions to the phishing email and shut it all down.

Sandoval: Now I'd like to get into an area of your research that feels quite different from what we've just discussed. You study emophilia a trait that drives some individuals to fall headfirst into romance with overwhelming speed and intensity. Can you explain what emophilia is and what inspired you to research and develop the concept?

Jones: That's actually a really funny story. When I was at the University of British Columbia studying with Del Paulhus, I conducted a study on my own looking at past sexual and romantic histories and how they might interfere with the present relationship. And so I had this one condition where I had somebody with frequent sexual encounters, and then I had another study where somebody had fallen in love over and over again, and I tried to publish that paper and my advisor, after several rejections, I came to my advisor and said, "What do you think?" He said, "Well, no, that study's not very good, so let's move on, but let's talk about that falling in love over and over again." He said, "I find that really fascinating. I want you to go develop a scale to study it." And hence the concept of emophilia was born. So emophilia is really falling in love quickly and falling in love frequently. And what's interesting about emophilia is that these individuals really genuinely feel the love. It's not some limerence or infatuation. It actually is genuine, compassionate, companionate, and all the things, consummate love, all the things we talk about. They feel these things. They just feel them much faster.

Sandoval: An emophiliac, can they fall in love with more than one person at the same time?

Jones: Absolutely. And it's really tricky because it's important not to confuse it with polyamory. Polyamory still has constraints and commitments and fidelity expectations surrounding it. Emophilia, they do end up falling in love with multiple people at the same time. They don't really cut people off like somebody with anxious attachment would, "Well, I'm done with you now, and I never want to speak to you again." Emophiliacs would respond often to the situations as, "I still love you, I just love them. And that person and that other person, too." That's exactly right.

Sandoval: So do they get their heartbroken a lot?

Jones: Emophiliacs do get their heartbroken a lot, but one of the things that I'm starting to learn about emophilia is that they're a little bit more resilient. Because if you think about somebody extremely low on the emophilic scale, and so somebody who doesn't fall in love virtually ever, they fall in love once and then that love doesn't work out. The relationship doesn't work out. For whatever reason, their threshold for falling in love is so incredibly high, they may never experience it again. And that can be a very crushing feeling. So an emophilic person, because their threshold for falling in love is so low, it will happen again. And so in a way, they end up moving on more effectively. And it's not this type of, "oh, I need you," or fear of being alone or any kind of anxiety-driven process. It's a passion, want, approach-driven process. So they end up falling in love very quickly with somebody else and move on. So there are trade-offs to being high and low in emophilia.

Sandoval: That's fascinating. So how can someone recognize if they are an emophiliac? Are there specific signs or behaviors to look out for and can it be linked to other personality traits or mental health patterns?

Jones: Absolutely. So the most effective way to know if you are high in emophilia is go to my website, which is dark triad.co and take my EP scale. The current study we're running right now that'll give you feedback on your EP scale is if you've ever dated a narcissist, because we find that individuals high in emophilia tend to not screen for red flags and potential problems in relationships. They wear rose-colored glasses upon meeting somebody, and they let their passions and emotions for that romantic connection take over. And so they don't screen out potential problems because they go full head force into these relationships. They don't screen like the other people lower in emophilia tend to do. It does correlate with concepts like anxious attachment, however, simply because what we tend to think we want, we tend to think we need, but anxious attachment is a need-based fear-driven process. That's a defense mechanism to protect people from feeling abandoned or alone, where emophilia is a want-based approach, process of passion, but the two tend to correlate slightly.

Sandoval: Just another quick question. If you're an emophiliac and there's these online dating sites, does that drive you to those?

Jones: Absolutely. So it's actually, I have a book that's under review or coming out hopefully this summer called "The Science of Emophilia: the Science of Serial Romance." And in that book, we discuss how the advent of online dating sites have created what's called a beta press in the population where the illusion of 50,000 available singles in a population leads people to be less faithful and believe that there's ample opportunity to meet people when in fact, most of that's a reality because most of those people you'll never connect with and you'll start a new relationship and it'll be the same cycle over and over and over again. So most of those people may not want to date you, you may not want to date them, but the illusion of that availability has allowed people to indulge their sense of emophilia in a relatively consequence-free environment.

Sandoval: So Dr. Jones, I know we've only scratched the surface. This has really been interesting and on the surface of all these captivating topics. But before we conclude, I'm going to talk a little bit about you and your background and where you came from and what brought you to the University of Nevada.

Jones: Yeah, sure. So I grew up in New Jersey, spent the first 21 years of my life there. I've moved all around and ultimately an old alum from UNR, actually the social psychology program, Dana Weiser, was somebody who told me about how fantastic UNR was. I actually helped her move to her first job at Texas Tech. And when I came up here, I just absolutely fell in love with the mountains, fell in love with the beauty of Reno. I mean, you really have to be here to experience how beautiful this region is. And when the opportunity came up in the College of Business at UNR, I jumped on it, and I was fortunate enough to get the job. But yeah, I really adore this region and the university. And so yeah, I originally was an assistant professor at the University of Texas El Paso in legal psychology studying white-collar crime. So I pivoted to trying to help organizations looking at corporate climate and how to improve those things before it gets to that point. And I think that's really been a powerful pivot in my research as well.

Sandoval: And you've been here for six years, correct?

Jones: Seven years. Seven years. That'll be seven years this August.

Sandoval: Alright. So what is your favorite part of living in Northern Nevada and what is your favorite part of the University of Nevada?

Jones: So my favorite part of living in the region of Reno and Nevada is the raw beauty. I very much...I grew up in New Jersey near some of the Appalachian mountain ranges and things like that. So I love the mountains. I love the raw beauty. And like I said, really you have to be here to appreciate how stunning the region really is and the natural beauty that it affords. So the ample opportunity for outdoor activities and hiking and things like that is just phenomenal. My favorite thing about the ÍƼöÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ is the culture, especially within my department of management. We have just a stellar lineup of amazing faculty in the College of Business and in management, many of whom are my friends and who I adore. So the culture of our faculty and the staff is unparalleled. We're all a bunch of friends, and I really enjoy just going to work every day to see my coworkers.

Sandoval: And you brought a special guest with you today?

Jones: I did.

Sandoval: Who is that?

Jones: This is my daughter Megan, and she is the light of my life and really makes me proud every single day. And so she's sitting very quietly and patiently in the podcast room. And for those listening that's right, she haven't heard a peep out of her, so she's a very good girl.

Sandoval: Megan is a good girl, and we are so happy you made it, Megan. So unfortunately that is all the time we have for this episode of Sagebrushers. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Jones.

Jones: Thank you, President Sandoval. I appreciate it.

Sandoval: And join us next time for another episode of Sagebrushers as we continue to tell the stories that make our University special and unique. Until then, I'm University President Brian Sandoval and go Pack!