PDF Summary:The Laws Of Human Nature, by Robert Greene

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If, however, we can look deeper at human nature, we can learn to:

1. Stop taking things personally. Whenever we’re in the presence of others, we tend to worry about what they think of us. Because emotions were originally related to communication, when they’re directed at us, whether or not we’re the source, we tend to take them personally. For example, if you’re angry about missing your bus, the people you encounter don’t have this background and think you’re angry at them. However, once we learn the laws, we’ll realize that most people aren’t actually that interested in us. When they get angry or judgmental, it’s usually not because we offended them; we just crossed their path at the wrong moment.
2. Manage toxic types. The laws will help us interpret people’s non-verbal cues and behavior patterns to see what kind of dangerous thoughts and feelings they might be hiding. This will help us identify and avoid bad apples before they get dangerously close to us.
3. Control our own nature. The laws will help us understand our characters, our repressions, our patterns, and other elements of self that we might want to improve or change.
4. **Make us more...

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2. They believe they’re smart. Almost everyone believes they’re intelligent in some way. They might admit that they’re not a genius like Einstein, but they’re proud of their street smarts, common sense, manual skills, and so on. No one wants to believe they’re stupid or gullible.

3. They believe they’re good. People like to think that they treat others well, support causes, and act collaboratively, and if they clash with others, they think of it as “tough love.”

• For example, many people who donate money want their names publicly displayed on a sponsor list so everyone can see how good they are.

People additionally have self-opinions about their specific insecurities, which usually come from childhood. Most of these self-opinions include superiority. For example, if someone thinks of herself as independent, she’ll tend to think that being independent is a positive trait and that her independence levels are superior to others’.

Low Self-Opinion or No Self-Opinion

A few people have low self-opinion because their childhood insecurity is related to being successful or good. A low self-opinion is just as strong as a positive one—people who think they’re...

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• They think they have a lot of enemies.
• They want to control others, see them as self-objects (part of themselves), and think the only point of others is to give them attention.
  • For example, in a romantic relationship, they force their partners to end all their other relationships so they get all their attention.
• They make others feel guilty for not paying them enough attention.
• They get impatient or bored when you talk to them about something that doesn’t affect them, and they try to bring the conversation back to themselves.
• They’re envious when others get attention.
• They’re very self-confident because this serves two purposes: gaining attention and hiding insecurities. However, this self-confidence is usually unjustified—they aren’t actually as competent as they appear to be.
• Often, they struggle with their jobs because they’re so worried about what others think of them that it’s hard to concentrate on anything outside themselves. (There is one exception—those who use their professional accomplishments to garner attention.)

Subcategories of Deep Narcissists

There are four types of deep narcissists. If no more specific directions are...

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Expression of Grandiosity

Grandiosity can be expressed in many ways, though there are fewer outlets today than they were in the past. In older times, people met their need for grandiosity with religion—gods and spirits allowed us to be part of something bigger and grander than ourselves—or by following a leader with a strong cause—if a leader did something great, their followers shared in the success.

Now that fewer people believe in something and there are fewer great leaders, we have to express our grandiosity in some other way. Many of us turn to worshipping ourselves, most commonly by trying to get social status through doing something prestigious or helping people. This works to some extent for talented people—they will have success and get the admiration they crave—but they’ll eventually get involved with projects that are beyond their abilities.

Additionally, people try to cope with their need for grandiosity by doing the following:

• Compensating with drugs, a superior attitude, alcohol, and so on.
• Faking humility. Some people try to hide their grandiosity by being visibly humble. For example, they might talk about how they don’t want status....

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Make People Like You: Confirm Their Self-Opinions

To influence people, you need to get them to drop their defenses by making them feel validated and confirming their self-opinion. People can think whatever they want about themselves, but they don’t know that it's true until someone else confirms it. When they get confirmation, they relax and feel secure, which allows them to stop worrying about themselves and think about other things, such as whatever you’re trying to convince them of.

When you come up against someone with a low self-opinion, you still need to validate this opinion. Be empathetic about how difficult their lives are. Only once they feel validated can you start convincing them out of their low self-opinion.

If you try to get people to do what you want in any way other than validating them—for example, by pleading or making them feel guilty—you might get what you want once, but they’ll resent you and be unlikely to help in the future. And if you always try to influence people in these ineffective ways, you become in danger of thinking that everyone in the world is indifferent.

There are five strategies for confirming someone’s...

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Dos

1. Start small or else you'll overwhelm yourself. Don’t try to read the whole body at once.

• For example, in a conversation, try to identify just one or two facial expressions that indicate that a person’s words aren’t giving the whole picture. Do this with multiple people, and only after you’ve gotten used to the face, move on to the voice and other body language. Write down the patterns you notice.

2. Focus only on observation. Don’t try to interpret what you notice, and especially don’t try to describe your thoughts in words.

3. People watch. Go to a public place and observe people. This exercise will allow you to watch people without having to maintain a conversation at the same time. Guess things about people based on what you see, such as their personality or profession.

4. Be subtle. Use only peripheral glances to spot clues. You’ll make people uncomfortable if you stare at them.

5. Encourage people to talk. Mirror them or respond with something that proves you’re listening. The longer they talk, the more they’ll communicate nonverbally.

6. Establish a baseline. When you’re studying a certain person, watch her interact with a...

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1. Those who choose not to mask are pushed to the fringes of society.
2. Learning to see through masks will help you predict people. When someone does something hostile, there are always signs beforehand because strong emotions are impossible to entirely hide.

In this law, we’ll learn to make people like us, manage toxic types, and control our own nature.

Make People Like You: Impression Management

You can make people like you by wearing an appealing mask, which is also called impression management. Impression management is especially important in professional situations because people associate certain behaviors with certain professions, and if their expectations are contradicted, they suspect a lack of competence. For example, if your doctor started acting like a rock musician, you might worry about her ability to diagnose illness. Even people who seem rebellious are subject to this suspicion—if a hipster suddenly wore a suit, others would question her authenticity as a hipster.

Once you’ve proven your identity and competence, you can start to show more of your true self and quirks, but you can never completely take the mask off. To continue succeeding...

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1. Active envy is a much stronger, maintained form of envy. The feeling can’t be vented in a quick release like a joke. This envy, because it’s so uncomfortable to feel, often transforms into righteous indignation, which can motivate us to harm the person we’re indignant or envious of. Actively envious people enjoy the pain of whomever they envy.

It’s important to study this law for two reasons:

1. Realize that some of the confusing attacks in your past stemmed from envy. Once you understand people’s real motivations, it’s easier to get over painful breaks in relationships.
2. Predict envy attacks so that you can avoid them.

In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and to control our own nature.

Manage Toxic Types: Warnings, Triggers, and Enviers

When people’s envy is triggered, they display nonverbal cues and give themselves away through their actions. Everyone shows these signs occasionally as part of passive envy, but if you see a pattern or combinations of signs, you might be dealing with active envy.

Cue #1: Microexpressions on first meetings. When people initially meet you and feel envy, they haven’t had time to go through the mental...

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In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and how to control our own nature.

Manage Toxic Types: Aggressors

Because everyone has aggressive tendencies, you’ll occasionally encounter low-level aggression. Simply ignore it and move on. However, highly aggressive people can be dangerous because they’re willing to break rules and cross lines that you probably aren’t. For example, when you get frustrated with someone, run out of patience for their resistance, and snap at them, you feel uncomfortable and quickly stop. An aggressor, on the other hand, may have no problem yelling or swearing at someone.

Here are the two types of aggressors and how to deal with them:

Type #1: Chronic Aggressors

Chronic aggressors have such strong feelings of helplessness that they regularly act on their aggression and cross social lines. Chronic aggressors likely become that way because of the influence of:

• Genetics. Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein found that some babies were more greedy than others—they had huge tantrums and demanded their mothers’ milk.
• Development. If a child’s parents don’t give her independence, she may dominate others as an adult, or if...

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Study the Law: Learn About the Anima and Animus

According to psychologist Carl Jung, we all have an internal entity called the anima (our repressed feminine tendencies) or animus (our repressed masculine tendencies). We tend to fall in love with people who embody our anima or animus because we want to get closer to our opposite both internally and externally.

• For example, Chopin was more feminine and George Sand more masculine, and they complemented each other.

When in love, our repressed traits come to the surface. To outsiders, it might look like we’re behaving out of character, but in fact, we’re being more authentic because we’re displaying all our traits, not just the traits associated with one gender. As a result, most of us change in the following ways:

• We focus on one person rather than the variety of topics we’re usually absorbed by.
• We act childishly and feel childish fear.
• We badly judge other people’s characters and don’t listen to anyone who tries to set us straight.
• We don’t understand why we’re doing any of the above.
• Our self-opinions become more malleable.

(We don’t necessarily need another person to see our anima or...

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• It’s present in digital and virtual settings, such as social media, but it’s less strong than in a physical setting like a crowd.
• It isn’t inherently positive or negative. Social force evolved to keep us safe, but in the modern world, some of its tendencies are inappropriate. For example, we evolved to dislike outsiders because it helped us survive—outsiders could have been aggressive or carry diseases. Today, though, disliking outsiders is inappropriate.
• We’re attracted to this force. Almost everyone inherently likes partisan crowds because they give us energy.
• When we don’t get enough of this social force and are isolated, we decline. We lose touch with reality and our own existence.
• We come up with rituals to strengthen the bonds within the group, such as political assemblies.
• Eye contact is particularly important for social force. When we feel someone’s gaze on us, it confirms that we’re real and validates our belonging.
• Even though we require it, we’re not completely comfortable with the idea of social force and we rarely talk about it or even become aware of its existence. The force makes us uncomfortable because it...

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The need for performance, like mask-wearing in general, isn’t something we need to fight or feel bad about—it’s wired in to everyone. What we do need to do is be aware of this influence so we can be more intentional about the image we present.

Influence #3: Other people’s emotions overpower our own. When we’re alone, our moods change, but if we’re in a group and a group member or members’ emotions are stronger than ours, they’ll replace them. Fear and anxiety are the most contagious emotions because they helped us survive. Apathy, tiredness, excitement, joy, hatred, desire, and rage are also quite contagious.

Influence #4: We become incredibly certain. By ourselves, we tend to doubt our choices. In a group, though, we tend to be certain of the decisions we’ve made, even if they’re risky or inadvisable. This is because in a group:

• It takes a lot of effort to come to a consensus, so we’re inclined to stick with whatever’s determined.
• If we don’t agree with the group, we feel like outsiders, and we never want to feel this way.
• If many people agree on a course of action, that makes it seem legitimate.

For example, financial bubbles are often caused by...

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Generations follow a four-phase cycle:

1. The first generation is revolutionary—members change the existing conditions, usually creating some instability. The instability isn’t necessarily violent—it could also be a major shift in values. This generation usually includes strong leaders.
2. The second generation seeks stability because they came of age during revolution. Members band together for safety.
3. Members of the third generation are individualistic because they never experienced revolution and don’t feel the need to gather allies.
4. The fourth generation feels that society is plodding and valueless. This attitude leads to some sort of crisis, often because when we lack values, we turn to demagogues or scapegoats, or tribalize. This generation usually includes a group of people who want to go back in time.

The cycle always includes the new generation pushing back against the values of the previous generation. The author thinks this might be because we develop our generational perspective when we’re young and tend to think absolutes. Additionally, this pattern is probably somewhat responsible for our survival—if we continued by getting wilder and...

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In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and make people like us.

Manage Toxic Types: Leaders and Authority Figures

Authority and leadership aren’t synonymous. Authority comes from striving for a higher purpose, which is a fundamental human need. People need purpose to help them guide their behavior for two reasons:

• Unlike animals, we don’t have instincts that tell us what to do. We have consciousness and a lot of choices.
• We’re aware of our insignificance in the larger world and we want to feel connected to something.

Leadership, on the other hand, is just holding a position of power.

It’s possible for someone with little authority to end up in a leadership position, especially today, because many people, even those in charge, associate negative connotations with authority and avoid using it.

• For example, some parents strive to be their children’s older friends rather than someone who tells them what to do.

Therefore, it’s important to assess leaders before choosing to join their groups or follow them. Otherwise, we might decide to follow someone who doesn’t actually have a vision, regurgitates a groups’ desires, or is...

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In contrast, irrational people are unaware of and deny their emotions, or they get even more emotional when someone points out that they’re letting their emotions influence them.

Rationality is a skill that needs to be learned, not a trait that everyone’s born with. In this law, we’ll first study different types of irrationality. They, we’ll use this knowledge to learn how to control our own nature.

Study the Law: Two Types of Irrationality

Type #1: Fundamental Irrationality—Biases

Fundamental irrationality is the low-level constant irrationality everyone is constantly the victim of. It’s commonly driven by the emotions pleasure (which people want) and pain (which people want to avoid) and causes a variety of biases:

Bias #1: Conviction. This bias makes us think that if someone (including us) feels strongly about something, it must be right. When we see a leader speak passionately about something, we assume they’ve assessed the situation and their strong feelings are justified. When we feel strongly about something ourselves, this covers up doubt—if we can muster enough energy to strongly defend something, it must be valuable, right?

• For example,...

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• For example, in 19th-century India, venomous cobras roamed the streets of Delhi. British authorities decided this was a problem and offered a reward for every dead cobra turned in, anticipating this would lower the cobra population. Instead, locals bred cobras so they could kill them, turn them in, and make money. When the authorities realized this was happening, they canceled the bounty. The breeders retaliated by releasing all their cobras, and the cobra population increased by 300%.

If you find yourself thinking that if you do something, your action will directly lead to only one outcome, you may be suffering from short-term thinking. It’s impossible to predict all the consequences, but the best long-term thinkers consider as many outcomes as possible.

A spin-off of nonconsequential thinking is believing that if your intentions are good, the outcome will be good. This is not always the case.

Sign #2: Battles That Won’t Win the War

If you’re involved in many struggles, and none of them are going anywhere, but you don’t want to give up because you’ve spent so many resources already, this reluctance to retreat may signal shortsightedness.

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• Ambivalent or enmeshed mothers are inconsistent—sometimes they’re distanced, sometimes they’re smothering. Their children sometimes take care of them, and the children grow up to find relationships anxiety-inducing and conflicting.
• Disorganized mothers are never satisfied with anything their children do. Their children sometimes end up with emotional problems.

3. Habits. As we grow up, when we make decisions, we create neuron patterns in our brains, and once we’ve established this neurological roadmap, we tend to keep following it.

4. Masks. As people discover our character flaws, we hide them by spinning them into something more positive or acting the opposite. This layer is what makes it hard to accurately assess other people’s characters.

• For example, an arrogant person might disguise their arrogance as self-confidence.

If these four influences are contradictory—for example, our genetics dispose us to be greedy but our parents raised us to be generous—our characters become contradictory too, often driving ambivalent or conflicting behavior.

In this law, we’ll look at how to manage toxic types. Then, we’ll look at how to control our own...

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• For example, if you go into an interaction with someone expecting them to be rude, they pick up on your negative emotions and reflect them back at you. This confirms your belief that people are negative.

In this law, we’ll learn how to manage toxic types and control our own nature.

Manage Toxic Types and Control Your Own Nature: Negative and Positive Attitudes

First, we’ll look at five negative attitudes and how to manage them in others and ourselves. Then, we’ll look at how to become more positive.

Five Negative Attitudes

There are five common varieties of negative attitudes. Often, people hold more than one because negative emotions amplify each other. For example, someone who’s hostile is likely to also feel angry.

As you read through the following types, determine if you fit them by reflecting on how you:

• Judge others. If you focus on people’s negatives, you probably have a negative attitude. If you forgive their flaws, you’re probably more positive.
• Handle hard times. If you blame others, minimize your own mistakes, hate change, and rile when challenged, you may have a negative attitude.
• Inspire responses in others,...

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*   For example, the pornography industry didn’t flourish until it was outlawed. 

Even though the grass-is-always-greener syndrome will always exist, people don’t always take advantage of it. For example, advertisements are heavy-handed, and politicians might be good at riling us up in the moment, but none of this is persuasive in the long term because it doesn’t present a future.

In this law, we’ll first look at how to control our own nature. Then, we’ll look at how to make people like us.

Control Your Own Nature: Escape This Law’s Thrall

To avoid being enthralled by this law, reflect on what you sincerely want and like so that when you do feel pulled towards something, you can tell if it’s because you actually want it or if it’s because someone or something (such as the grass-is-green syndrome) is influencing you.

Additionally, you can redirect this law to motivate yourself. A feeling of dissatisfaction can spur you out of the complacency you develop as you age.

Finally, you can escape this law by channeling your syndrome into coveting a deeper connection with what you already have:

• People. You can never know everything about another...

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• (Shortform example: The stereotypical image of heaven was a peaceful, bright place where you could be reunited with those who had died before you.)

Today, however, now that we know more about science, it’s harder for people to believe in an afterlife. We’ve come up with a few new strategies to make death less painful:

• We’ve hidden it. In the past, people regularly died in public places or their homes, and many people had witnessed the death of someone else. Today, in some parts of the world, death is relegated to hospitals, and most people have never seen someone die.
• We’ve made it cartoonish. In films and video games, action scenes are full of death, but it’s not taken seriously.
• We worship youth. We avoid old things because they remind us of how short life is. Instead, we focus on what’s new.
• We worship technology. Some people like to believe technology and advances in medical science will help us defeat death.

In this law, we’ll look at how to control our own nature by learning some strategies to feel more alive.

Control Your Own Nature: Feel More Alive

There are five strategies to becoming more aware of death (and...