Season 2 Episode 9: Making New Friends
After her friend Rob moved away, Anti-Social-Girl Nilly (age 15-17) befriended another guy. They shared some interests and overall he appeared to be strong and confident. Smart move to get someone like him on your side is it not?
Well, turns out it is not best for your school performance and when confronted with bad grades, she realizes that at some point in your school career, it is not about power on the school yard, but about the prospect of academic success.
Conduct Disorder is associated with impeded school performance and the social environment may play into this. Luckily, the up-coming discussion of her grades remind her that her future plans and actual future may diverge if she does not chance something. She also gets kinda annoyed by her friend. So, it is time for new friends, which fit her newly gained ambitions!
She looks around and spots a student who looks more to her liking. A bit of a loner, but above average grade and generally kind. The perfect new friend. Now, the question remains: how to get rid of your old friend, get the teacher to give you a better grade, and get to your newly targeted friend?
Easy! Throw your old friend under the bus, so you get off lightly. Blame him for your poor performance, teachers loooove self-reflection and social awareness, as well as being right about their judgement about another student. Who cares about your old friends, especially if they are not listening, right?
Next, you tell your teacher that in order to help you, you need to sit next to the targeted friend. That they barely know you, does not matter, they will make your acquaintance soon! And once you are placed next to them, you act as if it was all the teacher's plan. Neither old nor new friend knows you ever had anything to do with it!
And then, you work with your new friend together to become a good student and check out their notes, homework, and other stuff to copy.
As such, we see how Nilly drops an old friend in exchange for a new one. Ironically, unbeknown to her, she will actually develop some sort of emotional bonding with them, or better an imbalanced desire to be actually liked and admired. This is how she came to meet the "pink haired student" with glasses we saw already in earlier episodes.
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Author's note:
I could not find an explicit scientific source about it, but the idea that people with Conduct Disorder and ASPD, especially if combined with CU traits, are willing to throw their own friends under the bus, if they can save their own, is pretty much common knowledge. It does not always have to be dramatic. It can also be subtle.
I found this surprising when I once watched an interview with a psychopathic gang member, who admitted that he would switch the sides on a gang, if the other side has something better to offer. Because when I checked the comments, a lot of people who felt like they would be psychopathic due to a lack of emotional consideration for others, they felt repulsed by the idea to betray the close circle. To me, it appears that the lack of empathy for the common people is reserved for out-groups, while empathy and loyalty is considered as given, if there is the safety of an inner circle.
The fact that a psychopath may throw this all away seems to be... perplexing to say the least. Also that you may befriend people you may not even like, seems to be unusual. I would not say I am like this today, because at some point, I wanted stable relationships and I had to work hard to get to that point. Also I think that most of my social circle right now is in their social aspect themselves beneficial to me in a way I could not have imagined when I was younger. So thanks to these people for that!
Further reading:
Vitaro F, Tremblay RE, Bukowski WM. Friends, friendships and conduct disorders. In: Hill J, Maughan B, eds. Conduct Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence.
Keen DV. Conduct disorders and us: from heart sink to heart warming? Arch Dis Child. 2007 Oct;92(10):838-41.
Miron CD, Satlof-Bedrick E, Waller R. Longitudinal association between callous-unemotional traits and friendship quality among adjudicated adolescents. J Adolesc. 2020 Jun;81:19-26
Martins-Silva T, Bauer A, Matijasevich A, Santos I, Barros A, Ekelund U, Tovo-Rodrigues L, Murray J. Educational performance and conduct problem trajectories from childhood to adolescence: Observational and genetic associations in a Brazilian birth cohort. JCPP Adv. 2022 Oct 17;2(4)