--- Sally Adee, in a New Scientist review of Poisonous People by Leanne ten Brinke, March 2026
Excerpt
Ten Brinke doesn’t promise low-effort approaches to rooting out liars. “If lying were so easy and straightforward to detect, there would be little point in doing it,” she reminds us.
But it can be done if you pay attention. If a minority of “bad apples”, as she calls them, ruin the barrel, the rest of us have some choice in whether or not to let the rot set in. Indeed, ten Brinke hints there may be some personality types within the 80 per cent who can not only stop the rot, but reverse it. These people pair dark traits with qualities that we don’t normally associate with them, like empathy and conscientiousness.
Their mere existence explodes another uncritically accepted axiom among the 80 per cent, that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. In fact, this only holds true for the worst among us, says ten Brinke. Taking responsibility for your barrel of apples may require being more disciplined and honest about your own character. But there are rewards. Power is actually value neutral. It just makes us more of what we already are.
