Two types of jerks

I wrote once about kindness being more scarce in poorer societies. There's also a difference between richer and poorer societies in terms of how unkindness manifests itself most often.

In general, people who are profoundly selfish (a.k.a. assholes) fall into two categories that I call "brutes" and "brats." Both brutes and brats have no regards for other people's values or feelings and act on self-interest only; where they differ is in how they view their actions. Brutes have no problem bending people to their will in situations where they have the power to do so. They will take advantage of others at every opportunity. They more or less know that doing so is wrong, but they don't care. They figure the world is a tough place and it's either kill or be killed, so they kill if they have to. They do not feel the need to rationalize their assholery; even though they know the difference between right and wrong, they don't have a conscience. Brats, on the other hand, hate to think of themselves as assholes. They mostly recruit from people who at some point in their lives were profoundly spoiled, and because for a long time all their social interactions were based on other people catering to their whims, they concluded that the way of the world is such that they rightfully deserve more than others. They have no conscience either; but, as opposed to brutes, they are completely amoral. They believe deeply that other people are there to serve them and interpret any disagreement as terrible injustice.

My stylized and completely subjective observation is that poorer assholes are mostly brutes whereas richer ones are mostly brats (this seems to hold both within- and cross-country). There's also an orthogonal gender divide. Holding income constant, selfish men come in both flavors (though brats are usually outnumbered) whereas almost all selfish women are of the brat variety.

(In case you're wondering: If I'm an asshole, then I'm definitely a brat. Note the conditional nature of the statement though.)