[rhizome]

Sure, a lot of jerks are aggressive, but that's only a correlation, not a causation.

That's nice in theory, but there are a lot of people with dysfunctional upbringings for whom "jerks" provide the only role models for success.

[billpatrianakos]

I'm someone who had such an upbringing and my male model (my father) was a jerk (the rest of the world called him an asshole). He was very successful in business and I always wanted to model that success for myself. The funny thing is, I actually turned out exactly opposite of him and it was because of his jerk-ness that it happened. Though he tried to make me in his image his fatal mistake was treating me like the rest of the world. Instead of learning how to be the boss like him I learned how to fear the boss and be passive, nice, agreeable, and generally like a door mat.

So I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say but what I thought you meant to say was that those who have been brought up by assholes end up being assholes themselves. I disagree and I'm living proof. The person being brought up like that wants to develop those "jerk" traits that make their parent(s) successful but they end up getting developing habits like pleasing people and following orders without question that get in the way of what they want to do.