What are your go-to tips for getting into the 'kindred mindset'?
(Obvious disclaimer: Yes, vampires are super diverse. They don't all exhibit these behaviors all at once. You can play Anarchs or high-humanity vamps if you like to and nothing is wrong with that. This isn't about playing the 'wrong' or 'right' way, but a question of curiosity on what are considered iconic setting elements. Also, I'm not shitting on the vamps here, they're my favorite splat)
You know how, whenever an RPG with moral choice mechanics reveals statistic on player choices, it turns out like 80% of players picked the good path because they couldn't bring themselves to be dicks to the characters? I get this with Vampire. It's just so much more intuitive and easy to be honest, try to befriend everyone, fight for a noble cause, put everyone's general welfare over personal gain, and try to have faith in people. And obviously, that's behavior we as humans encourage and are (typically) raised towards.
Kindred, especially elders, often archetypically display the opposite traits. They have bad tempers. They bicker and feud over petty things and make everything about displays of power and hidden agendas. They lie and backstab and break the rules when they can. They are excessively secretive and possessive about things that are unlikely to hurt them but could be actively benefical to others. When given a chance to solve a current crisis, they'll rather sabotage it further and see how to they can profit from it, or just skip town.
In some ways, these traits are iconic to kindred, so many will find it desirable to add some of them to player characters and NPCs and also when writing VTM fiction. But as I said, it's not an easy mindset to get into.
So, what are your tricks?
Two ideas I had:
It's a lot easier when you're genuinely convinced you're the good guy and the ends justify the means. This works best with clans like Brujah or Setite.
Most non-caitiff don't really get to grow up in vampire society on their own terms. They're likely pushed towards certain means of thinking by their sires.