The Dark Side of our Personalities

[lpetrich]

Scientists Have Identified The Driving Force Behind All Your Darkest Impulses

Psychologists recognize the dark triad: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Some psychologists in Germany and Denmark have gone further, looking at other such traits and and finding a correlation between them -- a combined factor that they call D.

In a series of four separate studies involving over 2,500 participants, Zettler and fellow researchers surveyed participants with questions designed to measure their levels of nine distinct dark personality traits: egoism, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychological entitlement, psychopathy, sadism, self-interest, and spitefulness.

To do so, participants were asked to disagree with a range of variable 'dark' statements, such as: "I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so", "I'll say anything to get what I want", "It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there", and "Hurting people would be exciting".

They have published their results as The dark core of personality (Morten Moshagen and Benjamin E. Hilbig in Germany, Ingo Zettler in Denmark). They also have a site where one can take a personality quiz which will give one's D strength. The full-length quiz also finds estimates of several more specific dark traits. Here is the complete list, along with a "light" trait:

• The combined factor D is the tendency to maximize one's individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others — accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.
• Egoism is the excessive concern with one’s own pleasure or advantage at the expense of community well-being.
• Greed is the dissatisfaction of not having enough, combined with the desire to acquire more, i.e. an insatiable desire for more resources, monetary or other.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by a cynical world view, manipulativeness, strategic-calculating orientation, and callous affect.
• Moral Disengagement describes a set of cognitive processing styles of decisions and behavior (e.g., dehumanization, misattribution of responsibility and blame) that allows to behave unethically without feeling distress.
• In Narcissists, ego-reinforcement is the all-consuming motive, leading to the tendencies to approach social admiration by means of self-promotion and to prevent social failure by means of self-defense.
• Psychological Entitlement describes a stable and pervasive sense that one deserves more and is entitled to more than others.
• Psychopathy is characterized by deficits in affect (i.e., callousness, lack of remorse or concern for others) and lack of self-control (i.e., impulsivity).
• Sadism is the tendency to engage in cruel, demeaning, or aggressive behaviors for one's own pleasure and/or dominance.
• Self-Centeredness is the indifference or insensitiveness to the suffering and needs of others.
• Spitefulness is the tendency to harm others for pleasure, even if this entails harm to oneself.
• Honesty-Humility describes the tendency to avoid manipulating others for personal gain, feel little temptation to break rules, be uninterested in lavish wealth and luxuries, and to feel no special entitlement to elevated social status.

From the dark-factor site,

The Content of D

Individuals with high levels in D will generally aim to maximize their individual utility at the expense of the utility of others. Utility is understood in terms of the extent of goal achievement, which includes different (more or less) visible gains such as excitement, joy, money, pleasure, power, status, and psychological need fulfillment in general. Thus, individuals high in D will pursue behaviors that unilaterally benefit themselves at the cost of others and, in the extreme, will even derive immediate utility for themselves (e.g., pleasure) from disutility inflicted on other people (e.g., pain). Vice versa, individuals high in D will generally not be motivated to promote other’s utility (e.g., helping someone) and will not derive utility from other’s utility as such (e.g., being happy for someone).

Further, those with high levels in D will hold beliefs that serve to justify their corresponding actions (for example, to maintain a positive self-image despite malevolent behavior). There are a variety of beliefs that may serve as justification, including that high-D individuals consider themselves (or their group) as superior, see others (or other groups) as inferior, endorse ideologies favoring dominance, adopt a cynical world view, consider the world as a competitive jungle, and so on.

Reading the authors' paper, I find that they compare D and related factors to the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. They find that D is strongly negatively correlated with Honesty-Humility (H), negatively correlated with both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and weakly negatively correlated with Extroversion and weakly positively correlated with Neuroticism. But D is more than negative H, it seems.


There is an obvious practical application of this dark-factor work: working out how to recognize when someone is strong in them and to try to keep them away from anything where dark-factor tendencies can cause a lot of trouble. Psychological testing may be difficult, because someone high in D may be careful to give low-D answers.

Consider the case of someone who firmly believes that the end justifies the means, that one has to break eggs to make an omelet. That someone might feel suspicious about a psychological test and lie about their beliefs, claiming to believe that the end does not justify the means. For them, that lying would be perfectly justified, since the end justifies the means.

 

[ruby sparks]

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

For those who can't access the paper, you can do the self-test online here:

https://qst.darkfactor.org/index.php

 

[poster]

I'm often fearful that I would rate miserably on a test such as this. I scored considerably lower in D and highr in H than I expected. Cheers!

 

[Tigers!]

Did the test


Still think Original Sin is a lot less verbose.

 

[southernhybrid]

My scores were slightly higher than Tigers, but I did answer several questions as neutral because I thought they were stupid questions. To be honest, I am highly skeptical of tests like this. I think once we are able to really understand the brain from looking at the images from tests like MRIs, we will have much more accurate understandings of things like psychopathy. I think people that have the type of traits that are described in this test are likely due to the actual makeup of the cerebral cortex, and maybe other areas of the brain, and possibly the specialization of the numerous varieties of neurons and how they interact with each other. Environmental influences can also influence personality development, but probably to a lessor extent. I'm not sure.

So, basically I'm skeptical of tests like this and the conclusions they make, even if my results were good. I didn't need to take a test to let me know that I am not the type of person that ever enjoys or tries to hurt other people. I've always been this way. It doesn't make me any better than anyone else. It's just the way my brain has developed.

Finally, I don't think we are capable of being completely objective when answering questions on tests like this. That's why I am more interested in the progress we make when it comes to the actual examination of the physical structures and activities of the brain. Still, we humans do seem to have fun taking this type of test, even if it's all bullshit.

 

[lpetrich]

I must note that psychopathy in the psychological literature is not simply being deranged or mentally ill, as it is in informal usage, but something much more specific. It is traditionally a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits ( Psychopathy).

Robert D. Hare has created checklist of psychopathy traits, so that one can see how well someone fits. From Hare Psychopathy Checklist - define, person, people, used, personality, score, traits, Definition, Purpose,

• Glib and superficial charm
• Grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
• Need for stimulation
• Pathological lying
• Cunning and manipulativeness
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
• Callousness and lack of empathy
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Poor behavioral controls
• Sexual promiscuity
• Early behavior problems
• Lack of realistic long-term goals
• Impulsivity
• Irresponsibility
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
• Many short-term marital relationships
• Juvenile delinquency
• Revocation of conditional release
• Criminal versatility

 

[lpetrich]

I have taken the correlations that MM, BH, and IZ have published in their paper and I have done Principal Components Analysis on them. That's a way of fitting a multidimensional ellipsoid to some data. The lengths and directions of the axes then tell us something about that data.

The strongest component was overall correlation, the D factor itself. The strongest contributors were Psychopathy and Machiavellianism, followed by Spitefulness, Moral Disengagement, and Egoism, and then Sadism and Psychological Entitlement. Narcissism and Self-Centeredness were significantly less, typically around half the strength of the strongest ones.

The next component's strongest contributors were Self-Centeredness and Narcissism, with Psychological Entitlement not far behind. Correlated in the opposite direction from those three were Egoism, Sadism, and Spitefulness, though rather weakly. The others are correlated even more weakly, though mostly in the opposite direction from the first three.

So the Dark Side has two main parts: belief that one is super great and willingness to be nasty to others. "Megalomania" is an obvious name for the first one, but what used to be called that is nowadays called narcissistic personality disorder.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Psychopathy is caused by atheism and nothing else. /s

 

[BH]

It won't let me take the test.

 

[Tigers!]

It won't let me take the test.

It knows you are strong on the dark side.

 

[rousseau]

I would expect 'dark' tendencies to be prominent in a world of the biological imperative.

The distinction, I think, between a sociopath and someone who plays the game intelligently, is that the intelligent person knows which courses of action benefit everyone (enlightened self interest), whereas the sociopath is nakedly malevolent, often towards their own detriment.

 

[BH]

It won't let me take the test.

It knows you are strong on the dark side.

Well, I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time and had to pass gas out in a public place once. I swear it just came out and i couldn't hold it in any longer.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

My scores were slightly higher than Tigers, but I did answer several questions as neutral because I thought they were stupid questions.

I agree. And some are ambiguous.

For example: "It’s true that I can be mean to others."

That I CAN be? Sure. Anyone CAN be. That's a measure of egotism and personal responsibility.

Other questions are about how much you value telling the truth. Well, it isn't always dark to tell lies, but I bet disagreement with the statement "You should always tell the truth" is given dark points.

But many will answer this as if it is asking if people are sometimes mean to others. Yet even if you never are mean to others, you CAN be. There is the opportunity to be.

For the record, I scored 2.15 and 22% (higher than tigers! but still measured as "very low")

 

[Jobar]

Score 1.6, 4%.

I did the short version.

And I very much wonder how Trump would score on that test, answering honestly.

 

[southernhybrid]

Trump would lie if he took that tests. He isn't capable of telling the truth or of even realizing that harm that he does to other people.

 

[OLDMAN]

I scored 2.66 and at 57%. But I tried to avoid the neutral answer because it seems a bit dishonest. (if you know what I mean)

Seems to me perfectly natural that one shouldn't simply follow the rules regardless. I mean we have lots of stupid laws on the books. Also at my age I realized that a lot of institutions will use the truth against you and being institutions, not give a fuck. Look out for number one, because most companies and people won't worry about you or your family and will watch out for theirs...seems only logical. I could be wrong but I think age and sex will show a strong divide.
In the end I think they nailed me. Under the right circumstance I will kill you. lol

 

[rousseau]

My scores were slightly higher than Tigers, but I did answer several questions as neutral because I thought they were stupid questions.

I agree. And some are ambiguous.

For example: "It’s true that I can be mean to others."

That I CAN be? Sure. Anyone CAN be. That's a measure of egotism and personal responsibility.

Other questions are about how much you value telling the truth. Well, it isn't always dark to tell lies, but I bet disagreement with the statement "You should always tell the truth" is given dark points.

But many will answer this as if it is asking if people are sometimes mean to others. Yet even if you never are mean to others, you CAN be. There is the opportunity to be.

For the record, I scored 2.15 and 22% (higher than tigers! but still measured as "very low")

Agreed, some of the questions were a bit off.

- Is it always wrong to break the law?

Of course it's not, but I don't know how my answer is being interpreted

- Do you think you're an average person?

I know I'm not an average person but the test isn't going to like that answer.

I scored pretty low on most measures anyway, which I expected. For the most part I care about how the people around me feel and don't think I deserve anything that I didn't honestly achieve. Actually, just how the questions were worded makes people sound pretty terrifying. I can't imagine answering 'Strongly Agree' to a lot of those.