The Dark Triad
They call it “The Dark Triad,”— Which sounds like the new generation of bad guys in Rogue One, but it’s actually a term coined by psychologists in the late 1990s to describe a personality trait spectrum. The “triad” is formed by three conditions: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
These three personality characteristics are believed to share the overarching quality of having a general lack of empathy. Empathy for others is what allows us to be in touch with the emotions and desires of those around us, which has helped us thrive as social beings in our evolution. Empathy is what keeps up from hurting those around us because we understand what it’s like to be hurt.
This emotional deficit can take one or many of the forms described in the Dark Triad. Let’s define what each of these personality types mean.
We’ll start with narcissism. Most of us know somebody who is narcissistic and most of us are narcissistic to a certain degree. When you’ve done something good and people notice, a small part of you maybe hopes everyone remembers it forever. A full-blown narcissist, however, is completely focused on their ego.
“Some grandiosity delusions are a feature of that,” David Osmon says, a psychology professor at UW-Milwaukee. Osmon researches this area of psychology, particularly Machiavellianism in the recent years. “They think more of themselves than their products to the world warrant.”
When parents post every their 5-year-old child draws on the refrigerator as if it were a work of Picasso, that can create an environment that nurtures narcissistic tendencies. Believing in such delusions of grandeur creates an inflated sense of pride and self-image. This becomes a social problem because a narcissist has no interest in surrounding themself with people who don’t subscribe to their delusions.
“They expect people to adore and adulate them. They don’t talk to other people to hear what they have to say, they talk to people so that they can charm them have them become one of their admirers,” Osmon says.
For a pop culture example, think of Dr. House or Sterling Archer. Both of them are absolutely brilliant at their jobs – not out of care, but simply for the need to be right all the time. If they encounter any resistance from coworkers, they employ sarcasm and snarky remarks to preserve their self-image. A narcissist’s lack of empathy is a bit harder to find, but can be recognized through their strong drive to inflate their ego, often at the cost of others.
Psychopathy is an easy one to identify. Think Dexter, or Jeffrey Dahmer – cold-blooded killers who are known to murder scores of people without feeling any remorse for it. Out of the three categories in the Dark Triad, the lack of empathy among this group is likely the most recognizable. Those with psychopathic tendencies take pleasure in finding an object of prey, and often toying with them before doing them in. Dexter is often portrayed in his television show to tie his prey down and savor every moment of his self-indulgent murdering. The eerie thing here is that they don’t even know that they’re hurting your feelings.
“They just don’t get that feeling that the rest of us do when we do something that we know hurts somebody else,” Osmon says.
Psychopaths are also characterized by impulsivity. They often act without thinking it through, and consequently don’t like to take responsibility for their actions. This is also what makes them such cunning and charming characters; their behavior is not confined by social norms, which can make for some interesting conversations. A lack of a method of social control is likely the most noticeable trademark of the psychopath and sociopath. The cunning and manipulative ability are a major difference between the psychopath and the narcissist, but in that game, they can’t hold a candle to the Machiavellian.
Machiavellianism is the most under-studied portion of the Dark Triad. It can be recognized fairly easily, but it’s hard to define specifically. The Machiavellian is a cold, calculating type of person who is always striving for power. Machiavellian types are tempted to manipulate people to achieve their goals when they see the opportunity. They’re known act without regard to morality to use people as pawns in a game.
“Many Machiavellians are acutely empathic, which, in our results, is what we found to be the major difference between them and those with psychopathic tendencies,” Osmon says.
For this trait, we can take Frank Underwood of House of Cards or any mob boss in just about every movie you’ve seen for examples. They’re constantly calculating what the best move is, and likely to use “The ends justify the means,” as a defense for their actions. The master manipulator here will find more power in scared enemies than in beloved friends because, hey, it’s safer to be feared than to be loved, right? Ask Julius Caesar.
“A Machiavellian boss is someone who’s just a little bit wrapped up in themselves, they’re a little cutthroat,” Osmon says. “If you don’t genuflect every time they walk in the room, then you can feel that maybe they don’t like you, and they won’t treat you well, they won’t promote you, they won’t give you raises and things like that.”
All of these personality disorders share a general lack of empathy in common, which is why some psychologists believe that there may be a broader overarching theme to these traits as well.
“There’s been a lot of neuroscience work looking at the social-emotional areas of the brain and how they work, and how they’re manifest in different personalities,” Osmon says. “So there can actually be a physiological empathy deficit.”
We end our summary on the Dark Triad with Machiavellianism in order to set up the next article in the series on David Osmon’s work. Be sure to check back to So What Science in a few days to see how Osmon used the Dark Triad to study Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and to find out just how many psychopaths you may know.
As always: Cheers, nerds.
