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Machiavellianism Q&A Summary + Download

  To my magnificent readers! As requested, a condensed version of the Triple Question & Answer Session by IllimitableMan, Illacertus and Modern Machiavelli including a pdf to download. You can download the pdf below:   Modern Machiavelli – Triple QA of Power   Feel free to share the pdf, the whole article or parts of it, as long as you refrain from editing it. You also are required to link to the following article to avoid confusion: http://modernmachiavelli.com/q-a-power-machiavellianism/   Workplace Question: What is the best & fastest way to get ahead and promoted at work? Answer (MM): You won’t like this answer but

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Dark Triad Recap #2

We’ve covered a lot of new ground since we created our Dark Triad Summary page last month.  As our research continues to progress, we’ll update this page periodically to help you stay up to speed.  As always, feel free to contact us with questions, or drop a comment on a past or future Dark Triad post if you have any tips or insights you’d like to share.

Here’s the latest version of the Dark Triad Summary page:

What Is The Dark Triad?

The Dark Triad is a term used by social psychologists that refers to three inter-related personalities: sub-clinical narcissism, sub-clinical psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.  The connections between these traits were first documented in 2002 by psychologist Delroy L. Paulhus.

How Are The Dark Triad Personalities Measured?

The most common tool for measuring sub-clinical narcissism is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, or NPI.  It usually contains 40 items, although the Corry version uses only 23.  Psychologists still debate the validity of this tool.  The most common tool for measuring sub-clinical psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised, or PPI-R.

In 2010, personality researcher and Dark Triad specialist Peter K. Jonason published a consolidated tool for measuring Dark Triad traits called The Dirty Dozen.  The tool contains 12 of the most reliable and representative items pulled from the NPI, PPI-R, and MACH-IV (Machiavellianism) tools.

Narcissism

1.  I tend to want others to admire me.

2.  I tend to want others to pay attention to me.

3.  I tend to expect special favors from others.

4.  I tend to seek prestige or status.

Psychopathy

5.  I tend to lack remorse.

6.  I tend to be callous or insensitive.

7.  I tend to not be too concerned with morality or the morality of my actions.

8.  I tend to be cynical.

Machiavellianism

9.  I have used deceit or lied to get my way.

10.  I tend to manipulate others to get my way.

11.  I have used flattery to get my way.

12.  I tend to exploit others towards my own end.

How Does The Dark Triad Relate To The Big Five Personality Traits?

The Big Five personality traits are Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness:

Extraversion: This trait includes characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.
Agreeableness: This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other pro-social behaviors.
Conscientiousness: Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors.
Neuroticism: Individuals high in this trait tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
Openness: This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight, and those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests.

All three personalities are associated with disagreeableness (low agreeableness).  Narcissism and psychopathy both share an association with high extraversion.  Research suggests that narcissists can be neurotic; psychopaths generally are not.

How Are Dark Triad Traits Exhibited?

Personalities exhibit themselves through various factors.  Our simplified narcissism factor model has two factors, borrowing from the Corry Two-Factor Model:

Status-Seeking (Trying to assume power or control over others through leadership or expertise)

Overconfidence (Believing others are more interested in oneself than in other things)

 Our simplified psychopathy factor model has three factors, borrowing from the PPI-R Three-Factor Model:

Recklessness (Disregarding consequences of one’s actions to oneself or to others; lack of planning/goal-setting)
Nonchalance (Disdaining potential danger/embarrassment; inability to feel stress)
Coldheartedness (Lacking remorse when one’s actions negatively affect others)

 The Big Question – What, if anything, enables Dark Triad males to sleep with more women, more often, with less romantic commitment? 

There are at least three possibilities:

1. Dark Triad males may employ unique social strategies that effectively enlarge their pool of potential successes.

One online survey showed Dark Triad males have lower mate-selection standards for traits like creativity, kindness, and liveliness, and characteristics like physical attractiveness and social status.  If that is true, then these men are simply lowering their standards and increasing their options, not attracting more women.  However, another study’s findings suggest that narcissists do not lower their standards when choosing which women to target.  Although the men in this study were paid to approach women, they weren’t incentivized to approach women indiscriminately.  In other words, more approaches did not increase their individual payouts.  They were motivated purely by personal preference.  In our opinion, the second study’s findings are stronger.
In Positive Psychopathy, we examined 7 different psychopathic traits featured in Kevin Dutton’s book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths.  Four traits – focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, and action – are traits that strategically help psychopaths in social situations, including dating and seduction:

Focus – The ability to mute distractions in extremely hectic environments.  Focus is obviously a useful trait in any situation.  By quickly seeing, processing, and remembering tiny details most people miss, psychopaths with this traits excel where others fall behind.
Mental Toughness – The ability to remain unfazed in high pressure situations.  A psychopath with a high level of mental toughness does not respond negatively to criticism or rejection; he simply continues on until he succeeds.  Only a psychopath absorbs stress this easily.  For the rest of us, high rates of failure are inefficient and emotionally taxing.
Fearlessness – The ability to approach high-risk situations without apprehension or inhibited faculties.  It allows the psychopath to try things that other people don’t attempt.  These endeavors have fewer competitors, and succeeding at them is easier for the psychopath as a result.
Mindfulness – An intense, Zen-like state of attention for a current task.  Very similar to focus, mindfulness enables the psychopath to ignore not only present distractions, but also future worries and consequences.
Action – The companion trait to fearlessness.  Action allows psychopaths to constructively channel their natural disdain for risk and embarrassment; they proceed with a task that’s likely to fail even if they know it probably will.  Because psychopaths attempt high-risk endeavors more often than most people, they can claim more individual successes.  From a distance, it seems as if they succeed at them more often than they actually do.

2. Dark Triad males may possess personality traits that are intrinsically attractive.

In Zeroing in on Narcissism, the researchers isolated boldness as a mediator of narcissistic attractiveness.  They did not, however, test what common narcissistic behaviors best demonstrate boldness (besides simply walking up to girls and blatantly asking for contact information.)  We plan on using Vangelisti’s list of narcissistic conversational tactics to help us determine what some of these behaviors could be.
Charm, one of Kevin Dutton’s seven positive psychopathic traits, is the exception to the other six; the rest are strategically useful because they statistically increase success rates for psychopaths in social situations. Charm, however, is intrinsically attractive; it almost always succeeds.  Whether or not it can be learned or mimicked is an open question.

3. Dark Triad males may appear more physically attractive than the average male.

“Zeroing in on Narcissism” also isolated physical attractiveness as a mediator of narcissistic attractiveness. Cleanliness and neatness of dress were two characteristics common to narcissists in the Back Zero-Acquaintance study, but the researchers didn’t control for physical attractiveness.  Given the results of these two studies, it seems that narcissists put more effort into their physical fitness and aesthetic appearance than the average person.  This isn’t surprising, but it is important.
Decades of research suggests that attractive people are afforded more benefits than unattractive people.  If the Dark Triad males is in fact better-looking than the average male, his successes in and out of the dating world could simply be the result of a kind of stereotyping called behavioral confirmation.

Zeroing in on Narcissism

We’ve published over a dozen posts about the Dark Triad since we first started researching its potential links to attraction.  We want to answer this question: What, if anything, enables Dark Triad males to sleep with more women, more often, with less romantic commitment?  It could be that:

Dark Triad males may employ unique social strategies that effectively enlarge their pool of potential successes.
Dark Triad males may possess personality traits that are intrinsically attractive and/or behaviorally replicable.
Dark Triad males may appear more physically attractive than the average male.

If Dark Triad males really do in fact have greater sexual and/or romantic success with women, then it probably isn’t a result of just one of the above; all three are important.  So far, though, we haven’t been able to determine which of them is the most important.  We’ve seen evidence for behavioral strategies (i.e., identifying and mimicking Dark Triad behaviors), social strategies (i.e., increasing the number of potential sex partners by lowering standards, approaching frequently, hitting on women most men would not, etc.), and physical strategies (i.e., improving one’s appearance and raw physical sex appeal.)  But we haven’t yet seen a really solid study that addresses the latter two possibilities.

Until now.

Are Narcissists Sexy?

Scholarly reseach is a progressive enterprise, which means its okay to rip off your peers.  Its actually encouraged (as long as you cite your sources, of course).  When your peers publish a study that’s relevant to your area of interest, you can then take their findings and use them to design your own study.  Later, some other researcher will do the same with your findings.  Generations of researchers have been building on each other’s work like this, and, as a result, newer is usually better.  So when we came across a study examining the short-term attractiveness of narcissism published only two months ago, we jumped on it, just because it was relevant and brand new.

Once we read it, we realized it was a gold-mine.

Michael Dufner, John F. Rauthmann, Anna Z. Czarna, and Jaap J. A. Denissen conducted three experiments using college students in Germany and Poland.  The researchers hypothesized that two traits make narcissists initially attractive at zero-acquaintance: physical attractiveness and social boldness.

Study 1:  117 psych undergrads (58 male, 59 female) participated.  The students were assigned to one of three conditions in which they were given a fake narcissism questionnaire.  They were told that the questionnaire was filled out by a member of the opposite sex, and the scores on the questionnaires were low, medium, or high (depending on the condition).  After they examined the fake questionnaires, the students were asked to rate the friend appeal and mate appeal of the imaginary person.

*Note: These fake questionnaires used the NPI, validated Polish version.  The difference between this and the NPI that we discussed earlier is that the Polish version contains 34 items based on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = does not apply to me; 5 = applies to me).  We’ve mentioned before that we’d love to see a Likert-based NPI.  Here it is.

Study 2: This study used peer ratings.  152 participants invited a close friend (mostly of the same sex) to help in the study.  The friends (the inviters) provided ratings for mate appeal, friend appeal, physical attractiveness, and social boldness.  The participants (the invitees) took the NPI, validated German version, to assess their individual levels of sub-clinical narcissism, as well as surveys measuring self-esteem, mate appeal, and social boldness.

*Note: The NPI used in this study is the traditional 40-item dichotomous-response (0=agree; 1=disagree).  They also used the Emmons Four Factor Model.

Study 3: Social science experiments are mostly done in labs where it’s easy to control conditions.  But labs don’t always provide realistic simulations of the interactions and behaviors the researchers are interested in observing.  The authors of this study tried to solve that problem by paying 61 men 35 euros each to approach 25 women on the street and ask for their contact information.  The men were scored for sub-clinical narcissism using the Dirty Dozen Test, and were also scored for self-esteem.  Each man’s number of successfully obtained contacts (phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook friend requests, etc.) counted as his level of mate appeal.

*Note: The Dirty Dozen Test used 12 of the most highly correlating items from the NPI, PCL-R, and MACH-IV to assess a persons sub-clinical levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, respectively.

In Study 1, higher narcissism predicted higher mate appeal, while lower narcissism predicted lower mate appeal.

Study 2 provided a wealth of information:

Narcissism positively correlated with mate appeal, physical attractiveness, and social boldness.
Under controlled conditions, self-esteem would not affect narcissists’ mate appeal.
Each of the seven Emmons factors except Exploitativeness/Entitlement (E/E) positively correlated with mate appeal.
Physical attractiveness and social boldness mediated the link between narcissism and mate appeal.  This means that narcissism is not inherently attractive; it correlates with with these two traits, which are inherently attractive.

Study 3 showed that narcissism did not predict which type of woman a man would approach; all the men in the study approached more or less the same type.  It also mirrored the findings of Studies 1 and 2, but under real-life conditions.

In Context

The study contributes considerably to our work on the potential attractiveness of narcissism.  Here’s what it teaches us:

In Four Factors of Narcissism, we pointed out Emmons’ claimed that E/E is highly associated with neuroticism and is therefore the least attractive factor in his factor model.  The results of the Back zero-acquaintance study supported this claim.  But this study claims that the E/E factor doesn’t correlate with attractiveness at all, neither positively or negatively.  Who’s right?
This study gives us more evidence that narcissists are popular in zero-acquaintance situations.  We’ve examined one study so far that supports this idea; however, it did not narrow down the cause.  This one tells us that a specific social strategy (boldness) and physical attractiveness are the causes.
This study’s results suggest that narcissists do not lower their standards when choosing which women to target.  This directly contradicts another study we examined, but the effect was observed under more natural conditions, making this new study’s claims that much stronger.  Furthermore, the men in this study weren’t incentivized to approach women indiscriminately; they were paid and sent out.  More contacts did not increase their individual payouts at the end of the study.  Their approaches were dictated purely by personal preference.
In a controlled setting, self-esteem would not affect sex appeal.  This is a huge and controversial claim.  Conventional wisdom says that confidence is the “magic bullet” in dating.  But this study’s data analyses suggest that it’s irrelevant.  Only social  boldness and physical attractiveness mediate narcissists’ mate appeal.  This claim also directly contradicts the idea that physically-determined behavioral confirmation controls attractiveness.

We’ve taken a huge step forward toward determining what makes the Dark Triad personalities attractive.  This study is fantastic; it controls for physical attractiveness and for self-esteem.  It uses natural, real-life settings to support its claims.  It uses the NPI to screen participants for high- and low-level sub-clinical narcissism.  And above all, it avoids self-report data.  The second study is, of course, flawed by the personal closeness of the subjects and the students, but the authors admit it, and the third study addresses it.  The only other obvious oversight is the lack of attention paid to behavioral strategies.  If the researchers had re-run the third study using scripted or pre-planned interactions, we would then be able to see which specific narcissistic behaviors – if any – increase attractiveness.

We’re confident that boldness is an effective mating strategy for men.  Is it the most efficient method?  Probably not.  How bold is too bold?  We don’t know.  To answer these questions, we need to test behavioral strategies in greater depth and detail.

Sources

Dufner, M., Rauthmann, J. F., Czarna, A. Z., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2013). Are narcissists sexy? zeroing in on the effect of narcissism on short-term mate appeal. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, doi: 10.1177/0146167213483580

For a summary of our Dark Triad posts, visit our Dark Triad Summary page.