Introduction
I must admit that, because they trigger unhappy memories, I have been putting off writing the following set of articles. It is reassuring to believe that all human beings are social creatures, but unfortunately that is not the case. Some individuals with dark personalities place self-interest above all else. People of a more social nature who have had the misfortune to meet or interact with a dark individual will, as a minimum, have suffered disillusionment or a sense of injustice. They may also have suffered more material harm.
There are many reasons why we may not like to talk about dark individuals, or believe that they exist. We may blame ourselves for our misfortune or be embarrassed by it. Like me, we may wish to avoid the emotional pain of recalling it. We may prefer to maintain an illusion that such individuals do not exist and, finally, we may fear being labelled as cynics or false accusers. However, there is much objective evidence that such people do exist and can cause considerable social harm. Only if we acknowledge this can something be done about it.
The Dark Factor
The dark factor is a set of human personality traits. It is defined by the psychologists Moshagen, Hilbig, and Zettler, in their 2018 paper, “The dark core of personality”, as the tendency to maximise one’s individual utility – disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking dis-utility for others. In other words, looking after oneself, without concern for others, at their expense, or even whilst causing them harm.
Moshagen, Hilbig, and Zettler carried out four studies measuring the following nine well studied personality traits, and found that they were all significantly positively related to one another. As stated in https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-dark-core-of-personality/ they are:
- Egoism. Excessive concern with one’s own pleasure or advantage, at the expense of community well-being.
- Machiavellianism. Manipulativeness, callousness and a strategic-calculating orientation.
- Moral Disengagement. A generalized cognitive orientation to the world that differentiates one’s thinking from that of others in a way that leads to unethical behaviour.
- Narcissism. An all-consuming need for ego reinforcement.
- Psychological Entitlement. A stable and pervasive sense that one deserves more, and is entitled to more, than others.
- Psychopathy. Callousness, impulsivity, and deficits in feelings and self-control.
- Sadism. Intentionally inflicting physical, sexual, or psychological pain or suffering on others in order to assert power and dominance, or for pleasure and enjoyment.
- Self-Interest. The pursuit of gains in socially valued domains, including material goods, social status, recognition, academic or occupational achievement, and happiness.
- Spitefulness. A preference that would harm another but that would also entail harm to oneself. This harm could be social, financial, physical or an inconvenience.
The British psychologist, Steve Taylor prefers the concept of “a “dark triad” of three personality traits that belong together: psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. This makes sense because these traits almost always overlap and are difficult to distinguish from one another. The traits exist on a continuum and are more pronounced in some people than others.”
Unfortunately, there are more ways in which something can “go wrong” than “go right”. For something to “go right” it must be ordered or structured in some way. For it to “go wrong” that order must have failed, and there are many ways in which it can do so. Thus, mental ill-health, for example, takes many forms. The same is true of the dark factor. Individuals with the above traits will have them in varying proportions. Nevertheless, we endeavour to categorise dark behaviours by their similarities. An emphasis on one will cause us to place an individual in that category. However, the correlation between these traits suggests that there is something more fundamental that unites them.
The three personality types have common features as well as their own distinct ones, as described in the Venn-Euler diagram below.
Source: D’Souza, M. F. (2016). Manobras financeiras e o dark triad: o despertar do lado sombrio na gestão (Doctoral Dissertation). São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. (Financial manoeuvres and the dark triad: the awakening of the dark side in management)
A notable feature of the three personality types is that some of their characteristics can be desirable in leaders, for example, the vision and charisma of narcissistists, the strategy and tactics of Machiavellians, and the creativity and good strategic thinking of psychopaths. Furthermore, there is evidence that people with dark personality traits are attracted to leadership positions (Furnham 2010). The psychologist Oliver James has identified the prevalence of these personality traits in the workplace (James 2013), and they have been found to be fairly well represented in senior management and chief executive officers (Alernic et al, 2010). Finally, the dark triad traits have been found to be associated with knowledge sabotage, i.e., the deliberate hiding of information or provision of misinformation (Serenko & Choo 2020).
There is disagreement among specialists as to whether dark behaviours are evolutionary traits or psychological disorders. However, significant research evidence suggests that they may be approximately 50% inherited in the form of a predisposition and 50% acquired. There are, for example, genes known to be linked with some of the psychopathic traits. However, psychopathy is also known to be associated with factors such as drug taking and upbringing. Irrespective of the cause, the children of people with the disorder do have a higher risk of suffering it themselves.
The evolutionary explanation for dark factors is unclear. Most evolutionary psychologists speculate that with 90% of the population interacting co-operatively, there has been scope for the evolution of free-riders, i.e., predatory individuals who will take advantage of the normal functioning of human society to meet their needs with minimum effort. However, this explanation seems unsatisfactory as it would require human beings first to evolve social traits and then a small proportion of them to revert to non-social ones.
I would therefore offer the following alternative hypothesis, which has the benefit of greater simplicity. Social behaviour in animals, including humans, has evolved. A focus on personal survival must necessarily have evolved first. Only then could survival be enhanced by social behaviour. The genes involved in social behaviour will have emerged via random mutation and then propagated through the population via natural selection. So, it seems likely, therefore, that these dark traits are a genetic hang-over from ancestor species, rather than mutations in an essentially social species. This hang-over may be because there has been a role in society for such traits that has enabled them to persist.
There are three possible reasons for this persistence, all of which may apply to some degree. Firstly, because, as mentioned above, it may have conferred an advantage on a small number of individuals in what was otherwise a social population. Two contradictory selective processes may have been in play: individual selection for non-social people and group selection for social ones, resulting in a mixed population. Secondly, dark traits may have had a role to play in group selection. Due to their lack of conscience, dark personalities can rise more easily in the social hierarchy to become leaders. Once in that position, they can enforce group cohesion by coercion. In the early stages of human society, when groups were in competition with one another, a dark leader may have improved the chances of group survival, and thus their own, through greater aggression towards other groups. It is surely no coincidence that the world is plagued by despots who gain power by appealing to tribalism and nationalism. Finally, dark personalities also tend to move from partner to partner and have a greater number of offspring whom they then abandon.
It is important to note that evolution cannot predict the future. Life evolves in response to the pressures of the present. Thus, whilst dark traits may have helped humanity to become the dominant species in the past, this is not necessarily the case for the future. Today our species is faced with several existential threats that can only be overcome through a very high level of co-operation, and this is undermined by dark behaviour.
Leaders with dark personality traits can gain power for the following reasons:
- their behaviour is less constrained by concern for others;
- they can be charismatic, their dark side only emerging when they are under pressure;
- they can enjoy and be good at impression management;
- some people are willing to follow them due to errors of judgement, self-interest, or fear; and
- their environment may lack the controls to prevent such behaviour.
There is also evidence that dark personalities can be attracted to and flourish in particular types of organisation.
Once in a leadership position, they can “derail” the organisation. Organisations are usually co-operative ventures, i.e., people working together with a common aim. However, leaders with dark traits can steer the organisation in a direction more suited to their personal interest. Note that failure due to derailment and failure due to incompetence are two very different things.
Dark personalities also tend to generate a culture of negative competition. I liken this to a running race in which the competitors attempt to kick the feet out from under one another rather than trying to be first over the finish line. Obviously, this can end up in a brawl on the racetrack to the advantage of neither. In smaller relatively independent societies that competed with one another this may have been beneficial to one party, but in a larger global society it generally harms both competitors. We may once have needed dark personalities, but today they present serious risks, for example, nuclear war because of events in Ukraine, an inability to tackle climate change, and so on.
Ultimately, however, these factors lead to the ostracism or demise of an organisation with a dark leadership and associated culture.
Although much of the research on these personality types has been associated with business organisations, the same is true of organisations of all types including nations.
References
Alernic, J.H. & Craig, R.J. (2010) “Accounting as a Facilitator of Extreme Narcissism”. Journal of Business Ethics 96 (1): 79-93. doi:10.1007/s10551-010-0450-0.
Furnham, A., Richards, S.C., Paulhus, D.L. (2013). “The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review: Dark Triad of Personality”. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7 (3): 199-216. doi:10.1111/spc3.12018.
James, O. (2014) “Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks”. London, Vermillion. ISBN 978-1-4090-0557-5.
Jones, D.N. & Figueredo, A.J. (2013). “The Core of Darkness: Uncovering the Heart of the Dark Triad”, European Journal of Personality 27(6). DOI:10.1002/per.1893 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259541545_The_Core_of_Darkness_Uncovering_the_Heart_of_the_Dark_Triad.
Moshagen, M., Hilbig, B. & Zettler, I. (2018). “The dark core of personality”. Psychological Review,2018,v125 p 656-688. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:51621079
Serenko, A. & Choo, C.W. (2020). “Knowledge sabotage as an extreme form of counterproductive knowledge behaviour: The role of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and competitiveness.” Journal of Knowledge Management. 24 (9) 2299-2325. doi:10.1108/JKM-06-2020-0416.
Taylor, S. (2022). “The Darkness of Boris Johnson: a psychologist on the prime minister’s unpalatable personality traits”. The Conversation, 16/5/2022. https://theconversation.com/the-darkness-of-boris-johnson-a-psychologist-on-the-prime-ministers-unpalatable-personality-traits-177662
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