What Everyone Should Know About the Dark Triad's Most Troubling Trait

The idea that a “dark triad” lurks beneath the surface of the most manipulative and undesirable of people has support from a wide range of studies in psychology and personality. As you can tell from the names of its traits, a combination of high scores on psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism (Mach), would lead you to try to avoid people who fit this description.

Think about someone you know who might have these potentially harmful qualities. Chances are you didn’t choose to be with this person, who might be a boss, a relative, or someone in your wider circle of acquaintances. In the case of a boss, for example, this could be someone who you’ve seen cheat, manipulate, and demand constant praise and attention. You are forced to watch as this person berates your coworkers, cuts corners, and uses deception to advance even further up the food chain. On the other hand, if it’s someone you’re trying to decide whether to form a relationship with, you might wonder if there’s a way you can peek into the future and see whether this is a good idea or not.

If you think about the differences among the dark triad traits, you might wonder where the callousness and glibness central to psychopathy differ from the deviousness and lack of empathy implied in the very term Machiavellianism. Although the consequences of knowing someone high in just one of these traits could potentially be harmful to you, those consequences could differ in significant ways. Knowing what lies beneath the surface could provide the clues you need to plan how to protect yourself.

Indeed, as noted by TU Dortmund University’s Christian Blötner and Sebastian Bergold (2021), previous research suggests that “psychopathy and Mach are inseparable or even identical,” or that Mach is “a mild form of psychopathy.” What’s more, it’s not clear how psychopathy and Mach differ in terms of their emotional attributes. It would seem that those high in Mach might experience a wider range of emotions than psychopaths who are known for their lack of outward affect. However, the German researchers point out that even these differences aren’t that clearly established in prior research.

Machiavellianism’s Inner Core

To probe into the core of Mach as a unique trait, Blötner and Bergold propose taking a look at its motivational qualities. In their words, “Combining the roles of motives in cognitive, behavioral, and affective domains with Mach’s both goal-oriented and harm-avoiding tendencies, a motivational foundation of Mach seems promising.” By dividing the motivation of those high in Mach into “goal-oriented” or “approach” urges from the “harm-avoiding” tendencies known as “avoidance” motives, the German researchers hoped to understand what drives those high in Mach in ways that differentiate them from their psychopathic counterparts.

Testing this way to conceptualize Mach, the TU Dortmund U. researchers developed a new measure based on the two separate motivational components of approach and avoidance. To do so, they began with items from existing Mach measures and then asked raters to assign them to these two categories, plus two others for items that were ambiguous or not applicable. This process led to an initial set of items divided into 31 for approach and 20 for avoidance. The authors then tested the statistical properties of this questionnaire which became what the authors call the “Machiavellianism Approach and Avoidance Questionnaire (MaaQ).

In the first test of the Mach scale items, the authors used a final sample of 500 mainly undergraduate participants (from an initial pool of 684), average age of 27 years old, the majority of whom (79 percent) identified as female. The authors cite the nature of the sample as potentially limiting, particularly given the types of sinister qualities the MaaQ is designed to test, so keep this in mind.

Now see how you would rate on these eight items by using a one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree) scale:

1. I tend to manipulate others to get my way.
2. I have a strong drive for power.
3. I like to give the orders in interpersonal situations.
4. I enjoy having control over other people.
5. Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble
6. If I show any weakness, other people will take advantage of it.
7. People are friendly to each other only because of ulterior motives
8. There is something malicious in every human being. You just have to look for it.

As you might have guessed, items 1-4 represent the approach subscale, and 5-8 the avoidance. The average among those who participated in this phase of the study per item ranged from a low of 2.13 (item #2) to a high of 2.81 (item #6).

Separating Machiavellianism from Psychopathy

In the second study, Blötner and Bergold moved on to determine how well their new measure differentiated Mach from the trait of psychopathy along with measures of potentially related personality traits (honesty-humility, neuroticism, and agreeableness), impulsivity, physical aggression and mistrust, cynicism, and a motivational scale of “fear of loss and hope for power.” The sample was approximately the same in composition as the first sample, again representing a potential limitation given the nature of the psychological qualities under investigation.

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The outcome predicted by the authors was intended to pull Mach apart from psychopathy in the following ways. First, they proposed that cynicism, agreeableness, and honesty-humility would be “the connecting elements of Mach’s approach and avoidance,” meaning that both motivational qualities are involved in these personality tendencies. After all, you can be cynical because you wish to avoid harm, because you are trying to get ahead, or some combination of the two.

On all the rest of the scales, however, approach and avoidance did show differing patterns of relationships. Those with high scores on avoidance were more likely to report higher levels of neuroticism, mistrust, and fear of the loss of power, supporting the distinctiveness of this factor. The highly Machiavellian would therefore seem to be the ones who are likely to plot and scheme in order to hold onto what they have. By contrast, people high in psychopathy would be less concerned about what they have to lose because they’re not as focused on power per se.

Scores on the approach dimension of Mach, in turn, were related to high scores on the hope for power scale, supporting the idea that unlike people high in psychopathy, the Machiavellians spend their energy contemplating ways they can climb their way to the top.

Unlike psychopaths, furthermore, those with high scores on the MaaQ weren’t particularly likely to be impulsive or aggressive. It’s possible, as the authors point out, that people high in Mach might be more aggressive in real-life situations, or even more impulsive, than their scores on a questionnaire might reflect. On the other hand, it makes sense that the truly Machiavellian at heart would prefer to figure out how to get or hold onto power in more devious ways.

What You Can Learn About Dealing with the Machiavellian in Your Life

Clearly, people high in Mach are not the type of people you’d like to be with but, if they are individuals you can’t avoid, there are important object lessons from the Blötner and Bergold study. The most important is that the really good Machiavellians won’t be that easy for you to spot. Unlike people high in psychopathy, they are willing to take indirect routes to ensure that they maintain their position of influence over others. However, if you separate the motives to advance from the motives to avoid losing, you can perhaps more readily trace their pathways to power.

Second, the German study suggests that even if these individuals manage to hide their manipulative tactics from others, they may show other personality traits that can serve as warning signals. Unique to their dark triad qualities appears to be cynicism which, unlike psychopathic lack of empathy or lack of remorse, suggests a fundamental lack of belief in the goodness of human nature. Someone who is constantly making derogatory remarks about even those you would consider heroes could very well be a high-Mach person unwilling to acknowledge the existence of altruistic or prosocial motives in others.

To sum up, whether it’s the person you can’t avoid or the person you’re trying to decide whether to form a relationship with, the highly Machiavellian can pose just as much of a threat to your well-being as the highly psychopathic, but in different ways. Learning to pierce through to the depths of this dark triad quality can help you avoid their potentially destructive tactics.

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