Dark Triad-Origin, History, Aspects

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Yashasvi Soni
Apr 15, 2019   •  518 views

We have been discussing the dark personalities; there is a specific collection of traits that form an abstract personality which belongs to a group called Dark Triad. Psychology has been a help in many fields, most of the business management, law enforcement & criminal cases can be easily solved when looked to its core psychology. People who have these traits are trying to get away from others by being antisocial at times to achieve their own set targets (what matters to them).

The dark traits – Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism; they give us a combination of a cunning, manipulative, calculative brain & intimidating persona. Most people with these personality traits tend to be ambitious & ruthless towards anything that stands in their way. The research is quite recent, hasn’t even been two decades since the term was coined in 2002 by Paulhus & William.

Origin

The earliest mention of the trait of the triad is in 1998, McHoskey & Worzel stated that the tree distinguishing traits are to some extent interchangeable, while Delroy L. Paulhus didn’t quite agree with him. This lead Paulhus to do extensive research over the next three years before he coined the term “Dark Triad”.

The origin of the studies & research on the triad started as it started for the psychology, by studying human action & interpretingits cause & the reason behind such action (refers to the thought process or motive of doing that task). One of the ways is also to study the genetic & environmental influence on the gene & habits respectively of the individual. The case is considered as “twin study” wherein the one identical & another non-identical twin are taken. The scale for comparison is set as 100% same environment & genetics for identical twin & 100% same environment & 50% same genetics for the non-identical twins. They are then compared with respect to the fifty percent difference or deviation from their true nature. These tests are all performed on the zygote.

Aspects

Psychopathy

This is an egotistical trait considered the darkest of the three in the dark triad, this person tends to be highly antisocial with almost extremely impulsive response to everything. Psychopaths tend to be mean without any feelings; they neither have empathy for the loss of others nor any remorse for their own wrong-doings.

Virgil Zeigler-Hill and David Marcus in their book The Dark Side of Personality: Science and Practice in Social, Personality, and Clinical Psychology(2016) describe psychopath as a multidimensional construct with boldness, meanness & disinhibition.

Narcissism

The admiration for one's owns self, with a display of grandiosity & superiority in their behavior. The person mostly feels entitled to reward & crave dominance above all. All this is actually a show, but deep down these people have an unstable view of themselves which may sometimes involve having low self-esteem, ashamed of themselves.

Machiavellianism

A person who tends to manipulate people to get his own interests uses flattery as a technique & has tremendously successful methods to deceit the other person.

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