Someone with a lot of courage and a life insurance policy, I hope, has left a comment on one of my videos comparing me to Van Helsing. He said, my voice reminds him of Van Helsing's voice in the Dracula films.
He got it chronologically wrong. It's not that I sound like Van Helsing. It's that Van Helsing sounds like me.
Okay, Shoshanim.
Apropos Van Helsing and the monsters he is hunting interminably.
Today we're going to discuss Machiavellianism.
There's no way I can encompass all the knowledge about Machiavellianism. It's one of the hot button topics in psychology today. There's like a mountain ranges of information and studies and so and so forth.
But I'm going to discuss Machiavellianism's relationship to covert personalities, narcissism and psychopathy.
But before we breach this dam, before we enter bravely this topic, I need to remind you of a few things.
Number one, covert states of personality, covert personalities. You remember that covert personalities are reactive. They are reactions to failure, defeat, and collapse.
When the narcissist fails to obtain narcissistic supply, the result is covert narcissism. When the psychopath fails to secure his goals, the result is covert psychopathy.
So covert states are reactive. They are reactive to what? They are reactive to an ideal. Some ideal.
The covert narcissist would have liked to be, or would like to be, a real narcissist, an overt, grandiose narcissist. This is the ideal of the covert narcissist.
The covert psychopath would have liked to be a real, efficacious, terrifying psychopath. That is the ideal of the covert psychopath.
So covert states of personality are reactive to an unrealized, unactualized ideal state. They are in this sense compensatory. They compensate for the failure to become this ideal state known as ego ideal.
Covert states are fixated obsessively and compulsively on somehow approximating this ideal state asymptotically.
That's why covert states are exclusive. You can have a covert state and an overt state of another disorder, but you can never have two covert states. There is no comorbidity of two covert states.
So you could be a covert narcissist and an overt psychopath. You can be an overt psychopath and a covert borderline. You can be an overt psychopath and a classic borderline, but you can never be a covert narcissist and an overt narcissist or a covert narcissist and a covert psychopath.
So two coverts can never happen and the covert of the overt state can never happen. You cannot have a covert psychopath with an overt psychopath.
These are the rules of the game and this exclusivity is indicative of some interplay, some interaction between the covert state and the ideal to which it aspires.
The covert narcissist aspires to become an overt grandiose narcissist, so he can never be comorbid with an overt, grandiose narcissist. The overt, grandiose, narcissistic state is out of reach. That is the source of failure and defeat which gave rise to the covert condition.
So the first distinction we have two classes of internal objects idealized internal objects such as the ego ideal and devalued internal objects such as the covert state ideal and devalued objects.
The devalued objects aspire to become the idealized internal objects but never make it.
Okay point number one
Point number two we must make a distinction between internal objects, external objects and externalized objects.
External objects are simply people out there, ideas, concepts, circumstances, environment, physical, otherwise, everything out there, outside oneself is an external object.
An internal object we've just discussed.
And then there is an externalized object. The externalized object is the sum total of the personality's interactions with other people or with the environment.
So all the behaviors, all the choices, all the decisions, all the expressions, everything that is public facing, everything that is externalized, including aggression, anything, everything, sympathy, compassion, empathy, you name it, everything that is evident, visible, ostentatious, clear, and has to do with the environment, with other people, with the physical environment, with circumstances, with ideas, with concepts, with collectives, everything that is not internal, but external, as far as the personality goes, that is the externalized object.
Now, there is a dichotomy internally between idealized internal objects and devalued internal objects. You remember?
Similarly, there is a dichotomy between internal objects and externalized objects.
The internal object could be good.
In other words, the self-perception could be, I'm a good person, I'm a worthy person.
That is, an internalized good object, self-image, and a sense of self as being essentially good.
And the externalized object could be bad.
Although I'm a good person, I behave abominably.
So I have a good internalized object, I'm a good person, I behave abominably. So I have a good internalized object, I'm a good person, but my behaviors leave a lot to be desired. They're antisocial, for example.
So that is a bad externalized object.
And we could have these combinations. Good and good, good and bad, bad and good and bad, bad and bad.
An example of good and bad, an internalized good object, and an externalized bad object, is the borderline.
The borderline is a combination.
She perceives herself as all good, empathic, affectionate, compassionate, loving, caring, holding, containing, etc. Understanding, accepting, warm, her.
The borderlinesself-perception, half of all borderlines are men. Okay?
The borderline self-perception, half of all borderlines are men. Okay? The borderline self-perception is all good.
But her perception of her behaviors is actually all bad.
The borderline believes that she is, for example, self-destructive, reckless, defiant, cruel, aggressive, violent, insensitive.
So she believes that internally she has a good object, she's a good person, but her externalized object, the set of her behaviors, interactions with the environment, especially with other people, that's a bad object.
And that's why the borderline is terrified of intimacy, because she's afraid that if her intimate partner were to become aware of this duality, an internal good object but an externalized bad object, he would walk away.
She's afraid, she's trying to hide, hide, conceal somehow the fact that while she's a good person, she can't help herself and her behavior is very bad, out of control, impulsive, crazy, crazy making and so on.
So she's trying to hide this.
And the only way to hide this is to run away from intimacy and what she perceives as engulfment.
Okay, so there are two levels of conflict.
Conflict between idealized and devalued internal objects and conflict between a good internal object and a bad externalized object or a bad internal object and a good externalized object.
So bear this in mind as we proceed.
Now when I use the word objects, I'm actually borrowing language and terminology from the object relations schools in the 1960s.
Let me try another language to describe the very same thing in my view.
Light triad versus dark triad.
The light triad would be a good internalized object.
The dark triad would be a bad externalized object.
Now, the light triad was first described in 2018 by Laura Johnson. It is comprised of three elements: empathy, compassion and altruism.
When you say, I think that people are mostly good or I enjoy listening to people, I enjoy mingling with people, socializing with them, or when I talk to people I never think or I rarely think about what's in it for me, what can I get from them, I think about them not about me, these are examples of light triad in action.
And as you can immediately see, it is essentially a good internalized object.
And it is contrasted, itanti-correlated with the dark triad.
The dark triad is an externalized bad object.
The dark triad is comprised of three elements.
Machiavellianism, manipulating other people externally.
Subclinical narcissism, a narcissistic style of personality which essentially has to do with other people how you how you relate to other people you're exploitative manipulative envious and so on
And subclinical psychopathy a set of psychopathic traits and behaviors that do not amount to full-fledged psychopathy, but are still very reminiscent of it.
This is a dark triad.
And here we see that we can use this language of triads, light triad and dark triad, to actually recapture the older language of internal and external objects.
Now, there's something common to all dark personalities, and that is the dark factor of personality, or the D factor.
Now that I've provided the background of the internal conflicts between, as I said, idealized and devalued internalized objects and between internalized objects and externalized objects.
These conflicts are ongoing, even in healthy people. People with the dark factor actually end up selecting for or choosing or becoming bad objects.
So it's a propensity, it's a predisposition to identify with, incorporate and become one with your bad objects. An internalized bad object or an externalized bad object.
It's like faced with a menu of good objects, internalized, internalized and externalized, good objects, and bad objects, internalized and externalized, the dark factor of personality, the D factor determines whether you end up adopting the good objects as your determinants, whether you end up becoming the good objects, or whether you end up becoming the bad objects.
The dark factor of personality is a personality trait and it is consistent across situations, circumstances, environments, and across the lifespan, across time.
When you have elevated levels of the D factor, you are more likely to engage in behaviors which are unethical, subversive, antisocial, aggressive, bullying, cheating, criminal. You're likely to steal or vandalize. In extreme cases, you are likely to become violent.
So what's the definition of the D factor personality, this personality, dark personality factor?
It's, and I'm quoting, it's the tendency to maximize one's individual utility, disregarding, accepting or malevolently provoking this utility for other people accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications in other words rationalizations
What is utility?
Utility is goals the extent to which you are self-efficacious, how likely you are to obtain your goals.
And of course, this utility is the opposite, is when you hinder people, when you prevent them from obtaining or reaching or accomplishing their goals.
So it's very important to understand that the dark personality, which is rich in D factor, the dark personality is again a duality.
On the one hand, it pursues its own goals as if it were a good object, an internalized good object.
The dark personality says, I'm a good person and I deserve this. I deserve this, that which I'm pursuing, I deserve it.
So the utility part is actually an affirmation of the self-perception of the dark personality as essentially good and moral and deserving.
The disutility, which is the second part of the dark personality, they go hand in hand.
The dark personality not only pursues its goals, but it prevents others from accomplishing anything.
So this disutility, the other part, is actually the externalized bad object.
While the dark personality believes itself to be essentially good, deserving, just, moral and so on, it adopts behaviors which are bad. It adopts an externalized bad object in order to prevent other people from accomplishing the same goals because there is a perception of a zero-sum game.
If I win, you lose. But if you win, I lose.
There is scarcity.
And so the goals are perceived as scarce.
And unfortunately, the only way to get to the goal to accomplish it to possess it toacquire it, is to prevent you from doing the same.
So utility and disutility go together.
When I say goals, it could be anything. It could be money, status, access, contacts, power, excitement, joy, pleasure, whatever it is.
Normal people, normal healthy psychological functioning, involves aiming to achieve goals. That's very laudable. It's part of motivation.
But people with elevated de facto are inclined not only to accomplish goals, but to harm other people. To harm other individuals, collectives, groups when they pursue their goals.
The pursuit of their goals is perceived as a war, as a battle, a conflict, and they must inflict harm and damage on other people. They must cause disutility.
So if you steal something, it benefits you and it harms another. If you bully someone, maybe it gratifies you, but it causes damage, psychological damage to other people. When you hurt someone, maybe there's a physiological utility to you, but disutility to the other.
So individuals high on the dark factor, or the dark factor, experience utility as gratifying, exciting, joyful, pleasurable, even as they inflict disutility on other people. They hurt them, they cause pain, and so on.
In other words, there's an element of sadism. And that is why today we talk about the dark tetrad, not the dark triad. The dark tetrad is the dark triad plus sadism. This is an element of pleasure.
But again, using the language we've used before, it is a conflict between the light triad, the person with a high factor D, perceives himself as a light triad person, moral, just, deserving, and so, but engages in dark triad behaviors.
He perceives himself as a good internalized object, but actually has a bad externalized object, behaviorally speaking, his object is bad.
And this creates, of course, a dissonance.
In borderline personality disorder, this dissonance is crucial in my view. I think it may even be the cause of the emptiness, the psychogenesis of the emptiness, the empty schizoid core in the borderline is because she cannot reconcile the good internalized object with the way she behaves, which is really bad, the bad externalized object.
And so there's a dissonance there.
And in order to maintain a positive, moral self-image, even when that person engages in abusive, aversive, malevolent behavior, in order to maintain this delusional, self-deceptive perception as a good object, people with high D hold beliefs that they think justify their behaviors.
So they have a set of beliefs. Some of these beliefs are delusional. Some of these beliefs are cynical. Some of these beliefs are aggressive.
But they have sets of beliefs that rationalize, intellectualize, justify morally and ethically the way they behave, attempting desperately to convert the externalized bad object into an externalized good object in their own eyes.
And these beliefs are so convincing that when the dark personality is charismatic, it can infect collectives, groups, cults, political parties. It can infect them with these beliefs. There is a contagion, a transmission mechanism.
For example, the belief that you are superior. Because you are superior somehow, you're entitled.
Or the opposite, the belief that you're a victim. And because you're a victim, you have special rights and entitlements that obligate other people to accommodate you.
Or endorsing ideologies that favor the dominance or the superiority of a group or an individual, for example, racism, or viewing the world as a dangerous and hostile place, a competitive jungle, you have to do what a man has to do.
Or a borderline has to do what a borderline is believing that other people are malicious or maybe stupid or losers. They have it coming. You know, they deserve to be exploited.
This is just a sample, very small sample of thousands of beliefs used by dark personalities to justify essentially what came to be known as Machiavellianism, which is the topic of today's lecture.
The behavior, the externalized bad object, the set of behaviors that are essentially bad, anti-social, unethical, immoral. These bad behaviors are sustained and maintained by this background of firm beliefs that are rationalizing and self-justified.
It's a kind of massive defense mechanism, or shall I say, defensive wall against any self-awareness and any reality testing.
In this sense, people with a high de facto end up being delusional.
According to D theory, D, de facto, reflects some basic disposition. It's connected to aversive traits, most notably Machiavellianism, but also narcissism and psychopathy.
These are regarded as specific manifestations or expression of D, of the facto D.
Actually, they are called in the theory, flavored manifestations.
D reflects what all aversive traits have in common, the aversive part of traits.
So any aversive trait has an element of D, even in healthy people, even in normal people.
D is quantitative, not qualitative.
We all, healthy and unhealthy, abnormal and normal, narcissists and not, psychopaths or not, we all have traits which are aversive, disagreeable, anti-social, and so on. And these traits have a component of D. They have an element of D factor.
And so it's a question of quantity.
Whether you become a narcissist or a psychopath, whether you act in a Machiavellian way, is a question of quantity of D.
It's a kind of poison in a way.
Psychopathy is aversive, for example, because it reflects D to some extent. So is narcissism.
But in psychopathy, there are other traits which have nothing to do with D, for example, impulsivity or disinhibition. They're not aversive and they don't have a D element or a D ingredient.
So D is very high in psychopaths and narcissists but is not the only factor, not the determining factor and cannot lead to psychopathy and narcissism in the absence of other traits and behaviors.
Combined with these other traits, for example impulsivity or disinhibition, or defiance, or recklessness, or contumaciousness, combined with D, with the aversive part, they lead to what is known in the ICD 11, they lead to the trade domain of desociality and antagonism another trade domain.
But by far everyone agrees, by far the most relevant factor, the most relevant manifestation, flavored manifestation, call it as you will, most relevant expression of this dark undercurrent that can become a tsunami suddenly, kind of swallow the person up.
This desperate attempt to reconcile the internal conflict between internal objects and the conflict between internal objects and externalized objects, these conflicts, these dissonances, the dark personality is a solution to these dissonances, a solution to these conflicts, because the dark personality is convinced that it is good internally and externally.
Dark personality involves massive delusions and self-deception.
But behaviorally, and as a trait, there's no question that Machiavellianism is the number one aversive trait and the number one feature, I would say, of narcissism, psychopathy and similar dark disorders, including the covert states.
Okay, what is Machiavellianism?
It's a personality trait. It involves a calculating attitude toward human relationships.
The belief that ends justify the means.
Ruthlessness and callousness as a way of life.
A Machiavellian person is someone who views other people as instruments, extensions, tools, objects to be manipulated, used, exploited, or if necessary, abused, in order to pursue and obtain goals. If need be, using stratagems such as deception.
So this is Machiavellianism.
There is even a theory, it's known as the Machiavellian hypothesis, that says that the evolution of intelligence, especially in the social context, it was largely dependent on behavior characterized by the striving for power.
According to this Machiavellian hypothesis, individuals who are more Machiavellian in their behavior are more likely to be successful in adaptation, more likely to spread their genes to future generations.
But I'm not going to enter this hypothesis right now.
Back to Machiavellianism.
Again, Mac is short for Machiavellian or short for Machiavellian. Okay?
It's a construct. Machiavellianism is a construct.
It involves interpersonal manipulation, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest.
It was described by Richard Christie and Florence Geis, and they named it after Machiavelli, Niccolo Machiavelli of course.
And they created a test. Today it's known as the Mach 4 test. It's 20 question, Likert scale personality survey.
And people can score high on this test these people are known as high mucks or they can score low on this test and that's a low mac surprisingly so high macks have a high level of manipulativeness deceitfulness and cynical unemotional temperament Machiavellianism is one of the dark triad and dark tetrad traits alongside as I mentioned subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy and subclinical sadism.
It is not known that Machiavellianism is only the latest iteration in the description of a trait or the capture, encapsulation of a trait, there was well known before before christie and guys for example in the m mpi which is a personality test um especially the inventory for hypomania you have something known as the M scale or the mass scale and it's about manipulation and Machiavellianism and it preceded Christi's and Geist's work so it's not true that Machiavellianism as it's been described recently is a new discovery.
But the name, Coton, because it's very, you know, sexy name.
Okay.
Machiavellianism is a spectrum.
All traits are spectra. All traits lie on a continuum. Traits, not disorders. Not disorders. It's very important to emphasize. There's no spectrum. There's no continuum. There's no scale of narcissistic personality disorder.
Either you have it or you don't have it. It's like pregnancy.
But there is a scale, there is a spectrum of the traits of pathological narcissism.
Antagonism is on a scale, on a spectrum, dissociality or antisocial behavior and machiavellianism so the traits are on a spectrum or continue so high marks are very likely to cheat manipulate people around them, and they're very detached, they're very cold.
They have like a flat affect or then flat attachment. They're a bit robotic. They don't appear completely human, honestly.
Low Macs have a modicum of morality, empathy, so they're very unlikely to engage in behaviors that high max would find totally run over male and acceptable.
The higher one is on the Machiavellianism scale, the more likely they are to deceive and exploit at the expense of someone else, engage in unethical, immoral, unprincipled criminal behavior, and have no empathy, no feelings for other people, no emotions, at least not positive emotions.
They have access to negative emotions like narcissists. And no remorse and no regret.
Christie theorized that people with high mac, high machiavellianism, would have the following.
A relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships. No empathy. Simply no empathy.
And because you have no empathy as a high Mach person, you feel that you're not doing anything bad or wrong when you're manipulating other people you can't put yourself in their shoes.
Number two a lack of concern for conventional morality morality of behaviors or immorality of behaviors such as cheating and lying and deceiving, manipulating.
This kind of immorality is perceived to be as socially dictated, not innate, and relative, not absolute.
So depending on the context, depending on the circumstances, depending on the environment, depending on the end goal, the Machiavellian person would justify his behavior, he would feel that it is actually moral by his standards and he is the only relevant standard benchmark as far as morality goes.
This is highly psychopathic.
Machiavellian people and dark triad and dark tetrad personalities do not have, do not possess a gross psychopathology.
It is wrong self-styled experts and coaches and what have you, the riffraff on YouTube with and without academic degrees, confuse and conflate dark triad and dark tetral personalities with pathologies like narcissism and psychopathy.
That is wrong. Dark triad and dark tetral personalities are not psychopaths. They are not narcissists and they are not sadists.
They have elements, they have traits, they have styles that are reminiscent of these disorders, but they are not diagnosed with them.
There is an instrumental view of the world. Maybe there is an exploitative attitude, there is an objectifying stance, but never a pathology.
And finally, there's a low commitment to any idea or concept, belief system, value system, or ideology.
These people, Machiavellian people, are focused on getting things done pragmatically.
In this sense, they are much more psychopathic than narcissistic.
They don't care about allegiances, affiliations, history, belonging, group loyalty, they don't, in group, they don't care about any of these things.
They ask them, says, what's in it for me and how can I obtain it?
Now, manipulators are interested in tactics, not so much in strategy, in ends, not so much in means.
They're not inflexible, they're not rigid, they're highly flexible.
Another reason why actually people with dark tetra and dark triad personalities are not mentally ill. They don't have personality disorders.
These personality disorders are essentially rigid patterns.
Now, there's even a five-factor model of Machiavellianism, which relies on three basic, very important traits.
Antagonism. Manipulativeness, cynicism, selfishness, callousness, ruthlessness, arrogance. Antagonism.
Planfulness, deliberation, cunning, scheming, orderliness.
Agency, striving for achievements, assertiveness, self-confidence, emotional invulnerability, activity and competence.
These all together comprise Machiavellianism.
And yes, whereas we cannot diagnose personality disorders in children. Definitely not. We can diagnose Machiavellianism in children as young as three years old.
Machiavellianism shows, appears, makes an appearance in children as young as three years old.
These children use a combination of prosocial and coercive strategies.
So in effect, what they're doing is intermittent reinforcement.
Sometimes they're communal, collaborative, helpful, supportive, and sometimes they're coercive, bullying, terrorizing, and so on so forth.
And children who score high, high-MAC children are more successful at manipulation. They do it more frequently. And they are judged by others as better at manipulation.
Also, there is a correlation between high-MAC children and high-MAC parents, especially, by the way, in fathers.
Again, this distinguishes Machiavellianism, dark tetrad and dark triad of personalities from personality disorder people.
These personality disorders are much more affected by mother, whereas Machiavellianism, Machiavellian personalities, dark personalities, are much more affected by father.
In other words, Machiavellian personalities, dark personalities seem to be the outcomes of some disruption in socialization, whereas personality disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder seem to be the outcome of disruption in the formation of the self.
That's a major etiological difference.
One study concluded that parental Machiavellianism is a predictor and perhaps a cause of children's Machiavellian beliefs and their manipulative success.
Machiavellian children are aggressive and they strive for control within hierarchy they are reminiscent of Jordan Peterson and his lobsters.
Okay, I keep mentioning dark triad and there are several videos on this channel which deal with dark triad, dark tetrad, and my proposal of adark pentagram personality. You were invited to watch them because I get paid for the advertising.
Okaythat was a Machiavellian statement.
Now, in 1998, McHos, Wurzel, and Shiauto, whatever, they proposed that narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy are more or less interchangeable in normal samples.
A bit later, Delroy Paulhus and Mofsky began to form the concept of the dark triad. It's attributed mostly to Paulhus and McCoskey.
And then Kevin Williams joined the fray, etc., and the dark triad emerged.
Now, having said that, it's very important to distinguish Machiavellianism from psychopathy and narcissism.
If you listen to self-styled experts and coaches with and without academic degrees, charlatans and con artists online, the vast majority, actually, you will get the impression that Machiavellian is just another name for psychopathy or that all narcissists are Machiavellian or that all Machiavellians are narcissism in other words you will get the impression that Machiavellianism and psychopathy are indistinguishable.
That is not true. That is not the case.
Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlap to some extent.
But they are distinct constructs. They are not the same.
I heard self-styled experts online claiming that all psychopaths are narcissists, which is utterrubbish, total nonsense.
Also, many psychopaths are grandiose but grandiosity exactly like Machiavillianism is a trait domain it's a trait grandiosity is not narcissism it's a trait in narcissism one of many.
Psychopaths are grandiose. Narcissus are grandiose, but they're not one of the same.
Similarly, Machiavellianism is common in psychopathy, very common, less common in narcissism, but can be found.
It doesn't mean that Machiavellianism is psychopathy.
Get it?
There are differences between Machiavellianism and the state of psychopathy.
So, for example, psychopaths, not all psychopaths, but for example factor two psychopaths are impulsive. Factor one and so on tend to be reckless. They lack long-term planning and vision.
While people high on the Machiavellianism scale, Machiavellianists, they're not impulsive at all. They're not reckless. They plan ahead. They're very careful, meticulous and methodical. Exactly the opposite of a typical psychopath.
Paulhus and others stated that the difference between the two trades is underappreciated.
People high on Machiavellianism can delay gratification. They're much more sensitive to punishment, and they are aware of the consequences of their actions.
Psychopaths are the exact opposite of all this. Psychopaths cannot delay. They insist on instant gratification. They are less worried about punishment. They are unaware of the consequences of their actions. That's why they are reckless.
Machiavellianism is more influenced by the environment than psychopathy. High marks have been described as master manipulators.
And to be a good, true manipulator, you need to be embedded in the environment. You need to be alert to it. You need to be sensitive to it. You need to be reactive to it.
Psychopaths are not so good at that. They have cold empathy, as we will see momentarily, but they're not good at reacting to the environment, which explains why many, many psychopaths are lone wolves and are actually scattered.
Daniel Jones noted that both psychopaths and Hymax have a manipulative and callous nature.
There are big differences. The type of manipulation employed by Machiavellians is not the same type of manipulation employed by psychopaths.
Machiavellianism is marked by calculated planning.
Machiavellian people high on the Machiavellian scale manipulate only when there is something to be gained.
Psychopaths are rash. They don't think two steps ahead. They manipulate. And they manipulate instinctively, regardless of a situation and regardless of a goal.
The psychopath can relate to his environment only via manipulation. The psychopath's interpersonal interactions are mediated via manipulation.
The Machiavellian's interactions with the environment, many times, are not manipulative because there's no need for manipulation.
It's the same like the narcissists. The narcissists' only way to interact with other, significant other people is through the shared fantasy.
But of course there are other mental health disorders and other mental health clinical entities which make use or leverage fantasies. It doesn't mean they're narcissists.
O'Boyle and others found that the notion that Machiavellianism is marked by cautiousness is contentious. They said it needs to be studied further and that some Machiavellians are reckless in some situations.
So there's a bit of a correlation there. But even they agree that it is far less than the case is with psychopathy.
Okay. What about narcissism?
Again, everyone online would tell you that all narcissists are Machiavellian and Machiavellian people are narcissistic, both of them manipulate, both high marks and narcissists manipulate, there's no debate about this, no argument, but the motivation matters.
The narcissist manipulates only when and if he's after narcissistic supply. He manipulates people in order to manage impressions, improve or maintain reputation, and garner attention, negative or positive, narcissistic supply.
The Machiavellian manipulates when there's a goal, money, sex, power, you name it.
In this sense, a Machiavellian is much closer to psychopathy than to narcissism, actually.
The overwhelming vast majority of narcissists are not really Machiavellian at all, because they're not goal-oriented.
In the case of the narcissist, there is self-aggrandizement. The Machiavellian is not emotionally invested in any grandiosity, in any grandiose inflated self-image.
Machiavellianism is correlated with narcissism. Machiavellian scores were positively associated with some aspects of narcissism, such as entitlement, exploitativeness.
But Machiavellianism was inversely associated, discorrelated with other narcissistic tendencies, for example, self-sufficiency.
So some elements in narcissism are conducive to Machiavellianism and other very important elements in narcissism are not conducive to Machiavellianism.
It's a nuanced picture. You can't say all Machiavellians are narcissists. It's a nuanced picture. You can't say all Machiavellians are narcissists. All narcissists are Machiavelli. That is not true.
People higher on Machiavellianism are very realistic. They maintain a razor-sharp reality testing. They know the difference between fantasy and reality, imagination, and the truth, lies and deceptions and facts. They never lose sight of these distinctions. They are even realistic about their own character.
Narcissists are not realistic. They're delusional. They're totally setteecepting.
Narcissists are also way less malevolent than Machiavellian people. High Mach people are malicious, they're sadistic. They're a bit evil if you wish to use a religious word.
Narcissists are pro-social. They have a more socially positive personality because they rely on other people and depend on other people for narcissistic supply. They need to work with other people somehow in order to garner a supply. Self supply is never enough.
And narcissists are more egosyntonic. They report higher level of self-rated contentment or happiness than Machiavellian people.
Machiavellian people are always cynical, always angry, always passive aggressive, always hateful, always critical of other people and so on.
In covert narcissism, machiavellianism should be more prevalent, should be more pronounced, sorry, in covert narcissism, but there are no studies to substantiate this.
And think there should be.
Machiavellians and narcissists have deficient empathy or they lack empathy or they have cold empathy.
There's a focus of self-interest. There's no question about this, but they manifest differently.
The motivations are different. High marks are driven by personal gain.
Narcissists are driven by need for validation, admiration, attention.
High Max are more strategic, more calculating in interpersonal interactions, totally unemotional.
People high on narcissism are more impulsive, attention-seeking and sentimental within the shared fantasy, for example.
High Marx are exploitative, absolutely exploitative and invariably exploitative.
Narcissists sometimes seek out relationships that bolster their self-esteem and provide them with admiration and a sense of safety, stability.
Max, high marks don't need this.
In this sense, again, in this sense, they're much closer to psychopaths.
Compared to some clinical narcissists, people with a narcissistic style or a narcissistic personality organization, but who cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, they're not full-fledged narcissists. Compared with these kind of people, high-machs are much less empathic.
Much less empathic because the emotional deficiencies in high machs are enormous. They are pathologically unemotional. I will discuss it in a minute.
And so you will not find Machiavellianism in the DSM or in the ICD because it is not a disorder. It's not a mental health pathology. It's a personality construct. It'sa personality style if you wish. It is a non-clinical personality style.
And it is negatively correlated with agreeableness, conscientiousness, to some extent of honesty and humility, although there's a debate about it within the Big Five and the HPI and the HEXACO tests. There's a big debate about this.
But the belief is that these are the correlations, the negative correlations.
While high mach personalities are agentic, they have a very high level, elevated level of agency.
At the same time, they're non-communal.
Now we have something known as the interpersonal circumplex, which measures these dimensions of agency and communion. Agency is the motivation to succeed, to individuate, and this of communion is the motivation to merge with other people and support group interests.
Machiavellianism is high agency and low communion. It's diagonally opposite from what is known as self-construal, which is high communion, low agency.
And so people high on Machiavellianism don't simply wish to achieve things. They are not only goal-oriented, but they wish to do it. They wish to do it. It's part of the pleasure, part of the joy. They wish to accomplish things at the expense of other people, or at the very least ignoring and disregarding other people.
Now in 1997, I came up with a construct called cold empathy. I suggested that there is a variant of empathy comprised of reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy and I christened it, I coined the phrase cold empathy which is now I am happy to say widely used.
So Machiavellianism is closely correlated with cold empathy. It is negatively correlated with affective empathy. There's nothing surprising there. Machiavellianism is negatively correlated with emotions in general. Affective empathy, affective resonance, feeling good when other people feel good. It is positively associated with effective dissonance, feeling happy when other people are sad or fail or, you know, schadenfreude.
So people high in Machiavellianism have a better understanding of cold empathy. They do not feel emotional or hot empathy and that's why they seem to be cold, uncaring, somehow robotic, detached, and so on and so forth.
High machs are deficient only at the level of affective empathy, the sharing of emotions. The cognitive empathy is even high. In other words, cold empathy.
Narcissists have cold empathy. Psychopaths have very cold empathy, and Machiavellians have very developed cold empathy.
Again, there's no surprise you. As I said, high machs don't feel guilt or remorse over their actions. They're less likely to be altruistic. They're not concerned with other people's problems. It's not my problem. They're more automatic. They're less conscious in recognizing other people's negative emotions.
That is cold empathy. It's a emotions. That is cold empathy. It's a very important element in cold empathy.
The scanning for vulnerabilities, chinks in the armor, how to penetrate, how to exploit, how to leverage other people's weaknesses and frailties and how, allowing for better manipulation.
Even children who scored high on Machiavellianism showed a lack of empathy and delinquent behaviors compared to children who scored low. These children never felt guilty. They were lying, they were cheating, they were bullying, they were truant and so on and so forth.
This is reminiscent of what is known as conduct disorder in children, which is a precursor of psychopathy in some adults, in 40% of adults.
Machiavellianism is so diametrically opposed to empathy, and empathy or lack of empathy keeps cropping up all the time. Cold empathy is a lack of empathy as we know it.
We never really think of people as empathic if they don't react emotionally. There's no emotional correlate or emotional resonance so cold empathy is like the machine version of real empathy and so Machiavellianism is in a way the opposite of empathy it's just another word for another word to describe the opposite of empathy.
There are, as some studies say, significantly negatively correlated.
And important to understand that high Mach personalities, people with high Machiavellianism, have no access to their positive emotions, exactly like narcissists and psychopaths. They have access to negative emotions to some extent, but not to positive emotions.
But unlike narcissists, narcissists react to negative emotions. They go crazy. They become super enraged, super this, super that, super hateful. They decompensate and emotionally dysregulate narcissists.
Psychopaths leverage negative emotions. They use their anger and rage to drive them forward to terrorize the environment to modify other people's behavior. Their negative affectivity, the negative affectivity of a psychopath is an instrument, a tool at the service of the psychopath's pursuit of his goals or her goals. Goal orientation.
Not so with Machiavellian people.
While Machiavellian people have no access to positive emotions and limited access to negative emotions. They are not reactive to any emotion. Positive or negative. They are very reminiscent of schizoids in this sense. They're detached. Their attitude is totally unemotional. This flat affect, reduced affect display or vanishing affect display.
Christian Geist noted that the primary difference between high macs and low macs is a degree of emotion invested in interpersonal relations.
So there's no emotional investment. There's no, in other words, cathexis. There's no emotional commitment or investment so low emotionality is common among people who score high on the Machiavellianism scale.
Doris McEwen noted that Machiavellians do not inhabit the realm of emotion in the same way as others, yet they use it to manipulate others. They do not experience feelings, empathy or morality in normative ways. Yet they are consummate manipulators and deceivers precisely by playing upon these sentiments and convictions in others.
Thus they induce in others the guilt that they hardly feel in themselves.
There was a study by Farah Ali and others and they noted that Machiavellians seem to react emotionally to stimuli in a way that is very reminiscent of primary psychopaths.
But with a high level of anxiety, higher level of anxiety than psychopaths.
But that's a disputed study. Anxiety by the way is an interesting question. Today we know psychopaths are anxious. They have anxiety. Machiavellian people with Machiavellianism are anxious we know that that's been established in multiple studies.
And there is a question whether anxiety is the third factor that gives rise to both Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
Maybe people whose emotional development is stunted and arrested become Machiavellians.
When they're exposed to anxiety, they develop anxiety, and the reaction to the anxiety is Machiavellianism, a way to control the world by manipulating it.
While psychopaths who do have access to emotions, negative emotions at least, they choose another solution to anxiety, which is goal orientation, defiance, recklessness, contumaciousness and so on.
So anxiety may be the underlying factor which gives rise to Machiavellianism and psychopathy depending on the personality makeup.
The relationship between Machiavellianism and anxiety is not clear.
There are definitely positive correlations, but it's not clear.
Maybe the anxiety is derivative. Maybe people with high Machiavellianism are very worried about things not going their own way, aboutgoals, and this gives rise to the anxiety.
Maybe it's exactly the opposite. Machiavellianism and psychopathy give rise to anxiety.
We don't know enough. We don't know enough.
We don't know enough in addition to acting for self-interest and profit, high machs are a lot less verbal than narcissists and even psychopaths. They use significantly less work, fewer words.
That is especially the case when they are confronted in situations which require emotions. When they come face to face with emotions in themselves or in others, the emotions in themselves are denied so completely that they don't experience anything, but confronted with emotions in other people, they become deaf and mute. They're unable to verbalize. They're unable to talk. They're paralyzed.
And one of the studies concluded that it confirmed previous findings that high machs have a cool and rational character and a pro-self orientation, and it showed that their lack of group orientation may account for their low cooperation in social dilemmas.
Maybe, and maybe it's a more profound issue.
For example, alexithymia. Alexithymia is heavily correlated with Machiavellianism. It's a lack of awareness of one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.
Maybe when the Machiavellian person is confronted with other people's emotions, he is confounded, he's confused, he's puzzled, he's befuddled, he doesn't know what to do, he's at a loss, and so he freezes, it's like a threat, and he freezes.
Healthyalexithymic individuals are very high on Machiavellines.
So unemotionality of Machiavellines may be a form of alexithymia.
We don't know yet. Again, this field is evolving as we speak. There are results that correlate alexithymia with Machiavellianism, with exploitative beliefs, some results connected to narcissism, higher levels of alexithymia seem to be somehow connected to manipulativeness and the belief that this is an effective strategy. That's the extent of what we know.
However, aggression is a very interesting indicator of the gulf of the abyss between Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism.
In psychopathy, aggression is externalized. In narcissism, it's largely externalized, sometimes internalized, for example, after mortification.
But Machiavellianism has very little association with aggression, especially overt aggression. These people are not aggressive. When they do become aggressive, it's very short term. And so it's very limited. And they would tend to direct aggression at people who don't matter to them so much.
So their aggression is very limited. It's almost, it's rarely overt. And it's usually like a burst, an outburst against some passing, passing insignificant person. They would never, literally never be aggressive with long-term partners, which immediately sets them apart from narcissists and psychopaths.
Machiavellianism is associated with hostility, but the hostility is masked, is denied or repressed because hostility is not helpful, not conducive to manipulation. So they have learned over the lifetime, they've learned to suppress hostility, disguise it so effectively that maybe they don't experience it even.
The emphasis is on results, results, results, bottom line, goals, accomplishments, manipulating others to get there to the goalpost. And if you're hostile, if you're aggressive, if you're violent, if you're abusive, you're not likely to motivate people to help you to get to the goal.
Machiavellians are therefore not aggressive in the way that psychopaths and narcissists are, but in the pursuit of long-term objectives, they are dogged, they are compulsive.
So they sublimate their aggression. The aggression goes into the chase, into the conquest, into the pursuit, into the realization, actualization of a plan or a program.
Machiavellians are rarely antisocial. They become antisocial and they almost never commit crimes. They become antisocial, you know, mildly antisocial, attenuated antisocial behavior, only when the stakes are low and only with the benefits outweigh the risks.
They are not psychopaths and narcissists in this sense at all.
There was a study by Paulhus and they discovered that high machs refrained from cheating in risky situations. They prefer to sustain their reputation for the long term than to engage in short-term financial gain.
The author suggested that high-Machs may cheat under high-risk scenarios, but only when they are ego-depleted.
And then when they are ego-depleted, when they are tired, when they're exhausted, when they've been, when they've failed multiple times, this could be a new condition, covert Machiavellianism, if you wish.
At that point, they begin to resemble narcissists and psychopaths.
Mikoski found that Mach is associated with cheating, divulging intimate sexual secrets to third parties, and feigning love and inducing intoxication in order to secure sex.
That's the shared fantasy, yes?
And Mikoski suggested that Machiavellianism is correlated with an extensive focus on financial gain and with antisocial behaviors such as stealing, vandalism, and cheating as opposed to pro-social actions like helping others.
But all these are highly controlled, there's a full awareness of consequences, their behaviors are suppressed when they don't yield benefits that outweigh the risks, and only when the Machiavellian is utterly depleted, exhausted, destroyed, defeated, only then there's a form of covert Machiavellianism which comes to the surface, and then we have a convergence of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
Then we have a clinical dark triad in operation.
But these conditions, covert Machiavellianism, are extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely rare because the Machiavellian person knows better, is inhibited, is controlled, knows what he is she is doing, lands ahead, is careful and cautious and wise, and almost never finds himself in situations which are intractable risky and dangerous.
Machiavellians are like very very wise psychopaths and narcissists if that were ever possible.