What Is Machiavellianism? (EXCERPT)

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, these dissonances, the dark personality is a solution to this 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 ofversive 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, or Mach for short, 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 Machiavelli in their behavior, I'm 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 Mach4 test, it's a 20 question Likert scale personality survey and people can score high on this test these people are known as high Macs or they can score low on this test and and that's a low mac, surprisingly.

So high mucks 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 Geis. For example, in the MMPI, which is a personality test, 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 Christie's and Geis's work.

So it's not true that Machiavellianism, as it's been described recently, is a new discovery. It's very far from a new discovery.

But the name, Cotron, because it's very, you know, sexy name. name okay Machiavellianism is a spectrum, all traits are spectra, all traits lie on a continuum. Traits, not disorders, not disorders, is 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 antisociality, antisocial behavior, and machiavellianism. So the traits are on a spectrum. I'll continue.

So Hymax 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 Machs have a modicum of morality, empathy, so they're very unlikely to engage in behaviors that high max would find totally run of the mill 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 Mach high Machianism would have the following a relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships, no empathy, simply no empathy. And because you have 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 tetra personalities do not have, do not possess a gross psychopathology. It is wrong.

Sergstyled 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 the pathologies, 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 trace, 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, in-group. They don't care about any of these things. They ask themselves, what's in it for me and how can I obtain it? 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 tetrad 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, arrobeals, antagonism, planfulness, deliberation, cunning, scheming, orderliness, an 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 are communal, collaborative, helpful, supportive, and sometimes they're coercive, bullying, terrorizing, and so on so forth.

And children who score high-back children are more successful at manipulation. They do it more frequently, and they're judged by others as better 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.

His 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 destruction 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 a Dark Pentagram personality. You are invited to watch them because I get paid for the advertising. Okay, that was a Machiavellian statement.

Now, in 1998, McHoskey, Orzel and Seade, Shiau, whatever, they proposed that narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy are more or less interchangeable in normal samples.

A bit later, Delroy Paulhus and McHoskey began to form the concept of the dark triad. It's attributed mostly to Paulhus and McCoskey.

And then Kevin Williams joined the Frey, 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 Machiavellianism is just another name for psychopathy or that all narcissists are Machiavellian or that all Machiavellians are narcissists.

In other words, you will get the impression that Machiavellianism, narcissism 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 Machiavellianism, is a trait domain. It's a trait.

Grandiosity is not narcissism. It's a trait in narcissism, one of many.

Psychopaths are grandiose. Narcissists 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, 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 high-machs, 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 traits 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-machs 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 scared.

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. Rash. They don't think two steps ahead. They manipulate. And they manipulate reflexively, regardless of a situation and regardless of a goal.

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 narcissist.

The narcissist's only way to interact with other significant other people is through the shared fantasy.

But of course there are other mental health issues, disorders and other mental health clinical entities which make use or leverage fantasies it doesn't mean they're narcissists.

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 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 Machiavellians.

It's a nuanced picture. You can't say all Machiavellians are narcissists. All narcissists are Machiavellian. 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 totalists, they're decepting.

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 supply. Self-supply is never enough.

And narcissists are moral egosyntonic they report higher level of self-rated contentment or happiness than Machiavellian people.

Machiavellian people are always, always, always angry, always passive-aggressive, always hateful, always critical of other people, and so on.

In this sense, Machiavellianism should be more prevalent, should be more pronounced, sorry, in covert narcissism, but there are no studies to substantiate this and I 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 Machs are driven by personal gain. Narcissists are driven by need for validation, admiration, attention. High Machs are more strategic, more calculating, interpersonal interactions, totally unemotional. People high on narcissism are more impulsive, attention-seeking, and sentimental within the shared fantasy, for example.

High Machs 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.

High Machs don't need this. And this, again, in this sense, they are much closer to psychopaths.

Compared to subclinical 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's a personality style if you wish. It is a non-clinical personality style.

And it is negatively correlated with agreeableness, conscientiousness, to some extent, honesty and humility, although there's a debate about it within the Big Five and the hexacortes. 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, to dissociate. 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.

And this is where sadism begins to fit in. That's why I think we should be talking about the dark tetrad, not the dark triad in connection with Machiavellianism.

Now in 1997 I came up with a construct called empathy. I suggested that there is a variant of empathy comprised of reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy and I christened it and 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. It's negatively correlated, Machiavellianism is negatively correlated with emotions in general.

Effective empathy, effective 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 colduncaring, somehow robotic, detached, and so 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 developed cold empathy, and Machiavellians have very developed cold empathy.

Again, there's no surprise, 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 less conscious in recognizing other people's negative 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 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 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 to describe the opposite of empathy.

There are some studies say significantly negatively correlated and important to understand that high Mach personalities, people with high Machiavellians, 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 envious, 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 schizoid in this sense. They're detached. Their attitude is totally unemotional. There's flat affect, reduced affect display or vanishing affect display.

Christian Geis noted that the primary difference between high Machs and low Machs 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 McIlroy 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 theway, is an interesting question.

The psychopaths, 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, defines 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, about not accomplishing goals, and this gives rise to the anxiety.

Otherwise, maybe it's exactly the opposite.

Machiavellianism and psychopathy give rise to anxiety.

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, 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 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.

Healthy alexithymic individuals are very high on machiavellinism so unemotionality of Machiavellianism may be a form of alexithymia.

We don't know yet. Again, this field is evolving as we speak.

There are results that correlate alexymia with Machiavellianism, with exploitative beliefs, some results connected to narcissism, higher levels of alexithemia 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 if they are agreed 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 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 have learned to suppress hostility, disguise it so effectively, that maybe they don't experience it even.

The emphasis is on results, results, bottom line, goals, accomplishments, manipulating others to get there to the goal post 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 when the benefits outweigh the risks.

They are not psychopaths and narcissists in this sense at all.

There was a study by Paul Has Jones and they discovered that High Machs refrain 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're ego depleted and then when they are ego depleted when they're tired when they're exhausted 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.

Makowski 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 prosocial 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, plans 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.