Gaslighting Expert: Catch Psychopaths Hiding In Plain Sight By Asking This! | Dr Leanne Ten Brinke
In a Nutshell
Psychopaths can be spotted in 5 seconds through Duchenne smiles during hostile statements and excessive hand gestures, while liars give fewer details and more tentative language than truth-tellers. The Dark Tetrad traits—psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism—exist on a continuum, with 10% of people scoring high, and these individuals lie frequently, pursue power, and resist punishment-based change. Effective management requires setting explicit boundaries, using rewards instead of punishment, negotiating via text, and asking open-ended questions to increase cognitive load on liars rather than relying on unreliable behavioral cues.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Research shows that it takes about 5 seconds to get a kernel of truth about whether someone is psychopathic. Most people picture a dangerous-looking villain, but real-world psychopaths do not appear this way.
There are four elements of dark personality traits: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism. People with higher levels of these traits engage in Duchenne smiles, which involve activation around the eyes creating crow's feet. They also use a lot of hand gestures called illustrators.
These traits can develop from abuse, cold uncaring parenting styles, or overvaluation of a child early in life.
Research has examined how psychopathic personality traits could increase the amount of influence someone has in government.
When examining dating profiles, certain profiles show red flags associated with psychopathy. One profile described a brain surgeon, which appeared impressive but showed signs of narcissism.
The motivation behind this research is to make people less cynical about human nature. Understanding deception, dominance, and dark personality traits gives people something they can do about these interactions and provides a more accurate view of the world.
Most people move through life caring about others, having compassion, and being truthful and honest. Psychopathy is the opposite of this experience. Interest in psychopathy stems from wanting to understand this foreign personality type and wanting to avoid becoming a victim. Research on true crime shows it tends to have a largely female audience motivated by understanding and avoidance.
Scott Lilienfeld's research showed people 5-second, 10-second, and 20-second clips of criminal offenders being interviewed. Random psychology students rated psychopathic traits like callousness and manipulativeness. These ratings correlated reasonably well with trained clinical psychologists who conducted hours-long interviews.
People with higher psychopathic traits showed Duchenne smiles when saying hostile things, creating a weird emotional presentation of happy expressions with hostile language. They also used more hand gestures. Observers paid attention to these cues when making judgments, though personality assessment improves with data across different times and contexts.
The PhD research studied people who went on television asking for help finding missing loved ones. In some cases, they were guilty of killing that person. This involved comparing genuine pleas with false ones where people knew their loved one was never coming back.
Genuine sadness involves downturned lip corners and inner eyebrows coming upward and together. People who were lying showed more surprise expressions, pulling lip corners down but raising both inner and outer eyebrows without bringing them together.
Four different cues, two verbal and two non-verbal, predicted with about 90% accuracy who was lying versus telling the truth. Later replication found more modest effects but consistent verbal patterns.
Liars tend to use fewer words and more tentative language, leaving gray area in statements. Truthful people give more precise, high-conviction responses. The most consistent effect differentiating truth from lies is the amount of detail provided.
People who are lying tend to give fewer details. This contradicts the common belief that liars provide excessive irrelevant detail. When people have time to prepare, they can appear more like truth-tellers, but spontaneous responses reveal the difference.
Lying creates increased cognitive load because liars must invent details on the spot, avoid contradictions, remember their lies for future retellings, and imagine what others already know. Truth-tellers simply recall actual events.
Research shows people who are lying tend to have increased cortisol reactivity compared to truth-tellers.
Liars may give lots of detail about truthful portions of stories but become vague or sparse when describing the actual lie. This creates detectable deviations from baseline communication patterns.
There is no single definitive cue to deception. Instead, subtle red flags should encourage follow-up questions and deeper investigation into specific topics.
Thousands of studies show people perform at about 54% accuracy when detecting lies. In laboratory experiments where participants stole $100 bills and denied it, observers performed only slightly above chance.
Training can increase detection accuracy slightly. However, learning to ask better questions is more effective than trying to read behavioral cues.
Good lie detectors ask for more information and ask unanticipated questions. This increases cognitive load on liars and makes deception cues more apparent.
Closed-ended questions like "Are you cheating on me?" give liars easy escape routes. Open-ended questions force liars to generate more information and increase cognitive load.
After initial responses, asking specific questions about details forces liars to generate additional information. Questions like "Tell me more about that" reveal differences between truth-tellers who can elaborate and liars who struggle.
Liars tend to give fewer verifiable details. Research suggests asking how verifiable a statement is works better for detecting lies than trying to interpret multiple behavioral cues.
Liars may speak slowly, use more filler words like "um" and "ah," and show visible signs of mental effort like furrowed brows. However, these cues can have innocent explanations.
People worldwide cite sketchy eye contact as the primary deception cue, but research shows no connection between gaze aversion and lying. Liars often control their eye contact to appear truthful.
Some neurodivergent individuals, particularly those on the autism spectrum, may be perceived as lying when telling the truth due to eye contact patterns. Cultural differences also affect eye contact norms, leading to judgment errors.
The dark triad has expanded to a tetrad including psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism.
Psychopathy involves superficial charm, manipulativeness, grandiosity, shallow emotional experiences, lack of remorse and guilt, failure to take responsibility, impulsivity, and rule-breaking behavior.
Machiavellianism, named after Niccolò Machiavelli's "The Prince," involves cynical views of others, strategic lying, and manipulation. Practitioners engage in long-term planning, collecting information for future use like three-dimensional chess.
They tend to break a lot of rules. This might be just like workplace rules or social norms.
Psychopathy has largely been studied in contexts where they'll have that available to them. So they are very interested in power, which of course is where the name comes from.
Narcissism is one that people know pretty well. These are people who tend to be very entitled and they're very willing to exploit other people in order to get what they think they deserve. It's a very relentless kind of self-focus.
Narcissism, like all of these traits, exists on a continuum. You or anyone else could take a measure, a self-report measure of the extent to which you have these traits, and you can land anywhere from very low to very high.
Some of these traits, narcissism being one of them, actually has a personality disorder diagnosis at the incredibly high end. This appears in the diagnostic and statistical manual, which is basically like a list of different mental disorders. You could go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, they could assess you and diagnose you if you have like extreme levels of narcissism. But people land everywhere.
The problem is that people say, "Oh, she's a narcissist, right? He's a narcissist." They make this kind of very binary distinction. These exist on a continuum. There's no clear moment where it becomes you are a narcissist versus not a narcissist. It's more accurate to say they have relatively high levels of narcissism or psychopathy or whatever the case is.
There are two main types of narcissists: the vulnerable type and the grandiose type. Grandiose is the one that we all know well where they've got this ego and it's huge. It cannot be popped. They get this negative feedback and nothing gets through to them and they always think they should be the one in charge.
For grandiose narcissists, they tend to get very angry with a particular kind of threat to their ego, and that is like a failure to achieve. Like they wanted this promotion at work, they didn't get it.
Vulnerable individuals actually have a very fragile ego. It can be popped very easily essentially. So if they get negative feedback from people, maybe they get socially rejected, that's when they become quite angry. That's more of a trigger for them.
The research was focused on anger in response to these kinds of threats to their ego, but certainly emotional, combative responses. Someone who is relatively low on narcissism of both kinds could take that kind of feedback that like, no, I don't think a second date is really for us, but someone with vulnerable narcissism is going to respond badly.
During the interview process they were very quick to claim credit for all of the things the company they worked at had done. They were also very quick to say that they were good at everything. When asked if they could message them on a particular app, they said, "I'm amazing at that app." The pattern of behavior suggested insecurity rather than entitlement, as the person had been continually counted out and overlooked for opportunities.
For vulnerable narcissism, the reason that they would respond so poorly to rejection is that they need constant admiration and positive feedback from other people to keep their ego going. A former employer said about one person, "he always needs a gold star."
The difference between deep insecurity and narcissism is that deep insecurity would need to be coupled with entitlement. There's still a grandiose sense of self, it's just that it is quite fragile. They think they're really good and they're willing to exploit other people to get what they think they deserve, and they may feel like they've been victimized, and that's why they haven't gotten all of the accolades that they think they deserve.
Regardless of where this person sits on this continuum, they might still have incredible skills. They might have the abilities that you're looking for. The question becomes, is this something you can manage or is this going to create problems?
Our behavior is a combination of both our personality and the situation that we're in. If you're at a job interview, your whole goal is to show people like, I can do this job, I've got the skills that you need. In a job interview, we might come across as more confident, presenting ourselves in the best possible light. But we're very quick to rush to a personality assessment, which is called the fundamental attribution error. When we see someone behave in a particular way, like they're being self-promoting, we could be like, "Oh, that's narcissistic." That's a personality trait.
We tend to be more likely to make personality attributions to others, but if we were in their shoes, we would say we were just trying to show what we could do. It's the situation that made us act bigger than our britches. We need to be aware that the situation can impact our behavior, so we want to not be too quick to make a personality attribution where the situation could explain that.
Personality is a consistent pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time and across context. If you've only got one interaction with this person, you might get a sense of their personality, but you might see them out with their friends or with their family and they might not be so boastful, which might suggest that this is really the situation talking, not the personality.
When it comes to all of these traits, men tend to score somewhat higher than women. That's a quite consistent finding. That is not to say that women cannot score very high on these traits. There are certainly cases and there's quite a bit of overlap, but on average, the averages for men tend to be higher than the averages for women.
The fourth trait is sadism, which is the newest and latest one. When you hear sadism, you might jump to pretty extreme examples. Some started studying sadistic behavior in the context of sexual homicides, reading through descriptions of criminal behavior looking for signs of sadistic treatment of the victim. It can get incredibly extreme, but there's also more everyday versions. One good example is online trolling.
People who are relatively high in sadism take pleasure in other people's pain. They could do that in incredibly gruesome, horrifying ways, or they could just be pushing people's buttons online trying to get people upset. They all share three things: they are callous, so they don't care about other people, they don't care about your feelings or your outcomes. They're manipulative, so they're willing to lie and cheat to get what they want. And they're hostile toward other people. That's the core of all of these traits.
Facades are good at hiding. Some of the earliest descriptions of psychopathy in particular described it as a mask of sanity. They can seem quite normal on the surface, but if you get a look underneath the hood, you see that they're not running the same kind of operating system that you are.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that all people with high levels of psychopathy are violent, and that's absolutely not the case. Most people think a psychopath looks dangerous. They picture the villain in a movie, but that's not how it works in real life.
In the description of psychopathy with all those four different elements, there was rule-breaking, and sometimes that's criminal rule-breaking. That could be violent behavior, but it's not necessarily so. Psychopathy is a risk factor for violent behavior, but there's plenty of people who would score relatively highly and never engage in violent behavior. They might break rules in other ways.
When we hear the word psychopathy, what comes to mind is a Ted Bundy type character. He reportedly scored 39 out of 40 on the psychopathy checklist revised, which is a measure that psychologists will use to assess how psychopathic someone is. He's a poster boy for those traits, but certainly people can score highly without being a serial murderer.
All these traits exist on a continuum, so the proportion of people that we say are high on these traits depends on where you put that cut point. If we're talking about psychopathy and clinical levels, that means a score of 30 out of 40 on the psychopathy checklist revised or higher. That's about 1% of the population. Narcissistic personality disorder, so again, very extreme levels of those traits, enough to warrant a diagnosis, would be two to five percent.
We don't have clinical cut-offs for sadism and Machiavellianism. What we do have is a ton of data of people who have completed self-report questionnaires. If you look at the proportion of people who on average agree with the items, it's about 10% of the population.
The variation in someone's score on these personality traits is about 50% genetic and about 50% environmental experiences. These people didn't ask to be this way because you don't get to choose your parents, so you don't get to choose your genetics. When it comes to those environmental experiences, often they're early life experiences and not good ones. Research suggests that abuse and really cold, uncaring parenting style early in life can increase the likelihood that someone will have higher levels of these traits later in life.
For narcissism, another variable is overvaluation of a child early in life may lead to more narcissistic traits later. There was one study, a longitudinal study, where they asked parents the extent to which they told their kids like, "you're special, you're better than other kids." The more the kids got that kind of feedback, the more likely they were to be more narcissistic later down the road. They thought they were exceptional. They thought they were entitled to things that other people were not entitled to.
That's different than self-esteem. We want our kids to have high self-esteem. We want them to know that they are cared for and worthy. That comes from a warm, responsive parenting style.
Sometimes you've got a perfect storm where you might have a parent who has really high levels of these traits, so they're passing on that potential genetic risk factor. But if you've got a parent in your household who is callous, manipulative, impulsive, it's going to be very difficult to maintain a pretty stable home life for that child. They might end up experiencing some of those abuse and cold parenting styles that are also environmental risk factors for developing psychopathy later in life. So they get a double whammy.
Warm and responsive parenting is what seems to work. Early intervention with kids really can help reduce the likelihood of them developing high levels of psychopathic traits as they grow older. Usually it's training parents about how to respond in ways that don't escalate or create these dominance contests when the kid acts out, but also to reinforce and model this warm and responsiveness.
What's fascinating about psychopathy and callous and unemotional traits in kids is that they tend to be not very responsive to punishment. They're very responsive to rewards. If you see kids doing something kind or helpful, the parent-child interaction training teaches parents to repeat what they said, "That was a very kind thing to say," just repeating, showing, responding to them, paying attention to their behavior when they do something good or kind, reinforcing it, and giving that attention to increase the likelihood that you see it in the future.
The inverse of that in terms of a bad way to respond to a child that might lead to some of these dark personality traits in the future would be cold and unresponsive parenting, getting angry, getting frustrated with them. Physically harming them, that would be child abuse, is associated with increased likelihood of developing these traits over time.
If a kid is having a tantrum, you'll see a parent saying, "No, you can't have that." Then they'll increase the tantrum level, "No, you can't have that." But then once it gets to a certain point, you give in. What that teaches is that you just need to escalate your behavior, you need to continue to dominate your parent, kick it up a notch, and then at some point you're going to win as a kid. That kind of parenting is not going to extinguish the negative behavior very effectively.
There's a scan of functional MRI pointing out the prefrontal cortex. The research suggests that people who have high levels of psychopathy tend to have less active and less connected prefrontal cortex. That's associated with impulse control and moral reasoning, moral thinking. If their brains are less active during the same moral or impulse control task in those regions, this might help explain why they're more likely to behave impulsively and not be empathetic to other people.
The amygdala, which is deep within our brain, is also associated with emotional response, particularly fear. People with high levels of psychopathy experience pretty low fear. They're not very good at aversive conditioning. If we get punished for something, we learn that whenever we come up against that stimuli again in the future, we're like, "Oh, that turned out really badly last time, I'm going to avoid that." Amygdalas in people with high levels of psychopathy tend to be both smaller and less active.
Some change is possible. Most of the research we have on psychopathy in particular comes from criminal offenders. Individuals who are incarcerated have to take part in some treatment while they're inside. The research finds that they're not particularly motivated to change. That's a big problem because they don't particularly care about other people, and it tends to be other people that they are hurting with their behavior, so it's like, "Why would I change? This is a you problem, not a me problem." Motivation can be difficult to come by with this population.
If they do consistently engage in cognitive behavioral therapies, you can reduce the likelihood of recidivism, the likelihood that they will reoffend upon release. When it comes to lower levels of these traits, there's interesting research by Nathan Hudson where people did agreeableness challenges. Agreeableness is the opposite of these traits. They would ping them on their smartphone every day and would say, "You should give a compliment to a friend. You should reach out to a friend and just offer them some encouragement. You should buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the cafe today." These little things where people were encouraged to be kind, be helpful to other people, to see other people's perspectives. People who actually followed through on those did report having lower levels of these traits after four months than at the start.
In the book under the section that says hard truths, it says, "Poisonous people aren't likely to change very much. Personality traits are by definition enduring. Although some evolution of our character happens naturally, it takes decades. Data suggests that people become a bit more agreeable over time, and research with incarcerated men finds that even those with clinical levels of psychopathy are less likely to reoffend as they get older. Even so, waiting it out is likely to be a painful strategy. One study asked more than a thousand people who knew an individual who was psychopathic for a long time whether their behavior had improved past the age of 50. Almost all respondents, 93% said that as researchers put it, quote, 'the behavior was just as bad or worse after age 50 than it had been previously.'"
It's their personality, like asking a tiger to change their stripes. If you're not motivated to do it, as we know, people with these traits tend not to be very motivated. That's where that 93% of folks come in. They're not dramatically changing unless they find some reason to do so.
In the lab, researchers are increasingly fascinated with how people respond to individuals who are lying to them when they're not suspicious at all. Most existing research involves showing participants videos and explicitly telling them some people are lying and some are telling the truth, but this doesn't reflect how real life works. In actual interactions, no one announces that you need to judge someone's veracity—you're simply having a conversation.
Research consistently finds that when one person is lying and the other is unaware, the honest person feels less close to their interaction partner. In one study, participants conversed with strangers where one person was instructed to lie in response to everything while the other had no idea this was occurring. At the end of the study, dyads containing a liar reported feeling less connected to their partner compared to dyads where both people told the truth.
The research also found that people who self-report lying more frequently in everyday life tend to feel more lonely. This creates a bidirectional effect where lying creates social distance between people rather than bringing them closer together.
Even when people lie for prosocial reasons—such as to spare someone else's feelings—these lies still create social distance. People who are lying are perceived as less warm, less competent, and less moral. When someone lies, they tend to give relatively few details about themselves. Since conversations are based on reciprocal exchange, where sharing personal information builds connection, receiving less information from someone makes them seem less engaged in the interaction.
One study examined how much sympathy people feel for individuals who are lying or telling the truth about how sad they are, focusing specifically on pleaders—people who go on television asking for help finding missing loved ones. Half of these pleaders were actually responsible for killing the person they claimed to be searching for.
When participants watched these videos without knowing some were lying and some were telling the truth, they consistently showed more willingness to donate money to the genuine pleaders compared to the deceptive ones. They also felt more sympathy and compassion for the genuine pleaders, even though they weren't aware that some of these individuals were actually deceptive murderers.
Warmth is defined as the sense that someone is kind, honest, and trustworthy—their benevolent intentions toward another person. Competence refers to whether someone has the ability to actually execute on their intentions. People trust individuals to the extent that they are both warm and competent. High warmth without competence leads to less trust, as does high competence without warmth.
High warmth is associated with behaviors like smiling, eye contact, engagement and interest in your conversation partner, and immediacy cues such as leaning in and paying attention. These nonverbal signals indicate warmth to others.
When people have very little information about someone, they pick up on anything in body language and nonverbal behavior to make assessments. A resting face with a scowl signals anger, which decreases perceived trustworthiness since anger is not considered a warm emotion.
After finishing a PhD focused on murder, researchers wanted to study personality traits in different contexts. The Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme provided an opportunity to examine these traits in business school settings. The concept of "successful psychopathy" suggests these traits might help people succeed, though research was needed to determine what the data actually shows.
Research with Derek Kelner examined whether psychopathic personality traits could increase influence in government and money made as a hedge fund manager. These hyper-competitive contexts seemed like environments where psychopathic traits might provide advantages. However, consistently across studies, high levels of psychopathy were associated with less influence in government and making less money as a hedge fund manager.
People with high levels of psychopathy talk a really good game and make others think they're great tactical communicators and strategic thinkers. However, when asked how good they actually are at their jobs, they rate themselves as terrible managers. They tend to bully subordinates, create significant stress for team members, and their teams have worse outcomes as a result.
A study by Del Paul House demonstrated how narcissism affects first impressions versus long-term team dynamics. Student groups working together throughout a term made judgments about each other after their first meeting. People high in narcissism came across very well initially—they seemed confident, knowledgeable, and like they could lead. However, as the term progressed, people realized these individuals were actually hostile, didn't do their work, and created problems for the group.
The confusion between confidence and competence explains why narcissism can look positive initially. When someone states they can do something very confidently, others assume they have the ability to do it, but confidence is not the same as actual competence.
When analyzing a job application voice note where someone discussed their theater background, creative abilities, and desire to speak on world stages, several potential red flags emerged. These included talking about other creatives without acknowledging their contributions, putting other people down, and extensively discussing their own abilities and accomplishments.
When interacting with potential red flags like someone talking about themselves extensively or putting others down, these should be stored as observations rather than immediate judgments. Follow-up questions can help assess whether these behaviors indicate inflated ego or simply reflect the situational demands of a job interview where people are expected to present themselves positively.
Stanislavski technique training, which involves actually experiencing emotions rather than faking them, might help people mimic emotions more convincingly. However, no research suggests that actors would necessarily have higher levels of dark personality traits.
Ryan's profile contained language suggesting Machiavellianism through words like "professionally trained to argue my point," "savvy, strategic, and persuasive by trade," and references to winning debates. These terms could indicate someone who controls situations, manipulates others, and plays strategic social games rather than behaving impulsively.
Haley's profile raised potential psychopathy concerns through references to being called "hurricane," descriptions of "chaos," and mentions of plotting pranks on friends. The impulsivity implied by chaotic behavior and volatile emotional patterns could indicate psychopathic traits, particularly in women where psychopathy may manifest as emotional volatility rather than the more commonly recognized male presentation.
David's profile suggested potential narcissism through references to being "the life of the party," confidence in making decisions, and self-assurance about being right. The winking face emoji suggesting he might not have time for a partner could indicate self-centeredness and lack of priority given to relationships.
Chad's profile appeared relatively normal and free of obvious dark triad indicators.
Early warning signs to watch for include whether someone interrupts frequently but refuses to tolerate interruptions from others. This indicates both impulsivity and a desire for dominance. The key distinction is between excited interjections versus angry reactions when interrupted, with the latter being more concerning.
People with these traits consistently ignore personal and professional boundaries. They may continue asking about family members even after being told you don't want to discuss that topic. This includes always pushing on boundaries even when they're set explicitly.
Psychopathy indicators include appearing weirdly calm, lacking fear, sadness, or concern for others when these emotions would be expected. This relates to the shallow emotional affect characteristic of psychopathy.
Narcissism indicators include seeming to be an authority on every subject. They present as knowing everything about everything while you know nothing, needing to be the authority figure.
Impulsive, off-the-cuff responses to questions indicate potential impulsivity associated with psychopathy. They don't think about things but say whatever comes to mind immediately.
Psychopathy indicators include appearing tough, combative, or cruel. Psychopathy is associated with aggression, dominating people, cruelty, and sadism. This connects to Haley's self-description as tough and asking if others could handle her.
People with high levels of psychopathy tend to make really intense eye contact, seeming to peer into your soul, which clinicians have noted as a characteristic.
Psychopathy indicators include lacking emotions related to self-awareness such as embarrassment or shame. This includes deficits in broader self-conscious emotions like remorse and guilt.
Narcissism indicators include spending a lot of time talking about themselves while showing much less interest in you.
Sadism indicators include finding it enjoyable, annoying, or boring when others are struggling.
Dark personality traits are extremely common relative to the impact they can have on lives. According to research, people don't tend to change. One in five people may be antisocial in some way according to statistics around antisocial personality behaviors.
Standard approaches don't work well with these individuals. When someone hurts us, we might show them the hurt or punish them, expecting guilt and behavior change, but these approaches don't work for people with psychopathy.
Setting out rules is not a guarantee they won't be broken, as rule-breaking is a defining feature of psychopathy. However, research suggests that establishing clear rules and making them explicit decreases the likelihood of selfish behavior compared to having no rules.
Workplaces with respectful workplace policies make explicit expectations for treatment, decreasing violations. If rules are violated, there's documentation to reference. In relationships, make clear what's okay and what's not okay, and tell the other person explicitly rather than keeping it in your head.
Having a friend who knows your boundaries can help identify when boundaries are slipping.
Research shows that workplaces with codes of fairness see people with high levels of these traits less likely to keep bonus money for themselves instead of sharing it fairly. People with high levels of psychopathic traits tend to choose less assertive individuals as targets, making asserting boundaries helpful in avoiding being targeted.
Gaslighting is a pattern of denying someone's version of reality. This includes telling people they shouldn't feel the way they're feeling, that things didn't happen as they remember, or that they can't trust their own sense of perception. This can be incredibly destabilizing and isolating.
People with high levels of these traits endorse these tactics and don't see anything wrong with doing this to romantic partners, making them more likely to engage in gaslighting.
Gaslighting occurs when arguing with someone's perception of reality or their subjective experience, not when disputing facts. For example, denying that someone feels insecure or threatened, or claiming they're blowing things out of proportion, constitutes gaslighting.
People with these traits are likely to try pushing on established boundaries, but less so than if no boundaries exist at all.
Machiavellianism is named after the pursuit of power. Psychopathy is associated with domineering people. Narcissism involves believing oneself superior and a born leader. All these traits relate to power, and people with these traits are very interested in having power over others.
Research shows this doesn't go well for those working underneath them. People working under bosses with more psychopathic traits report being more stressed, bringing stress home and creating family conflict. They create division within teams and increase turnover and tension.
People with high levels of these traits are callous and not concerned about others, so appeals to compassion won't motivate them. However, they might behave better for different reasons like money, power, or status. For example, explaining that a team's stress will prevent meeting sales targets and losing bonuses can motivate change.
People with high levels of psychopathy are very reward-sensitive but not punishment-sensitive. Their brains don't process punishment the same way, so they don't develop links between behavior and fear of punishment, making them more likely to repeat behaviors.
Punishment has a place but isn't as effective with these personalities. When they do something kind, honest, or helpful, reward them with bonuses or job titles since they care about status, increasing the likelihood of more positive behavior.
Given that a reasonably sized minority of the population has elevated levels of these traits, avoiding them entirely isn't realistic. They might have genuinely useful skills needed in companies, requiring learning to manage these personality traits.
Relationships with these individuals might be maintained for other reasons, like wanting to see a sibling despite difficulties with a brother-in-law.
People with high levels of narcissism aren't particularly interested in fairness or kindness but are interested in loyalty. Studies show that when people share commonalities like the same birthday or fingerprint type, those with high narcissism get less angry when receiving negative feedback.
Starting conversations with common ground, like attending the same university or supporting the same sports team, can make people more receptive to feedback about needing to help with family care.
Opening rebuttals with "I completely disagree" hinders persuasion ability. Research across social psychology, behavioral economics, and linguistics shows that explicit adversarial phrasing triggers psychological mechanisms that make the other person less receptive.
When giving negative feedback to domineering bosses, phrasing concerns as questions rather than statements makes them more willing to hear criticism. For example, asking "What do you think if we turn these three forms into one form?" is more effective than declaring the current process stupid.
These personalities tend to lie frequently as manipulation and deception are part of their modus operandi. Look for deception cues like lack of verifiable details, relatively few details, signs of cognitive strain, and follow up when seeing red flags.
Research from the University of British Columbia found that people with high levels of psychopathic traits and other dark personality traits performed significantly better in face-to-face negotiations compared to text-based negotiations. In a study involving negotiation over concert ticket prices, individuals with these traits secured much better deals when negotiating in person, leveraging their superficial charm and domineering presence.
When negotiations occur over text rather than face-to-face, people with dark traits lose much of their charismatic advantage. Text-based communication provides several practical benefits: it creates a written record of agreements, preventing gaslighting about what was previously decided; it gives recipients time to think through responses; and when violence is a concern, such as in domestic violence situations or divorce settlements, text communication creates physical distance between parties.
People with dark personality traits tend to be more cautious about what they write when communications are permanent and documented. Written form also allows recipients to share communications with others for additional perspectives, whether consulting partners, checking facts, or using AI tools to verify appropriateness of behavior.
Research indicates that discussing statements with others before making truth-lie judgments leads to greater accuracy. Similarly, making judgments about someone's personality as a group rather than individually produces more accurate assessments.
A study by Dcker Kelner involving sorority members found that Machiavellian women were discussed the most in gossip. While caution is warranted regarding rumor mills, sharing experiences about problematic individuals can help others avoid similar situations. Whisper networks that warn people about certain individuals at work serve this protective function.
Three common mistakes people make when dealing with dark personalities include:
- Believing there's nothing you can do, despite numerous effective strategies being available
- Assuming others have the same inner experience and motivations as yourself, when understanding their specific goals and what would motivate behavioral change is more effective
- Thinking you can change them, when the likelihood of someone fundamentally altering their personality is low
Rather than hoping someone will wake up with a different personality, deploying specific strategies for improving day-to-day interactions is more effective than expecting fundamental personality change.
Approximately 10% of people would generally agree with items measuring dark personality traits, meaning 90% of people are generally good, kind, and honest. While this 10% represents a minority, they cause outsized harm. Clinical levels of psychopathy affect about 1% of the population, yet offenders with clinical psychopathy account for approximately 50% of all serious crime.
A single person with these traits can cause significant strife at work and abuse at home. Learning to mitigate damage from this relatively small group can dramatically improve individual lives, workplaces, and daily interactions.
One great lie people have been told is that success requires being primarily self-interested and exemplifying dark personality traits. Research attempting to demonstrate that high levels of psychopathy would lead to greater success as hedge fund managers found the opposite result. True success involves taking others along, earning prestige and respect from others, and receiving care and concern from people in one's network.
People often assume others share their internal experience, leading to frustration or feelings of inadequacy when this assumption proves false. Research helps people become more empathetic and less cynical about human nature by understanding that not everyone operates with the same motivations and inner experiences.
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