The Dark Triad is a cluster of three socially aversive but subclinical personality traits — Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy — named by Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams in 2002. A fourth trait, everyday sadism, extends it to the Dark Tetrad. These are dimensions everyone sits somewhere on, measured by validated self-report scales; a high score is a tendency, not a clinical diagnosis.This free course gathers the clearest, evidence-based explainers into one ordered path. You will learn what the Dark Triad is, how to tell the overlapping traits apart, how Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy actually differ, how sadism rounds out the Dark Tetrad, and how these tendencies show up in subtle, everyday behaviour.By the end you will understand all four constructs, what the research does and does not claim, and why these traits matter for relationships and work — without mistaking the model for a way to diagnose anyone. There is no quiz; you finish each video by writing your own question and learning from your peers' answers.
welcome to my scientifically informed Insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is Dr Grande today's question is can I explain melanism and differentiate it from psychopathy and narcissism so when we think about these three constructs this is referred to as the dark Triad so we have psychopathy narcissism and machanism and they're conceptualized as sub clinical so when we think of the dark Triad we're not talking about mental disorders like antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic personal order now specifically with machanism this comes from a political philosopher that lived about 500 years ago named makii and he wrote a book named The Prince and the prince outlined these different constructs like being ruthless and doing anything to gain power and a lot of different types of characteristics that we now see in this construct of machanism so machanism contains characteristics like being cynical having a disregard for conventional morality and being manipulative and I'll explain these a little more detail as I compare them to psychopathy and narcissism so we talk about machanism and we relate it to the other dark Triad trait psychopathy and narcissism we know that this trait in the research doesn't appear to be completely separate now of course psychopathy and narcissism aren't completely separate from one another either but they're relatively distinct and machanism really doesn't enjoy that status it kind of has characteristics from both psychopathy and narcissism and it can be really conceptualized as a set of traits from each of those as opposed to a separate construct so the dark Triad really may be just a dark diet but either way it's an interesting construct and we do see it sometimes just by itself again it's subclinical so it's not studied often in the mental health realm but it may be a separate construct it may be separate enough to be of interest and to be studied should it really be part of the dark Triad it's kind of a separate question here I'm going to treat it as a construct that's distinct enough so what we really see here with melanism again is it has certain characteristics from psychopathy and narcissism and specifically from Factor one psychopathy and grandiose narcissism so just real quickly with psychopathy psychopathy has Factor one and Factor two so with Factor one psychopathy again callous on emotional manipulative lack of empathy with Factor 2 psychopathy we see characteristics like being impulsive irresponsible and committing crimes so it lines up more closely with antisocial personality order Factor one psychopathy really doesn't line up too well with antisocial personal order now with narcissism we see both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism so with grandiose narcissism we have that again sense of entitlement and arrogance and jealousy and manipulation with vulnerable narcissism we see some of the same characteristics but we also see hyper sensitivity shame high neuroticism so a tendency to be anxious and depressed so grandios narcissism is a bit different than vulnerable narcissism that's fairly established in the research and vulnerable narcissism really doesn't have its own personality sorder correlate the closest correlate would be borderline personality sorder they don't line up perfectly but there's some alignment between those constructs we do see research on this construct of the vulnerable dark Triad which would be Factor two psychopathy vulnerable narcissism and borderline personality features so again that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about the dark Triad which would have subclinical features from Factor one psychopathy grandiose narcissism and of course machanism so now in terms of describing machanism and differentiating it from psychopathy and narcissism I'll start with the first characteristic of machanism kind of move through these characteristics so first I'll talk about fantasy and desire so we see this with machism where somebody desires power money and status but usually not fame so this idea of Fame fantasy and desire is a little different than what we see with psychopathy but it's actually fairly similar to what we see with narcissism except someone who's narcissistic would also desire Fame so the next characteristic of machism would be being cynical having a cold outlook on life on Humanity somebody that has low trust so there's a little bit of paranoia with machanism we also see a lack of empathy and a lot of times all these characters istics are kind of put together so what we see here with machanism is someone who's referred to as being pessimistic but I don't think this is always the case I think someone with this characteristic is pessimistic about other people and about the world but not necessarily pessimistic about what will happen to them usually their personal Outlook is pretty good again they're manipulating people and they're disregarding morality for their own gain so they must believe believe that gain has value for themselves personally so really with melanism we see that the world will harm people so the idea here is why not join in that's the idea behind melanism if the world is a dark place with a cold Outlook then a little bit of extra harm created by one individual isn't a big deal we also see with Maki valm there's low neuroticism so this is in common with both psychopathy and narcissism now in terms of responding to threats to personal safety or threats to Ego somebody who's melanistic may not worry too much about responding with anger they may not be assertive in that way someone who's Psychopathic generally would be oriented toward revenge and someone who's narcissistic may be oriented toward Revenge so there's some differences there in how lack of empathy and responsiveness kind of come together or are disjointed with the responding the reactions of someone who's melanistic as compared to Psychopathic or narcissistic now just to relate the lack of empathy with machism to psychopathy and narcissism I generally think of someone who's melanistic as having a little bit more empathy than someone who's Psychopathic and about the same amount of empathy as somebody who's narcissis so I mentioned before that machanism is associated with being ruthless and what we see here is individuals with this characteristic enjoy work that is ambiguous in terms of morals ethics and rules so I've noticed that they tend to be attracted to new unregulated businesses kind of businesses that are the Wild West in terms of laws and rules so they tend to be in that sense Pioneers in the business world but they're not always attracted to those Ventures for the right reasons we also see a real willingness here to commit crimes and to break rules so they have this in common with somebody who's Psychopathic or narcissistic but they carefully weigh the consequences so there's less criminality with melanism than there would be with psychopathy but there'd be probably a little more criminality with melanism as compared to narcissism narcissism has some connection to criminality but it's really not as distinct as what we see with psychopathy and machanism so one of the kind of ways of thinking for someone who's melanistic would be that all people are criminals but we only call people criminals when they are unwise and get caught so this really speaks kind of to the moral attitude of someone who's melanistic and also speaks to kind of that negative outlook of The Human Condition now one of the strong areas of Interest around machanism is the manipulation component and it shares this component with both psychopathy and narcissism but the manipulation with melanism is expressed a little differently the way I think of it is with melanism the manipulation is based more on emotions like there's more emotions and feelings that can be used in that individual's toolbox than what we would see with psychopathy so someone who's Psychopathic is fairly straightforward in their manipulation they have a superficial charm but there's no depth they really don't have the same relationship with emotions and feelings in terms of expressing them to be highly manipulative at the same level as someone who is melanistic someone with melanism can use guilt they can pay compliments they can use deep emotional and feeling components much more efficiently than someone who's psychopathic now someone who's narcissistic I think really has a similar ability as what we see in machanism so they again can use emotions and feelings as part of that manipulation we call that interpersonal manipulation so again when we talk about the manipulation component melanism is different than psychopathy but similar to narcissism now someone who's melanistic tends to be socially dominant we see this both with psychopathy and narcissism they tend to have have good long-term strategic planning skills so kind of high in conscientiousness in a sense this is not a feature of psychopathy and it's also not a feature of narcissism they tend to be goal oriented a lot of times we think of these as negative goals some people would refer to these as evil goals kind of inserting some philosophy in there this is not a feature of psychopathy and it's not a feature of narcissism so long-term planning and goal orientation are in a sense unique to melanism at least in terms of the dark Triad now with impulse control this is a willingness to delay gratification we see that someone who's melanistic is strong in this area they are willing to put off rewards this is not a feature of psychopathy and it's not a feature of narcissism I would say someone who's Psychopathic has more of an ability to control impulses than someone who's narcissistic but someone who's mocky valant itic this is a strength over both of those other characteristics I mentioned before superficial charm this is a feature of psychopathy and narcissism it is a feature of machanism but again they can bring in more emotional components so they can appear friendly and gregarious and have a little bit more depth in that deceitfulness than what we see with psychopathy and narcissism So speaking of deceitfulness this is also a characteristic of mocking evanism and it's shared here with psychopathy and narcissism but here's really the difference the lying with machanism is a lot like what we see with psychopathy but not what we see with narcissism in narcissism in a sense a lot of the lying the pathological lying is the reward someone lies without a clear purpose it's not necessarily obvious to someone on the outside so they might exaggerate accomplishments or say how great they are but there's no clear gain there's no monetary gain for example or material gain so again in narcissism lying is the reward in machanism lying is for the reward and it shares that with psychopathy so there's a clear material gain purpose to the lying with machanism another characteristic we see with machanism is this idea of hiding one's int tensions so low Communications about why actions were taken even if those actions don't really seem to have a Downs sign in terms of revealing why they occurred so this is different than both psychopathy and narcissism generally if somebody's Psychopathic they will hide their intentions a little bit but there's not a large deliberate effort to do so and when someone's narcissistic they're usually fairly clear about their intentions they have difficult ulty hiding their intentions so somebody with machanism they really have an expressed interest in this this is marked in machism somebody really wants to lay low and not reveal reasons behind actions another thing we see with melanism is taking a pleasure in The Misfortune of others it shares this with someone who's narcissistic but if we look over at psychopathy someone who's Psychopathic wouldn't necessarily take pleasure in The Misfortune of others they may but it's not necessarily a core part of psychopathy when it is a part of psychopathy that's a particularly unsafe presentation of psychopathy when someone is in a sense sadistic and Psychopathic that's an unfortunate combination that can lead to a lot of problems so those are some ways to differentiate the characteristics of machanism from the other characteristics of the dark Triads psychopathy and narcissism and a lot of times with melanism I hear this argument that that's really the future machanism is really the future of business that they're Superior Business Leaders but I don't really agree with this I think that ultimately this strategy of disregarding morality and rules and doing whatever has to be done to be successful is really inefficient obviously it violates the Norms of society and that's a problem there is is a criminality component associated with it but beyond that individuals who are melanistic don't appreciate the advantages of relationships they tend to be uncooperative inconsiderate of others who are in leadership positions and more likely to withdraw from groups even when staying in the group would help them to advance their goals so really in terms of individuals who are mocky alistic and successful it's those individuals who can switch between being Cooper operative and competitive it's not just an uncooperative component that leads to success it's really the ability to maneuver to be flexible flexible in thinking and flexible in essentially agreeableness so melanism I think is worth studying there's some interesting aspects there that can lead to understanding Business Leaders and business success a little better but I think that calling it Superior that doesn't make a lot of sense to me in terms of how we think about relationships and success I think it actually has too much in common with psychopathy and narcissism to be labeled essentially positive or good for lack of better words another consideration with melanism is of course it may really just be characteristics from psychopathy and narcissism which are usually viewed negatively in terms of how individuals with those conditions function in society so I think we do have to be careful about machanism and putting it on a pedestal I think it makes more sense to keep it as part of the dark Triad even if it doesn't really line up in terms of the symptoms or signs clustering together I still think it makes more sense to think of it as associated with psychopathy and narcissism rather than a separate construct which may be again positive so melanism is certainly an interesting construct again it's not one used in mental health a lot but it is one that people see pretty regularly in different settings so if you have any thoughts on machanism and certain characteristics that maybe I didn't mention that are really associated with that construct please put those in the comments I'd be interested to take a look at those and as always I hope you found this discussion of machanism and the dark Triad to be interesting thanks for watching