The dark personality traits that mean you could be a narcissist, sadist or psychopath
Psychologists believe that understanding the 'D-factor' can help better treat dark personality traits in the future
DO you have any of these personality traits?
If you do, it doesn't say much for your personality - in could be a sign you're a narcissist, sadist or psychopath.
It's possible you could be all three, as experts reveal dark personality traits stem from the same part of the brain.
It' s been dubbed the "dark centre" or D-factor, by experts at the University of Copenhagen
They defined the D-factor as "the general tendency to maximise one's individual utility - disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking harm towards others, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications".
In layman's terms: People who deliberately disregard other people's feelings, or set out to harm them, while thinking they are justified in doing so.
To understand the dark centre, we first need to understand the personality traits that make a person a psychopath, narcissist or sadist.
Psychopathic personality traits:
Being a psychopath can be difficult disorder to spot.
On the outside, a psychopath may appear normal, nice and even charming.
But underneath they lack conscience and empathy, according to
This makes them manipulative, volatile and more prone (though not always) to criminal behaviour.
If a person is a psychopath they can be:
- uncaring
- have shallow emotions
- irresponsible
- insincere
- over confident
- narrow attention span
- selfish
- unable to plan for the future
- violent
The term psychopath is often confused with sociopath, but the key difference is sociopaths tend to be anti-social whereas psychopaths may appear totally normal in a social setting.
Narcissistic personality traits:
Psychologist Stephen Johnson as someone who has “buried his true self-expression in response to early injuries and replaced it with a highly developed, compensatory false self".
In other words, someone who:
- is self absorbed
- highly conceited
- puts their perceived self above others
You may have heard the term "they're in love with themselves" - that's referring to narcissism.
Here's the key personality traits of a narcissist:
- conversation hoarder
- interrupts conversations to switch the subject back to themselves
- likes to break rules
- disregard for other people's feelings, thoughts and possessions
- exhibitionist - they do things to make themselves appear better than others
- a sense of entitlement
- charming and charismatic
- thinks of themselves as a hero
- attention seeking; manipulative
Machiavellian personality traits:
Machiavellianism refers to someone who who focused on their own interests to the point they will manipulate, deceive and exploit others for their own gain.
They do no chose to be, they simple are a master manipulator,
They can be calculated, conniving and deceptive.
These are the five main things to look for if someone is a machiavellian:
- have jobs where the rules and regulations are ambiguous
- emotionally detached and cynical
- charming but able to guilt people into doing things
- can be threatening
- preferred in competitive situations like sporting teams
- not good as friends
Sadistic personality traits:
You're probably thinking 50 Shades of Grey right about now.
The film has brought a perception of what sadism can do in the bedroom, , but in reality there's a few nasty traits you'd probably rather avoid.
People who are sadistic tend to derive please from inflicting pain or humiliation on people, whether it's mentally; physically or sexually.
These are the personality traits to watch out for:
- enjoy seeing people hurt
- enjoy hurting people
- find pain exciting
- think others would enjoy hurting people
- fantasise about inflicting pain
- likes humiliating others
- get's violently angry
The dark triad...
Psychologists define those who have the "dark triad" as having the perfect storm combination of personality traits of narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy.
These are people who often callously use people to their own advantage and enjoy the suffering of others.
But where to these traits come from?
Experts from the University of Copenhagen have determined that we each have a dark centre of our personality.
In practice, this implies that if you have a tendency to show one of these dark personality traits, you are also more likely to have a strong tendency to display one or more of the others.
They include:
- egoism
- machiavellianism
- moral disengagement
- narcissism
- psychological entitlement
- psychopathy
- sadism
- self-interest
- spitefulness
Ingo Zettler, professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen, and his colleagues looked at studies involving more than 2,500 people.
They asked them to what extent people agreed or disagreed with statements such as "It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there", "It is sometimes worth a little suffering on my part to see others receive the punishment they deserve", or "I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so".
They also studied other self-reported tendencies and behaviours such as aggression or impulsivity and objective measures of selfish and unethical behaviour.
They found that people who scored highly for some dark personality traits were also more likely to score higher on other traits mapped in the D-factor.
"In the same way, the dark aspects of human personality also have a common denominator, which means that, similar to intelligence, one can say that they are all an expression of the same dispositional tendency," Ingo Zettler said.
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"For example, in a given person, the D-factor can mostly manifest itself as narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark traits, or a combination of these.
"But with our mapping of the common denominator of the various dark personality traits, one can simply ascertain that the person has a high D-factor.
"This is because the D-factor indicates how likely a person is to engage in behaviour associated with one or more of these dark traits.
"We see it, for example, in cases of extreme violence, or rule-breaking, lying, and deception in the corporate or public sectors.
"Here, knowledge about a person's D-factor may be a useful tool, for example to assess the likelihood that the person will re-offend or engage in more harmful behaviour."
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