Why are some people extraordinarily selfish,
manipulative, and unkind? David Robson asks the
scientist delving into the darkest sides of the human
mind.
If you had the opportunity to feed harmless bugs into a
coffee grinder, would you enjoy the experience? Even if
the bugs had names, and you could hear their shells
painfully crunching? And would you take a perverse
pleasure from blasting an innocent bystander with an
excruciating noise?
These are just some of the tests that Delroy Paulhus
uses to understand the “dark personalities” around us.
Essentially, he wants to answer a question we all may
have asked: why do some people take pleasure in
cruelty? Not just psychopaths and murderers – but
school bullies, internet trolls and even apparently
upstanding members of society such as politicians and
policemen.
It is easy, he says, to make quick and simplistic
assumptions about these people. “We have a tendency
to use the halo or devil framing of individuals we meet
– we want to simplify our world into good or bad
people,” says Paulhus, who is based at the University
of British Columbia in Canada. But while Paulhus
doesn’t excuse cruelty, his approach has been more
detached, like a zoologist studying poisonous insects –
allowing him to build a “taxonomy”, as he calls it, of
the different flavours of everyday evil.
Self-regard
Paulhus’s interest began with narcissists – the
incredibly selfish and vain, who may lash out to protect
their own sense of self-worth. Then, a little more than
a decade ago, his grad student Kevin Williams
suggested that they explore whether these self-
absorbed tendencies are linked to two other unpleasant
characteristics – Machiavellianism (the coolly
manipulative) and psychopathy (callous insensitivity
and immunity to the feelings of others). Together, they
found that the three traits were largely independent,
though they sometimes coincide, forming a “Dark Triad”
– a triple whammy of nastiness.
It is surprising how candid his participants can often
be. His questionnaires typically ask the subjects to
agree with statements such as “I like picking on weaker
people” or “It’s wise not to tell me your secrets”. You
would imagine those traits would be too shameful to
admit – but, at least in the laboratory, people open up,
and their answers do seem to correlate with real-life
bullying, both in adolescence and adulthood . They are
also more likely to be unfaithful to their spouses
(particularly those with Machiavellian and psychopathic
tendencies) and to cheat on tests.
Even so, since Paulhus tends to focus on everyday evil
rather than criminal or psychiatric cases, the traits are
by no means apparent on the first meeting. “They are
managing in everyday society, so they have enough
control not to get themselves into trouble. But it
catches your attention here or there.” People who score
particularly high on narcissism, for instance, quickly
display their tendency to “ over-claim ” – one of the
strategies that helps them boost their own egos. In
some experiments, Paulhus presented them with a made
up subject and they quickly confabulated to try to
appear like they knew it all – only to get angry when he
challenged them about it. “It strikes you that yes, this
fits into a package that allows them to live with a
distorted positive view of themselves.”
Born nasty
Once Paulhus had begun to open a window on these
dark minds, others soon wanted to delve in to answer
some basic questions about the human condition. Are
people born nasty, for instance? Studies comparing
identical and non-identical twins suggest a relatively
large genetic component for both narcissism and
psychopathy , though Machiavellianism seems to be
more due to the environment – you may learn to
manipulate from others. Whatever we’ve inherited
cannot take away our personal responsibility, though. “I
don’t think anyone is born with psychopathy genes and
then nothing can be done about it,” says Minna Lyons
at the University of Liverpool.
You only need to look at the anti-heroes of popular
culture – James Bond, Don Draper or Jordan Belfort in
the Wolf of Wall Street – to realise that dark
personalities have sex appeal, a finding supported by
more scientific studies. Further clues to the benefits
might come from another basic human characteristic –
whether you are a morning or evening person. Lyons
and her student, Amy Jones found that “night owls” –
people who stay up late but can’t get up in the morning
– tend to score higher on a range of dark triad traits.
They are often risk-takers – one of the characteristics
of psychopathy; they are more manipulative – a
Machiavellian trait – and as narcissists, they tend to be
exploitative of other people. That might make sense if
you consider our evolution: perhaps dark personalities
have more chance to steal, manipulate, and have illicit
sexual liaisons late while everyone else is sleeping, so
they evolved to be creatures of the night.
Whatever the truth of that theory, Paulhus agrees there
will always be niches for these people to exploit.
“Human society is so complex that there are different
ways of enhancing your reproductive success – some
involve being nice and some being nasty,” he says.
Dark corners
Recently, he has started probing even further into the
darkest shadows of the psyche. “We were pushing the
envelope, asking more extreme questions,” he says –
when he found that some people will also readily admit
to inflicting pain on others for no other reason than
their own pleasure. Crucially, these tendencies are not
simply a reflection of the narcissism, psychopathy or
Machiavellianism, but seem to form their own sub-type
– “everyday sadism”. For this reason, Paulhus now
calls it a “dark tetrad”.
The “ bug crushing machine” offered the perfect way for
Paulhus and colleagues to test whether that reflected
real life behaviour. Unknown to the participants, the
coffee grinder had been adapted to give insects an
escape route – but the machine still produced a
devastating crushing sound to mimic their shells hitting
the cogs. Some were so squeamish they refused to take
part, while others took active enjoyment in the task.
“They would be willing not just to do something nasty
to bugs but to ask for more,” he says, “while others
thought it was so gross they didn’t even want to be in
the same room.” Crucially, those individuals also scored
very highly on his test for everyday sadism.
Arguably, a rational human being shouldn’t care too
much about bugs’ feelings. But the team then set up a
computer game that would allow the participants to
“punish” a competitor with a loud noise through their
headphones. This wasn’t compulsory; in fact, the
volunteers had to perform a tedious verbal task to earn
the right to punish their competitor – but, to Paulhus’s
surprise, the everyday sadists were more than happy to
take the trouble. “There wasn’t just willingness to do it
but a motivation to enjoy, to put in some extra effort to
have the opportunity to hurt other individuals.”
Importantly, there was no provocation or personal gain
to be had from their cruelty – the people were doing it
for pure pleasure.
Troll tracking
He thinks this is directly relevant to internet trolls.
“They appear to be the internet version of everyday
sadists because they spend time searching for people
to hurt.” Sure enough, an anonymous survey of trollish
commentators found that they scored highly on dark
tetrad traits , but particularly the everyday sadism
component – and enjoyment was their prime
motivation. Indeed, the bug-crushing experiment
suggested that everyday sadists may have more muted
emotional responses to all kinds of pleasurable
activities – so perhaps their random acts of cruelty are
attempts to break through the emotional numbness.
More immediately, his discoveries have attracted the
attention of police and military agencies, who want to
collaborate with Paulhus to see if his insights might
explain why some people abuse their positions. “The
concern is that these people might deliberately select
jobs where you are given the mandate to hurt
individuals,” he says. If so, further work might suggest
ways to screen out the dark personalities at
recruitment.
He’s also excited about new work on “moral
Machiavellianism” and “communal narcissists” – people
who perhaps have dark traits but use them for good (as
they see it). In some situations, ruthlessness may be
necessary. “To be prime minister, you can’t be namby
pamby – you need to cut corners and hurt people, and
even be nasty to achieve your moral causes,” he says.
After all, the dark personalities often have the impulse
and the confidence to get things done –even Mother
Theresa apparently had a steely side , he says. “You’re
not going to help society by sitting at home being
nice.”
All of which underlines the false dichotomy of good and
evil that Paulhus has been keen to probe. In a sense,
that is a personal as much as a professional question.
He admits to seeing a dark streak in his own behaviour:
for example, he enjoys watching violent, painful sports
like Mixed Martial Arts. “It didn’t take long to see I
would stand above average on these dark traits,” he
says. “But given my abiding curiosity as a scientist and
my enjoyment of investigating such things – I thought
that perhaps I was in a good position to take a closer
look at the dark side.”
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