Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

psyche.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 231 posts

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#71

Post by munificent »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #65

I would take this article with a grain of salt. It gets a lot wrong and a lot of it is questionable. For example, notice something about the stats it gives throughout the article? It's whole numbers, and with large variations: 10-20 per cent of individuals, 30-50 per cent of people, and so on. That variation and the whole numbers should be a read flag. When performing a study very precise numbers pop up. This isn't a…

> We immediately know this is a fluff piece because it uses pop psychology terminology, instead of the actual terminology.

Using the actual terminology in a popular article is what turns that terminology into pop psychology terminology. You can ask for popular articles to use the current terms, or you can ask for psychology terms to retain their precise clinical meaning, but you can't have both.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#74

Post by bonoboTP »

mercurialshark wrote: post #56
bonoboTP wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't imply that every charming person is suspicious for being cruel. Just that when you are on the receiving end, it can be very frustrating to try and tell others about it. This is in fact one mechanism that keeps victims of sexual or other harassment and bullying silent. And I don't mean small misunderstandings and microagressions. There are people who will literally tell you "you can try telling about this to…

All good points, thanks. Yes, being on the receiving end - especially when you rely on the other person's best intentions - can be traumatizing. And yes, that's a particularly terrible form of manipulation.

The problem is especially bad when they get into a position to police other people's conduct and are supposedly there to serve justice.

The problem is that many well intentioned people cannot imagine that it's the case. This will have to be a big realization that the reasonable factions of the social justice movements will need to make. In the current climate this is just too far out to be a topic of rational discussion. Indeed I assume many people now discount everything I wrote due to mentioning this political angle.

But when you actually think about it, it would be surprising if such people didn't seek out some of these powerful positions to roam free.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#75

Post by bonoboTP »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #68
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #7

>Overall, individuals with dark traits engage in more counterproductive work behaviour, such as theft and abusive supervision. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t end up with higher average incomes than their peers with light personalities. >The key factor here seems to be empathy: the capacity to resonate with – and understand the perspective of – the emotional experiences of others. Individuals with light personalit…

> that higher agreeableness (more empathy) has a negative effect on salary, That seems plausible or even obvious. All things being equal, an empathetic person will value a happy work environment (relatively) more than a high salary. They'll avoid the sabotage-all-others big law firm and go into research (avoiding personal conflicts), become a public defender (empathy), judge, etc.

Research involves lots of personal conflict. You couldn't imagine how cutthroat the fight for funding, positions, paper authorships, citations etc can be. Lots of small minded machinators.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#76

Post by incrudible »

alexpetralia wrote: post #70
incrudible wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empathy is feeling what others feel. In other words, if I hurt you, I not only understand that you are hurt, I would be hurt myself. Psychopaths are incapable of empathy, but it would make sense if lack of empathy were advantageous from an evolutionary perspective.

Isn't this sympathy?

Quoting Wikipedia:

The words sympathy and empathy are often used interchangeably, but the two terms now have fairly distinct meanings. [...] One popular and recent conception of the distinction is that sympathy represents "a feeling of care and concern for someone, often someone close, accompanied by a wish to see him better off or happier," while empathy represents "a person's ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being."

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#77

Post by bonoboTP »

stakkur wrote: post #48

'If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometime…

While it is true that we all have aspects of each in us and depending on time and place one or the other may be more prominent, there is large variation among people regarding temperament and personality.

It's just factually not true and dangerous to believe that everyone is the same in this regard.

At the same time, we must never think we are above judgment ourselves. All of us need to count with the possibility of being on the evil end sometimes.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#78

Post by proverbialbunny »

munificent wrote: post #71
proverbialbunny wrote: post #65

I would take this article with a grain of salt. It gets a lot wrong and a lot of it is questionable. For example, notice something about the stats it gives throughout the article? It's whole numbers, and with large variations: 10-20 per cent of individuals, 30-50 per cent of people, and so on. That variation and the whole numbers should be a read flag. When performing a study very precise numbers pop up. This isn't a…

> We immediately know this is a fluff piece because it uses pop psychology terminology, instead of the actual terminology. Using the actual terminology in a popular article is what turns that terminology into pop psychology terminology. You can ask for popular articles to use the current terms, or you can ask for psychology terms to retain their precise clinical meaning, but you can't have both.

You can explain what you mean, link to sources that explain, and so on.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#79

Post by BTCOG »

alexpetralia wrote: post #12
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #7

>Overall, individuals with dark traits engage in more counterproductive work behaviour, such as theft and abusive supervision. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t end up with higher average incomes than their peers with light personalities. >The key factor here seems to be empathy: the capacity to resonate with – and understand the perspective of – the emotional experiences of others. Individuals with light personalit…

Does high agreeableness necessarily translate into more empathy, or vice versa? I define empathy as "knowing your customer" (whoever it may be). You can be very attuned to this whether you are agreeable or disagreeable, no? (Perhaps this is not a widely accepted definition of empathy, and that definition instead somehow indicates "being nice"? I don't think being nice/agreeable necessarily helps you know who you're s…

Spotted the sociopathic dark personality.

Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

#80

Post by Proziam »

derbOac wrote: post #10
indigochill wrote: post #4

It mentions those with "dark traits" tend to be seen as poor team players, but perhaps that's exactly why these types ascend to top leadership positions. Your "team play" ability only matters to the extent that you engage in peer-to-peer relationships, which can be relatively minimal in that position compared to, say, middle management. See, for instance, Steve Jobs. I've never heard him described as a "team player",…

In my personal experience, the problem with individuals with narcissistic psychopathic features in management or executive positions is that there's almost always opportunity costs with regard to a different way that could have achieved more with less cost. That is, they are ruthless and destructive, and claim doing so was necessary, but it's only because there was a very very simple alternate approach (often requiri…

Plenty of anti-social individuals are masters of subtle manipulation and can min/max along social axis to reach their goals. It's dangerous to assume that individuals with narcissistic psychopathic features will always be "ruthless or destructive" because many (most?) will not.
Post reply on HN