Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

I think these studies are all significantly flawed because successful people with dark personality traits learn to cover up their dark traits.

As a result, the cohort of people with "dark traits" in these observational studies will inevitably be skewed towards those who are less successful/intelligent/adaptable.

Possessing "dark traits" basically means you aren't limited by a moral compass. For any given decision, there's a universe of choices - some choices are moral and others are immoral. "Dark" people can choose from the entire universe of choices, while "light" people can only choose from the moral universe of choices.

It should be obvious, then, that people with "dark traits" are more likely to be successful iff they learn to cover up their dark traits. After all, having greater optionality in your actions is likely to lead to a more optimal path towards your goal.

From my experience working with people that run high in these "dark traits", it's not necessarily a bad thing as long as you put them in positions where their incentives are aligned with those around them.

1. Can I understand why person X would feel emotion Y in situation Z? People probably vary the most on this one when they themselves would not feel emotion Y in situation Z, because it becomes about how well they can put themselves in the shoes of someone with different values/priors (from a more cerebral perspective). There's also a difference between retroactive explanation and prediction of course, but without extensive knowledge on person X prediction can be very hard in the "gray areas" mentioned.

2. If I know that person X feels emotion Y, do I feel emotion Y myself? Again, most people probably have this for their closest friends/family, but the degree to which one has this for people they casually encounter seems to vary widely. Probably due to both inherent personality trait differences, and varying circumstances over time - for example if you currently have some intense mood for personal reasons it may be harder to feel an opposing mood because of someone else (but easier when it's the same mood maybe?)

My understanding is 1 is cognitive empathy and 2 is affective empathy, but I'm not as sure whether 2 encompasses all of affective empathy, because there is also:

3. Given limited information about the situation, can one still figure out the emotion someone is feeling? This allows empathy #2 to be applied more readily, and in cases where your actions are relevant (coworkers, friends, etc.) to investigate further and possibly apply empathy #1.

I'm not sure whether 3 is itself considered part of empathy, but certainly it is very important in being able to "use" your empathy in daily life, so it functionally is part of empathy. And this is likely the trait most frequently impaired in individuals on the spectrum, as it requires recognizing subtle, often non-verbal, behavioral cues. I'm not super up to date on the literature but I don't believe 1 or 2 above are considered to be impaired in most cases of Autism, and there definitely are articles out there about how it's incorrect to say those on the spectrum have low empathy.

It's hard to rate oneself accurately, but personally I would say I am above average at 1, average at 2, and below average at 3 (solid at little linguistic hints but horrible at picking up on facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, etc.)

I think the cultural aspect of this study must be taken into consideration.

Speaking as someone who can from a country with a relatively high population (India), we were taught that in a race to the top, its either eat or be eaten, and that machinations are a vital part of success as long as they do not tarnish the way you're perceived.

> having greater optionality in your actions is likely to lead to a more optimal path towards your goal.

One of the frequent issues I hit with other people is that they will "block off" a choice before actually evaluating it. They will, for instance, refuse to bring up that they have another job offer in a salary negotiation because they feel it's "unfair".

One case of this was a friend who doesn't want to leave a job where they're being made to work 12+ hour days because "they need me and the company might fail if I leave".

It feels they can't even dive into and tease apart these choices and really evaluate them ("Is it fair for me to bring up this other job offer in this negotiation?"), and they also struggle to consider what the other side is capable of (eg negotiating with multiple candidates at the same time).

Unfortunately it's not until these people get bitten a few times that they start to develop a stronger sense of being able to navigate these choice problems.

I think some of the oldest and most successful bits of governance are built on this principle, but there's a lot of laws out there that seem to just attempt to dictate a desired outcome without considering how the real world will only nominally comply.