How do psychologists measure personality traits to classify people in these kinds of categories (dark/light)?
Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
111–120 of 231 posts
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I've been diagnosed as having narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) by several doctors so maybe I can shed some light on this. NPD is the inability to generate and/or experience internal validation. It is the lack of internal voice saying "good job". NPD is not self-aggrandizement although that is a common coping mechanism used to deal with the underlying disorder. I don't thi…
I require external validation and I can't validate myself. Does it make me narcissistic too?
Most everyone react positively to positive feedback from peers.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#113> 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…
Morality is evolved. Humans are social animals, and we have evolved a set of rules to guide human communities by. We call this morality (there's an interesting discussion about biblical/religious morality vs atheist morality, but it's interesting because of how similar those moralities are). If your goals never align with those of your community/organisation, and you don't need the community/organisation to help you…
That assumes the community isnt evil
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#114I think the whole thing is flawed.
Why?
Because criminals and other people who do overall negative things to society as a whole are obviously going to skew averages of dark personality traits down, decrease their average "success/happiness" score.
This means that there might exist productive people with "dark personalities" who might very well be much more productive than "light personalities", but this won't come out since average will be skewed.
You can have dark view of humanity/people and use people for your means, but still do great things for society. You could also use other people on an individual level to do great things for society in general. Also you don't have to be happy while doing it, and I would consider being influence on the world to be a definition of success. And arguably you would be able to have more influence if you were willing to use some "dark personality traits".
Essentially to understand whether "dark traits" can be more productive and achieve more you would have to exclude from results anyone who is fine with doing activities that generally harm society.
Take Bill Gates for example. He obviously has "dark traits", but as he got older he got better at hiding them and now look, what kind of positive influence he has had over the world. And arguably there aren't many people out there that are more successful than him. Same with Elon Musk, yadayadayada.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#115Personality traits that are not advantageous in some way are unlikely to be maintained over many generations of evolution. Personality traits that are universally advantageous would not be discernible as traits, because they would become universal to everyone. Therefore, all personality traits must also be disadvantageous in some way. So-called "dark trait" behaviors obviously confer advantages at least in the short…
It is not true that traits that are not advantageous are unlikely to be maintained over many generations. For example, many genetic diseases have survived for many generations. This may happen because, for example, they correlate with some other more positive traits. Or, because of other indirect, external factors.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
" 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? " That is a very odd definition of empathy; it seems to imply that you are trying to sell them something, that you want something from them.
You could think of any interaction in the world as a trade of something. Best if it is a win win for both sides.
Best in life is to crush your enemies, see dem driven before you, and to hear da lamentations of da vemen.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#117There are a lot of those dark traits out there, and we have to segment them. Just from my exp, I see more dark traits on successful people, albeit it doesn't necessarily mean that people with dark traits are more likely to succeed. Can't say if it's universal though. I'd also argue that dark traits linked to social success are more or less born, or heavily influenced by childhood exp (which is essentially "born"), so…
There's different groups of people with dark traits. There are straight up criminals who are going to skew the averages, but most successful people do have dark traits, so to me at least it's obvious that dark traits can make you more successful, you just can't do this whole study from the angle they are doing to understand anything meaningful except to have some "holier than thou" results produced.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#118The idea that people with darker personalities will succeed may also be a perception bias.
According to this article we are talking about 20% of people with some degree of "dark traits".
Of course a group this large will intersect with the most successful portion of the population.
And, successful people with bad traits are likely to stand out in peoples perceptions.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#119Highly intelligent people are highly adaptable. If the incentives set by the system favor certain traits deemed as dark there will be a non zero percentage of people developing these traits. Especially in highly competitive fields. For example is it a dark trait to work at the minimum required level in a company while spending the time gained to sharpen my skills so I get a 50% salary increase changing jobs instead o…
this might be a reflection of dark traits if you're blatantly harming your coworkers, say, by doing this. But otherwise I'd say no, it's not evidence of a dark trait to work at the minimum required level. You don't owe a corporate entity more than that.
I never look to harm other people, but according to this quiz I got quite "dark" results. So it doesn't seem like they are specifically considering harming others as the definition of dark traits.
I got most highest result in Narcissism or Entitled Self Importance. This just means that I'm ambitious and it's important for me to succeed and others to see that I am successful. It doesn't mean I'm harming others. Most of my motivations in life are for people to consider me to be intelligent for instance, but I don't see how it specifically harms anyone. I don't want them to consider me intelligent on flawed premises.
Re: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?
#120The older I get, the more I realize how many problems in the world are caused by the dark personality spectrum. Most men, police officers, priests, white people, catholics, politicians, or Germans are actually nice people who wouldn't harm anybody even if given the chance. A lot of the abuse that was done by these groups, be it towards women, ethnic minorities, children, or police brutality, was most likely done by somebody with strong dark personality traits. Not all crimes, but a surprisingly large amount. Exploring this condition, learning to recognize dark personality traits more reliably, knowing how to mitigate them, and maybe finding ways to help these suffering people is an important evolutionary step for us as a species. One way to see through their games and machinations is by looking at the facts.