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Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

psyche.co

221–230 of 231 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Dark' people don't hide it as well as they'd like. When it becomes clear somebody wants to play the dark game, all the choices become restrictive. Someone who has gained a position of authority with those traits is usually not worth challenging because you have to play the influence game in the dark where the rules have likely been implicitly set up against you. Inspiring fear or exhaustion becomes easy. Light peopl…

> 'Dark' people don't hide it as well as they'd like This is what I've observed. They tend to think they're smarter or more clever, and act as such, but really this makes their actions stand out as strange and often quite obvious. A gotcha, however, is that one has to be able to look past their charm, which can often be overpowering and is typically a shield of sorts.

> this makes their actions stand out as strange and often quite obvious.

And is there any bad consequence for them afterwards? Because if no, then it simply means they are good at hiding it while they have to, and don't bother hiding it when they no longer have to.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m astonished it’s that high. I’d be interested in seeing a source for your data point. To be clear, i believe they deserve a high level of compensation it’s just that they’re usually treated badly compared to the societal benefit they provide. Certainly in the uk the median annual salary is about £26k. The above figures would mean US nurses are earning ~12x more.

Wife is a nurse in the USA, the pay is much higher than Europe, $90k+ in California is common. Crisis nursing has also increased the pay in times of COVID. Additionally, there are specialities within nursing that pay even more, such as nurse practitioner.

That’s much better than Europe and at least a bit more like it. Nurse practitioner i think is about 50k at best in the uk.

I guess the rather different way that healthcare operates between the two regions has a lot to do with it.

Still not as optimistic as the lower bound stated on the parent post which was more like 240k (assuming 48 weeks).

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've listened to hundreds of hours of Hitchens. I liked him. I asked you for concrete refutations, which are implicitly based in science. Tilting at windmills here..

Yet again, you still haven't refuted anything Hitchens claimed, even though you claim to be familiar with it. Obviously you can't refute them, because if you could, you would have already, after I originally asked you to refute what he said that you don't agree with. Now you're asking me for a refutation (but of what??!), just like Trump incoherently projecting his own lies onto other people, after you refused to ref…

1. What concrete and specific thing did Mother Theresa fail to do for the suffering people when she visited the nun convention?

2. What specific and concrete thing did Mother Theresa do, to be called a murderer in the plane crash?

Most of Hitchens arguments are against the character of god, how he's so totalitarian and capable of causing suffering. There is little to respond to because it isn't based on arguing concrete realities. The game is based on arguing interpretations of events in the most negative light and using that as a reason to distrust the character of god.

God is a necessary concept and arguing how terrible is his 'character', is beside the point. We can endlessly rework history with a nominalist historicism completely devoid of the context that god occupies, to show how terrible god's ethos is and how his adherents are evil, but it is a pointless game in the end.

God isn't going away and this endless attempt by UK atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins, et al to have all the benefits of 2k years of Christanity without the theism is a tiring waste of time.

Hitchens is a christian athiest. He is a product of his context and all the secular humanism and gaping at the awe of space won't save you from the fact that the past 2k years were successfully led by christians in the west.

He was in a limo with dawkins and once said even if he had the most complete and destructive argument against god, that would end all arguments about god, he wouldn't do it. He was man who built his career on arguing the endless topic, religion. In his own words he chose this topic because it doesn't run out.

So yeah, preach to me about magic soap labels, if you think that's what god is, then you are welcome to it. I won't join you in nominalist hell and I won't lift you out of a well.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Dark' people don't hide it as well as they'd like This is what I've observed. They tend to think they're smarter or more clever, and act as such, but really this makes their actions stand out as strange and often quite obvious. A gotcha, however, is that one has to be able to look past their charm, which can often be overpowering and is typically a shield of sorts.

> this makes their actions stand out as strange and often quite obvious. And is there any bad consequence for them afterwards? Because if no, then it simply means they are good at hiding it while they have to, and don't bother hiding it when they no longer have to.

The consequences are detailed at length in the original post.

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

#225
post #81

> 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…

I agree with you. Smart people with dark traits become really good at painting their objectives in moral, altruistic terms. They tend to limit the display of their "dark traits" through actions to infrequent events where they stand to gain significantly and will suffer the least blowback. This is because they understand that most people build trust by observing small actions. So the smart+dark personality combos foll…

Why can't those people with dark traits be open and honest in a setting where they are anonymous? Unless you are arguing they are so good at covering their tracks that they end up convincing themselves their moral compass is right.

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

#226

To start, I'll define what I view "dark traits" to mean personally to me. They mean having an internal moral system where it is acceptable to harm others in some ways. The more harm a person is willing to do, the more we generally label those people with the personality traits that we say are "dark". There is some measure of psychology that would indicate that many such people who we label that way have neuro-atypica…

> doesn't prevent me from causing this feeling in others Can I ask for an example? If can be presented anonymously > I don't think any of these studies are able to easily "detect" me I agree. Is it a bit weird that the researchers didn't add any notes about this (Or if they did i didn't see that)

Well I don't outright physically harm others ( such as with my fists, fights, weapons, etc )

I don't though seem to have a problem urging others to engage in dangerous behavior that could cause them physical harm.

This is essentially a throwaway account but I've decided to continue to use it till it gets banned into oblivion.

Ycombinator themselves still have the IP address though, and I'm not bothering with Tor and VPNs for its usage, so I could be held accountable should I admit to anything illegal.

There is nothing I am doing that I know of that is outright illegal, but I do believe that some of the things I am involved with do in turn cause probable harm to others. ( of their own accord )

I unfortunately can't give the concrete examples that cause me to believe what I've said, as it would both lead to telling more about myself than I wish, and also expose me to even greater criticism.

I'll give one example that I think is fairly common: I have no issue verbally abusing others, especially in a workplace scenario. I was, in fact, encouraged to do so during my time at Amazon. Anything for the results.

Cussing someone out to their face in front of others, berating them very strongly telling them that their work is absolute garbage is something I have done on occasion and feel almost zero guilt about. I feel they deserve it.

The trouble is that I feel this notion of "other people deserve to suffer" for the majority of humans. I personally dislike crushing bugs... but the idea of a human being harmed somewhat pleases me because intellectually I think humans deserve mostly to suffer.

I have seen personality studies that have detection for people attempting to fool the study in the following ways:

1. Answering too extreme to any particular known "psychological profile" will throw flags. Unless you are trying to manipulate your answers, generally you won't perfectly match any particular profile. I do though account for this when I answer psych tests by diversifying my answers and not being perfect in my manipulation of the test.

2. The same question is asked in multiple ways to see if a person will answer it different ways when asked from a different perspective. This is an attempt to detect the person "spinning" their answer based on the way it is asked. It is pretty easy to spot these questions though, at least within a single session of questions, so I usually notice these and attempt not to answer them in a conflicting way.

3. Questions are asked that are overly personal or probe to traumatic areas. I've had shrinks attempt to goad me into overly emotion reactions when I am carefully answering questions in the way I want to present myself. The best way to combat this is to intentionally believe in a particular set of emotional responses and to not attempt to hide any emotions. One cannot completely suppress whatever emotions you have, therefore you can only really be deceptive well about things you don't feel emotional about. Fortunately, over time one will tend to believe and experience the feelings that you act like you have. Eg: If you feign love for someone, it isn't that hard for it to appear entirely real, and you do feel it to some degree even if you know it "isn't real". The trouble here is feigning too intense reactions in an attempt to live up to the "real portrayal" of the emotion. Example: The person you love is belittled by someone and you react angrily defending the person you "love". Those faking will tend to go overboard with the reaction.

We wish to cast humans into profiles, sort of like applying stereotypes to people. This will seem to work and make some statistical sense out of how people act, but it fails terribly at the corner cases.

People are internally as complex as we can possibly imagine.

The tests and analyses given tend to work for specific debilitation. They do not work for intentional malfeasance. If you are "healthy" for a general psychological perspective, you can simply choose to be a dark person for no particularly good reason other than deciding to be.

I'll admit that one typically chooses to be dark due to the experiences you have in life. Do you, though, know all of the traumatic experiences a person has had that you meet? How could you possibly? Supposing you knew, must we assume automatically that many traumatic experiences absolutely cause continuing problems in life?

This reminds me of a question I had early in life on a test to work in a retail sales position. The question was "would you steal or borrow $5 from the register", followed by "$1", then "10 cents". I of course dutifully answered "I would never steal or borrow any amount".

The trouble with my answer is that it is not a human answer. Most normal humans beings, if we answer such a question truthfully, would not care at all about borrowing 10 cents. Depending on the job and the amount of money, $1 also would be meaningless.

The amount that it becomes acceptable to "fudge" increases as you deal with larger amounts of goods and money. You begin to realize that small amounts really are irrelevant and not worth thinking about too hard. This is normal healthy behavior.

A person who is a stickler and insists that no amount of money can ever be borrowed/stolen... watch out. Such a person is dangerous.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn't prevent me from causing this feeling in others Can I ask for an example? If can be presented anonymously > I don't think any of these studies are able to easily "detect" me I agree. Is it a bit weird that the researchers didn't add any notes about this (Or if they did i didn't see that)

Well I don't outright physically harm others ( such as with my fists, fights, weapons, etc ) I don't though seem to have a problem urging others to engage in dangerous behavior that could cause them physical harm. This is essentially a throwaway account but I've decided to continue to use it till it gets banned into oblivion. Ycombinator themselves still have the IP address though, and I'm not bothering with Tor and…

> personality studies that have detection for people attempting to fool the study

Interesting to hear about that, and what you've found.

What you write, makes me think about the feelings part of the brain, and that those parts are really old, like, from the dinosaur age. And they're a bit stupid and predictable, I think.

The emotional intelligence tests try to "measure" those old and silly and predictable parts of the brain -- but maybe the new and fancy cerebral cortex logical thinking parts of an intelligent person's brain, can always learn and understand how the feelings parts of the brain, would react in different situations.

Maybe it's impossible to create accurate EQ tests (that cannot be gamed by a bright person with some life experience), because the EQ parts of the brain are too simple to understand how they work, for the thinking and reasoning parts of the brain.

> you can simply choose to be a dark person for no particularly good reason other than deciding to be.

Apparently you can -- I cannot though. The long term effects of my decisions, needs to be friendly to others (or have no effect), otherwise my brain produces strong unpleasant feelings.

- - -

Interesting to read about the $5 from the register question. I'd never think about that way at looking at the answers.

Instead I'd thought that never never taking $1 would have been a bit too rigid, inflexible, a trait that I d guessed could cause other types of problems (but what do I know).

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most everyone react positively to positive feedback from peers.

Most of what I do in life is in order for me to be considered successful by others and I don't trust my own judgment of my success. How do I know if I'm delusional or not without feedback of others?

Taken to an extreme, yes, it’s possible you suffer from narcissism. There are also many other forms of the pattern, a common one is impostor syndrome. Speaking from experience, it can present a lot like narcissism (seeking external validation and even self-aggrandizement as a coping mechanism). But it can also subside when enough external validation is established to enable self-validation. If you need external validation for things that are unfamiliar or unproven, but you’re able to self-validate as your comfort level rises, it’s probably something more like that. If you continue to need external validation after you’ve reached enough comfort and certainty on the thing that bears validation, there may be more going on.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The missing piece here is that 'empathizing with your customer' is an extremely different context than 'having empathy for others'. The former focuses on meeting your own needs through using 'the skill of empathy' to create a bond of kinship and be more likely to execute a sale. The latter focuses on understanding the needs of others, even if — especially if — doing so does not advance your own needs. I am courteous…

I found this a very insightful distinction. Thanks for this.

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

#230
post #36

If one defines success as true happiness that lasts, no. If you want caregivers and to be around people who like you and actually care while you are aging and then old, I would say strongly that it is better to practice treating others the way you would want to be treated, with honesty and kindness. Or if you want to be around that kind of people (I hope everyone would, upon reflection). Or if you believe in God (for…

Edit: s/surrounded by/near/ (4th para. re Stalin)
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