Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by zepto » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

SaberTail wrote: post #11

My worry isn't addressed by this study: Some portion of people with dark personality traits start from a privileged position. If someone's parent is the head of a company, or even well-connected, "achiev[ing] less and [being] considered poor team players" are much less of an impediment. If someone can effectively skip or get more slack in passing through the career levels for which dark traits are a disadvantage, the…

Exactly. A vague and general population study just tells is that dark traits are on average not helpful, it doesn’t tell us anything about outliers.

Someone with dark traits and significantly above average intelligence, or inherited wealth, may be able to avoid the pitfalls that otherwise prevent such people advancing.

Even if such people are very rare, e.g. 1 in 10,000, they would have an outsized influence, so we should be as interested in the outliers as the general population.

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

#22

Post by wpietri » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

The question I'd rather ask: Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed in systems set up by people with dark personality traits?

Traits only have meaning in an environment, a context. It's not clear how much we can control the traits. But we definitely can control the environment. The modern corporation only goes back to the age of railroads. Many of our governmental systems don't go back much farther. These are things we can change.

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

#23

Post by mam2 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

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…

I always found these kind of studies bullshit: the worse serial killers and pedophiles were sometimes described as "nice" and "charming" people.

I don't think it's accurate to make a clear line between "real sociopathy" and "normal people" based on your behavior. Everyone has personal goals, interests, (whether good or bad) and try to have what he think is the the optimal behavior (wether good or bad).

The real question is what are you real personal goal / interests, not how you behave.

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

#24

Post by dcolkitt » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

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…

> but its been shown pretty consistently that higher agreeableness (more empathy) has a negative effect

Be careful conflating agreeableness with empathy. In Big Five OCEAN, empathy is a sub-facet of agreeableness(A), but not the only one. Other sub-facets of agreeableness are conflict-avoidance, modesty, compliance, and naive trust in others.

Intuitively, it would seem to me those are more important contributor to success. In particular conflict-avoidance is a big contributor to being exploited by others. A person who scores moderately low on the aggregate agreableness(A) score could be both empathetic, but willing to stand up for themselves and make sure they're getting a fair deal.

Supporting this, the research has found that agreeable people do particularly bad in transactional, rather than transformative, leadership roles. When a team is working as a high-trust, high-cohesion unit, agreeableness is an asset. But when interacting and negotiating with third parties at arms length, it can be a major liability.

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

#25

Post by thanksforthe42 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

The book Blueprint talks about this.

Society can't function with only "dark personalities". When only dark personalities are in the room, everyone loses.

When it's a mixture, the dark personalities get more.

You can quickly see how this can impact evolution if someone swindles their way to wealth and has multiple wives/partners.

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

#26

Post by loughnane » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

The first and second books of Plato’s republic[0] touches on a similar idea; who gets the better of life: The just or the unjust man?

It’s a dialogue between Socrates and a few others (in turn). Really neat read and relevant to the conversation.

The article also mentions machiavelli’s The Prince[1], which is a shorter read and more tactical.

[0] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm

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

#27

Post by watwut » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

They are damaging, but nevertheless they are ascending to leadership positions. Look at middle management - it literally selects for people with lower EQ who are insensitive towards needs of people who dont have power. Or those with narcissistic psychopathic features.

Yes, they harm things. But their nice cooperating peers are less likely to "steal" other peoples achievements and progress less.

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

#28

Post by playpause » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

mam2 wrote: post #23

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…

I always found these kind of studies bullshit: the worse serial killers and pedophiles were sometimes described as "nice" and "charming" people. I don't think it's accurate to make a clear line between "real sociopathy" and "normal people" based on your behavior. Everyone has personal goals, interests, (whether good or bad) and try to have what he think is the the optimal behavior (wether good or bad). The real quest…

Extreme outliers aren't useful indicators when trying to understand general trends.

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

#29

Post by tartoran » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

mam2 wrote: post #23

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…

I always found these kind of studies bullshit: the worse serial killers and pedophiles were sometimes described as "nice" and "charming" people. I don't think it's accurate to make a clear line between "real sociopathy" and "normal people" based on your behavior. Everyone has personal goals, interests, (whether good or bad) and try to have what he think is the the optimal behavior (wether good or bad). The real quest…

> I always found these kind of studies bullshit: the worse serial killers and pedophiles were sometimes described as "nice" and "charming" people.

That is at first sight. Psychopaths have a surface level charm but spending enough time with them and the illusion shatters.

A real agreable and nice person has that as a baseline, that’s a big facet of their personality.

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

#30

Post by finnthehuman » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

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…

>Does high agreeableness necessarily translate into more empathy

I think the difference is that the personality trait called "agreeableness" doesn't mean someone is a pushover. But I do agree with you in general, my biggest gripe with pop psych as of late is the way "empathy" is used interchangeably with being nice.

Has a quiet person failed to empathize if there is no change in their outward behavior? I'd say obviously no. So I've been trying to work out why we talk about empathy when we mean being nice.

I think people talk about empathy rather than niceness because it makes it easier to admonish others. If I tell someone that they should be nicer, they likely already understand the situation as one where they could be nicer, and chose not too. Maybe they even chose not to be nice fully aware that it violated established social protocol. I am simply making a demand that they behave to my standards, and well adjusted people know that I am not their father no matter how serious I try to make myself sound. Or I can tell someone they lack empathy, accusing them of failing at a basic part of humanity. Depending on their internal thought process I'm more likely at extracting the behavior I want out of them through this manipulation. It's rudimentary bullying. Make an accusation someone doesn't want to be true, and treat any attempt to refute it as proof the accusation is true.