Psychologists call it the black triad: An intersection of three of the most malicious trends in human nature – psychopathy,, narcissismAnd Machiavellianism.
But the truth goes further and darker. There is also selfishness, sadism, wickedness and more. And behind this gallery of thugs of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a common core of human darkness is, according to the researchers.
In a 2018 study, psychologists in Germany and Denmark have mapped this driving force behind all our darkest impulses and gave it a name. Meet D, the newly identified dark factor of personality.
The theoretical framework of the factor of its foundations in what is called the g postman: A construction proposed by the English psychologist Charles Spearman more than a century ago when he observed that people who performed well on a type of cognitive test were more likely to mark well on other types of tests ‘intelligence.
In other words, a “general intelligence factor” could be measured. But it turns out that not all scientists can detect.
“In the same way, the dark aspects of the human personality also have a common denominator, which means that – similar to intelligence – we can say that they are all an expression of the same provisional trend,” explain Psychologist Ingo Zettler of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark in September 2018.
In a series of four distinct studies involving more than 2,500 participants, Zettler and his colleagues researchers questioned participants with questions designed to measure their levels of distinct dark personality traits: selfishness, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, Narcissism, psychological law, psychopathy, sadism, interest and wickedness.
To do this, the participants were invited to disagree with a range of variable “dark” declarations, such as: “I know that I am special because everyone tells me”, “I will say anything To get what I want “,” it is difficult to get ahead without cutting the corners here and there “, and” hurting people would be exciting “.
With all the responses in hand, the researchers have carried out a statistical analysis, the results suggest that if these dark features are all distinct, they all overlap to a certain extent, due to the central obscurity factor, D, which is revealed In different ways in different people.
“In a given person, the D factor can especially manifest itself as a narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark features, or a combination of these,” Zettler said.
“But with our cartography of the common denominator of the different dark personality traits, we can simply check that the person has a factor D of these dark lines.”
It’s quite provocative things, but you don’t just have to speak to researchers for that: you can take the test yourself.
The team has set up a online gate where you can measure your own score via a questionnaire.
Why would people want to know? Well, apart from personal curiosity as to the night that you really are, the researchers said that their results could one day lead to new discoveries in psychology and therapy, making our understanding of the way we interpret the People’s malicious actions.
“We see it, for example, in the event of extreme violence, or of receipt of rules, lie and deception in the sectors of the company or the public”, ” Zettler said.
“Here, knowledge of a person’s factor D can be a useful tool, for example, to assess the probability that the person will reinstall or adopt more harmful behavior.”
The results were reported in Psychological review.
A previous version of this article was published in September 2018.