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"We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demograph

"We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies." I know that the study controlled for socioeconomic and demographic variables, but I can think of a couple potential problems. One is that the overall study is composed of several smaller studies, each of which uses what may be a flimsy way of assessing negative traits from surveys and games. The other problem is as follows: take two African American women who make the same amount of income. Generally, they have the same demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. However, if one believes that she must, on the margins, extract more from an oppressive system, and the other believes that she must completely work with the system and take what she can get (regardless of her beliefs about the system), then can the former be classified as a Machiavellian psychopath and the latter be classified as a normative angel? (rhetorical question) Note: I used the term "the system" to abstract from a lot of variables to keep things brief. Note 2: Don't get me wrong, I'm not a post-modernist on ethics. Quite the opposite. I'm just skeptical about many psychological studies like the one in the OP. The correlations could be true (or not, or smaller in magnitude), and the research is worth doing, but I see no reason to update my priors yet.

merpnderp 6y ago
Can she prove it is oppressive, or is it just her opinion? Because if she can prove she's being oppressed, there are a large number of legal prescriptions (in the US) rather than ruining her professional career by being cunning and duplicitous. Nobody likes working with lying cheaters, regardless of their stated goals.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  "Nobody likes working with lying cheaters, regardless of their stated goals." Of course. I certainly don't like working with cheaters. But are you sure that that's what the study is actually measuring? Does it really prove that someone is more likely to be a cheater and a liar in a corporate environment if they exhibit a dubious and simplistic measure of victimization? I think it's dangerous to update my priors and increase my suspicion of people whom I deem to demonstrate above average victimization for their demographic. Guess who that would hurt the most? How arbitrary would my judgment be? Even if we can definitively say that the correlations in the study hold, the error terms, effect magnitude, and the practical difficulty in reproducing the study's controls render its findings impracticable in most contexts. Thankfully, I haven't met many capital B Bad people/cheaters/pathological liars in my life, at least I don't think so. The worst people I met were very confident (the c in con artist) and didn't seem to have a victim complex.
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    I wonder if you've ever had to deal with managing or employing people. From my experience there are just some people who think they were born for greatness and your job is beneath them, and they'll half-ass it, abuse sick/flex time, and do as little as possible at work, never realizing that they can't be born for greatness if they can't even manage to do their current job. And they will definitely claim to be victims of this, that, and the other when called out, no matter how badly they've screwed their co-workers or employer. One of the greatest draws of a guaranteed minimum income is to get the lying slackers out of the job market. Maybe they'll get bored watching Netflix and find something useful to be productive at, maybe not, but they suck to work with and employ, making everyone less productive who has to deal with their crap.
- deleted 6y ago
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- jstanley 6y ago
  > Because if she can prove she's being oppressed, there are a large number of legal prescriptions But if it is the entire "system" that is oppressing her, then she is likely to find that these legal prescriptions do not apply in her case. Isn't that quite obvious? If you're being oppressed by a system, the system oppresses you, no matter how loudly it claims that it has resolutions for anyone who is being oppressed. The fact that the system does not work for you is what it means to be oppressed in the first place.
  - merpnderp 6y ago
    If you can't articulate, in detail, how you're being oppressed, are you being oppressed of just suffering from paranoia?
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zozbot234 6y ago
Dark triad traits are personality traits, not mere political or social beliefs. They involve a lot more than just attitudes towards "the system", and the way they're assessed also reflects this. > Quite the opposite. I'm just skeptical about many psychological studies like the one in the OP. There's reason to be skeptical about many things in psychology, but the broad "dark triad" construct is seems to be at least somewhat sensible.

merpnderp 6y ago

Can she prove it is oppressive, or is it just her opinion? Because if she can prove she's being oppressed, there are a large number of legal prescriptions (in the US) rather than ruining her professional career by being cunning and duplicitous. Nobody likes working with lying cheaters, regardless of their stated goals.

keenmaster 6y ago
"Nobody likes working with lying cheaters, regardless of their stated goals." Of course. I certainly don't like working with cheaters. But are you sure that that's what the study is actually measuring? Does it really prove that someone is more likely to be a cheater and a liar in a corporate environment if they exhibit a dubious and simplistic measure of victimization? I think it's dangerous to update my priors and increase my suspicion of people whom I deem to demonstrate above average victimization for their demographic. Guess who that would hurt the most? How arbitrary would my judgment be? Even if we can definitively say that the correlations in the study hold, the error terms, effect magnitude, and the practical difficulty in reproducing the study's controls render its findings impracticable in most contexts. Thankfully, I haven't met many capital B Bad people/cheaters/pathological liars in my life, at least I don't think so. The worst people I met were very confident (the c in con artist) and didn't seem to have a victim complex.
- merpnderp 6y ago
  I wonder if you've ever had to deal with managing or employing people. From my experience there are just some people who think they were born for greatness and your job is beneath them, and they'll half-ass it, abuse sick/flex time, and do as little as possible at work, never realizing that they can't be born for greatness if they can't even manage to do their current job. And they will definitely claim to be victims of this, that, and the other when called out, no matter how badly they've screwed their co-workers or employer. One of the greatest draws of a guaranteed minimum income is to get the lying slackers out of the job market. Maybe they'll get bored watching Netflix and find something useful to be productive at, maybe not, but they suck to work with and employ, making everyone less productive who has to deal with their crap.
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jstanley 6y ago
> Because if she can prove she's being oppressed, there are a large number of legal prescriptions But if it is the entire "system" that is oppressing her, then she is likely to find that these legal prescriptions do not apply in her case. Isn't that quite obvious? If you're being oppressed by a system, the system oppresses you, no matter how loudly it claims that it has resolutions for anyone who is being oppressed. The fact that the system does not work for you is what it means to be oppressed in the first place.
- merpnderp 6y ago
  If you can't articulate, in detail, how you're being oppressed, are you being oppressed of just suffering from paranoia?

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zozbot234 6y ago

Dark triad traits are personality traits, not mere political or social beliefs. They involve a lot more than just attitudes towards "the system", and the way they're assessed also reflects this. > Quite the opposite. I'm just skeptical about many psychological studies like the one in the OP. There's reason to be skeptical about many things in psychology, but the broad "dark triad" construct is seems to be at least somewhat sensible.