I would take this article with a grain of salt. It gets a lot wrong and a lot of it is questionable. For example, notice something about the stats it gives th

I would take this article with a grain of salt. It gets a lot wrong and a lot of it is questionable. For example, notice something about the stats it gives throughout the article? It's whole numbers, and with large variations: 10-20 per cent of individuals, 30-50 per cent of people, and so on. That variation and the whole numbers should be a read flag. When performing a study very precise numbers pop up. This isn't a confidence interval they're calculating, it's made up numbers. (The real numbers btw are between 8 and 9% of the US population.) Let's look at the premise: >For 15 years, research into dark personality traits (including narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism) has been rapidly expanding. Straight from the get go it uses fuzzy or vague terminology. Furthermore, it does not attempt to explain its chosen initial terminology. The actual terminology is: - ASPD for something close to the Hollywood psychopathy/sociopathy stereotype, there is no official psychopath in the DSM. - Narcissism is NPD, and NPD is quite different from what people typically call a narcissist looking at themselves in the mirror, so the audience is going to misunderstand without explanation. - Machiavellianism. It explains how countries slowly take over land of other countries. It explains how to maintain power on a national level once you have it, and so on. I admit I don't even know what the machiavellianism stereotype is. Maybe Game of Thrones and people backstabbing each other? That is not Machiavellian. Using vague terminology is a way to get people to believe things without questioning them. It gets the audience to think they know the topic on a deep level, but instead their understanding is reduced. A lot of conspiracy theory websites do this, and even political websites as of late. Sadly, at times, vague terminology can be used as a technique to manipulate people. Fuzzy terminology is a red flag when validating a source. I could keep going and critique this article all the way through, but it would be quite a long post. (eg, they say these characteristics are more common in men, but there are more female narcissists than there are males, which is the largest group.) In short, a healthy dose of skepticism is helpful. The article aims to solidify a stereotype, that makes it easier for actual bad actors to not be identified. Sadly, reality is darker than these stereotypes.