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Scientists have created the darkness measure, D score, for how dark you are
- constantlm 5y agoMassive loading spinner obscuring the content :(
- jessaustin 5y agoHow does this ever seem like a good idea?
- tomrod 5y agoBetter than Shimmer, IMO. But a real loading bar? chefs kiss I love that design. Fake loading bar? No fun.
- tjs8rj 5y agoI feel like I can be a pretty ruthless person and I only scored about the middle of the range. Pretty terrifying to imagine a good chunk of the population is allegedly even darker
- Hamuko 5y agoBy middle of the range, do you mean 2.5 or actually where the median person scores? Because scoring a 4.0/5.0 nets you a 98th percentile placement (don't ask me how I know).
- themodelplumber 5y agoIt made me wonder, reading through the items--a lot of these are "little picture" questions / items. I would guess--just as a spitball--that a lot of the people who would test really dark are going to be handled better by the rest of us, systematically, over time, in ways that support the best they can do for themselves and for the rest of us. That's even part of the point of this instrument. Humanity is getting more and more big-picture-oriented in general (planning, teamwork, contingency thinking, scoping, scheduling, emotional intelligence, etc. are all freely taught even to low-paid workers in many cases) and has even begun to coalesce around a "curable disease" model of evil (i.e. latest Spider-Man film). In addition, highly-sensory forms of entertainment which allow expression of the D traits offered are also available, theoretically making a restorative bounce to the opposite frame of mind, something like the Yin response, possible... (Definitely speculation but I'd risk it)
- themodelplumber 5y agoIn case anybody else is trying to get the item sets, check your spam folder. (BTW this weird thing where Chrome blocks .zip downloads from HTTP sites is new to me) With the G and now D taken...were there other letters too? Is there an alphabet race coming on? It is feeling a bit like a cultural meme-launch--what letter will be next? Some ideas, maybe these would help us all: S, for People Who Are Generally Spies Y, for a unification of theories around detecting a Youtuber in your environs C, for understanding people who Tend to Invent Cryptocurrencies F, for a unified theory of Generally Fishy People
- anigbrowl 5y agoYep, it's just the academic version of domain squatting. There's good money in both being associated with a fashionable scientific metric (pseudo or not) and in selling - sorry, licensing - tests to institutional buyers that want to run them on everyone in the criminal justice system.
- themodelplumber 5y agoIt's pretty wild to think about this being run on a bunch of people for serious reasons, because I'm reading through the items and it seems easy to game, in that the generally "morally right" choice seems obvious. "I tend to forgive the wrongs I have suffered." Oh yeah. For _sure_, institutions who are in charge of assessing me, I would _definitely_ tend to forgive those wrongs... Hopefully this would be one of many instruments used... Plus with error around things like maybe not-so-necessary English issues for lower-level readers: "There is poor comfort in revenge." Phrasing? Items requiring more analytical thinking to understand than other items: "If I opposed the election of an official, then I would be glad to see him or her fail even if their failure hurt my community." Just to say--love the research, really curious about the application...
- anigbrowl 5y agoThose are good criticisms. My (2nd hand) understanding is that in institutional settings where there would be incentives to lie on a self-report the grading is done on a clinical instrument by a professional who educes the answers through conversation rather than stating them plainly. At least, that's how the Hare psychopathy checklist is done, and subjects who would score high on that are disproportionately likely to want to game such an instrument.
- anigbrowl 5y agoI realize this project is organized by a bunch of northern European universities whose staffers might be somewhat oblivious, but someone should really tell them how terms like light and dark as applied to persons can lead to unwanted confusion and unintended results.
- LanceH 5y agoWe really shouldn't be sacrificing whole words just to appease cranks who won't be satisfied anyway. The English language has subtleties and people should stop trying to conflate meanings just to feed the outrage.
- thereare5lights 5y agoYou're talking about a situation where priming is relevant. Your objection doesn't address the problem.
- LanceH 5y ago
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- holoduke 5y agoAmazing that hundreds of thousands finished the test and about 200 people finished the test while I was making it. I wish I had so many participants.
- antupis 5y agoThat is magic of front page of HN.
- dotancohen 5y agoThe magic of front page of HN is usually a few dozen additional hits per hour. Sometimes it might get into the hundreds for something really relevant to the specific crowd here, but I doubt that this particular issue is that high-interest for HN. Actually R'ing TFA is still a very high bar!
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoPeople love to be told things about themselves, even if not particularly accurate or reliable, like a Magic 8-Ball. Tests like this benefit greatly from the network effect as people want to compare scores with friends and family.
- framecowbird 5y agoI scored incredibly far on the left and now I feel woefully inequipped for everyday life.
- SamPatt 5y agoI scored 30%, which seems like enough self interest to survive but not enough to hurt others regularly. Don't feel bad about being on the left! I would much rather have you in my life than someone on the right (unless perhaps we're in a war or something).
- themodelplumber 5y agoFor real, it's heavy business just to read through the items. I'll bet at least some of the researchers had to set serious boundaries with their own work. I wouldn't be surprised if their personal worlds got very dark for a time, even if they knew in advance that this kind of work was ahead of them.
- Kliment 5y agoI also scored far on the left and I'm doing okay in life. You don't need to be evil to get shit done. Just get shit done.
- n-e-w 5y agoLikewise. I am definitely on the Light Side of the Force and have done well. While I would say it cost me earlier in my career, the reputation and quality benefits that have accrued through life were more than worth the early struggle. I just really do try to do /good/ to people as it's broadly defined on a "typical" issue.
- novok 5y agoTBH, nobody really likes working with such jerks, you might not realize that they also don't get ahead in their careers more often than not. I'm fairly certain most highly dark people are in prison, especially the spiteful. The sad part of the story is people often cognitive dissonance themselves about the bad they do in the world, or make it abstract because most people don't like to be the bad guy of their personal story and might score as being a fairly light person, even if they do harm.
- mjfl 5y agoOMG a personality test! I love these in Cosmo!
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- divbzero 5y agoHow dark am I if I’m immediately suspicious and hesitant to take personality tests like this? Who knows what psychological profiles they are building of unsuspecting masses…
- themodelplumber 5y agoNo worries, being suspicious on a contingency basis isn't even close to being in there. Plus the person who would get those sneaky reports is probably dark enough to ignore them anyway. Why? Because people generally think other people think like they do. Ergo--everybody games the test anyway, so I'll just skip the tedious data and go after those I don't like. Following objective data is also a way of giving up one's own sense of subjective power. BTW you can self-score if you download the items and read the word doc.
- rex_lupi 5y agoHow dark am I if I have deliberately chosen the most 'moral' option that I can think of and still checked the box that asks if youve answered the questions honestly?
- infogulch 5y agoIn About they cite a reference that claims that "darkness" is functionally distinct from the Big Five's agreeableness, maybe there's something here.
- mgaunard 5y agoIt's interesting that most results are "light". I took the test and ended up in the middle of the scale, but apparently relatively few people end up there.
- kstenerud 5y agoThat's to be expected, I think. A mostly-dark or even a mid-dark population would have trouble out-competing mostly-light populations over time due to issues with internal discord. The accuracy of such tests is of course as suspect as for g, but I would expect that for optimum competitiveness, there has to be at least a small amount of this kind of variety in any society, tending much more towards light than dark.
- novok 5y agoOne inaccuracy factor about this test is how it equates legality to morality. If the test taker does not think legality is equal to morality, then some thoughts they will have would be marked as dark when they are not. If a person is helping slaves escape an underground railroad, despite it being illegal, are their answers about their opinions of legality correct? If someone ignores segregation laws and sits on an empty seat that they are not allowed to on the bus, are they dark for 'disregarding the law' to 'get ahead'? They get to sit on the bus sooner after all! If they think the law is wrong, is that different than them thinking the law it correct and doing it anyway to get ahead? Need to tease that out in their question set, or avoid questions having to do with the law. Another commenter said that the test came from northern europe where there is more trust in institutions and government. I bet they will get higher 'dark' scores where people do not trust their governments, and inaccurately so. EDIT: And since 2 of them are in germany, you have a fairly accepted cultural reference of law gone wrong in recent german history too!
- rex_lupi 5y agoJust took the test and was thinking exactly the same
- kstenerud 5y agoProbably a good idea to alert them to this flaw. If this test were ever to be used as an official tool, we'd have a lot of trouble since people tend to turn off their brains once they have a tool to do their thinking for them.
- mjfl 5y agoI also thought that agreeing with the item that was something like "it is wise to break the law to achieve your goals" is more of a sign of stupidity than 'darkness'.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoadmitting such beliefs to the authorities is certainly a sign of stupidity! Though maybe that's what the test is actually intended to measure. If I were running a large organization I'd want a way to identify 'low-neuroticism rule followers' more urgently than 'moral actors'.
- Stevvo 5y agoWhy is agreeing with "It's wise to keep track of information that you can use against people later" an indicator of dark traits? This is what a lawyer does when building a case against a suspect. Are all lawyers somewhat 'dark'?
- sincerely 5y agoYes :)
- ummonk 5y agoRead the title and thought it was a measure of melanation rather than an expanded version of the dark triad.
- qart 5y agoSame here. I was wondering how they are going to achieve it, and if we are supposed to send them our pictures with standard grayscale charts held against our face or something.
- bluecalm 5y agoNot a fan of those. The questions are imprecise. What does "is it better?" even mean? Better for me? Better for ethical reasons? Better for the society? How about the torment question? If I torment someone that I think deserves it I wouldn't feel bad at all. If I somehow end up tormenting someone not fully deserving it I would feel very bad. They seem to think beliefs justifying hurting others for good reasons are dark. I think the contrary: it's your duty to society to make sure to apply swift payback for bad behaviors. It's usually altruistic as well: you won't feel any better and it might cost you but the world is a better place when there are consequences for bad behavior. I still scored low 2.57. It's scary to think so many people score much higher. There isn't much respect left in me when it comes to social psychology. Seeing yet another survey using imprecise language doesn't help. I seriously question this branch as science at this point. Did it every produce anything useful when it comes to making predictions about actual people?
- adreamingsoul 5y agoMy D score is 2.09 Watch out everyone! :)
- Traubenfuchs 5y ago3.77 / 97% Yikes, it seems I am more out of touch with common sense than I thought. I really don‘t feel that „dark“ though. I usually try not to rock the boat, but if I can take 2 cookies with the only consequence being someone else will get none and the guarantee I won‘t get caught, I will probably take it.
- pg_1234 5y agoOr, given the world we live in, you have too much common sense.
- Borrible 5y ago3.59/94% I'm quite evil! And didn't even cheat this time. No really, I swear. Come on, where should be the advantage?
- throwaway73838 5y agoPeople claiming to be scientists have created a test which alleges to be able to provide a numerical value to morality. Fixed that for you.
- emerged 5y agoI scored very very left on this, but plenty of people still think of me as a jerk because I don’t always hide moral criticisms against others - and I think there is a strong grouping quality to being at the center of the darkness bell curve. In that area you push out both the very left and very right people.
- AstralStorm 5y agoAnyone up for a lawsuit? "I understand that it is impossible to link my personal identity and the data or responses I provide." Psychometric tests are rather trivially linkable given a small amount of metadata. This would fall under "I like to make claims I know cannot be true for personal gain"
- alexshendi 5y agoOh, is it just like Spearman's G? Lovely!
- beej71 5y agoI wonder how this correlates to business success.