"Worse than Narcissists!" How to Identify Machiavellians (Dark Triad). Dr Daniel Jones

Psychopaths will mug you. Narcissists will charm you. Machiavellians will invade you. They're thinking down the road. They're thinking long-term goals. They're thinking strategically. If you focus on one trait to the detriment of the others, you're going to create blind spots and how you could be manipulated.

Welcome to the Brad Carr Podcast. My guest today is Professor Daniel Jones, one of the world's leading experts on the dark triad of narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism, and a former student of Dr. Del Paulhus, who coined the term dark triad. Dr. Daniel Jones, you said that the science of understanding manipulation has failed us. Why do you say that?

Because we've been studying these traits for more than 50 years. 50 years we've known about different toxic personality traits that create interpersonal harm, wreak havoc on society, and create deception and distrust among our fellow peers. And we've done almost nothing to give people actionable solutions to protect themselves from that type of manipulation. And from my perspective, that's unacceptable. We don't need more research showing how they harm people. We need people to come to us with solutions. We need to produce actionable real life solutions for people to be able to protect themselves from manipulation that comes from people who have been doing this their whole lives.

Mhm. So then what do we need to know about your background to understand what you bring to the science of manipulation?

So initially I began my journey in psychology looking at it from a very situational experimental social psychology perspective. It was only when I started studying with Dr. Del Palace who was the creator of the dark triad concept that I began to integrate personality and social psychology uh into the equation and then obviously focusing on aspects of evolutionary psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, I started looking at a much larger puzzle of how these traits uh interact with their environments and interact with other people to create the harm that they do. I would urge anybody looking at these types of personality traits to understand that everything is person environment and person by environment interactions as Curt Lavine said almost 100red years ago. And so understanding the situations in which they act helps us understand the types of behaviors that are they're going to unleash, the harmful behaviors they're going to unleash, and the types of things they're going to pursue in different environments.

Mhm. And so I do want to talk about the specifics and stuff. First I'm just curious. So your mentor Dell Pace, if I'm saying that right, that's right. Coined the phrase dark triad. I mean, how did how did they even do that?

So uh Dell was originally a student of Richard Christies at the University of Colia and Christie created obviously with along with his student Florence Gist the the concept of Machavelianism. And so there was a paper in 1998 that came along by a guy named John Macausky that said Machavelianism is dead. It's not it's redundant with psychopathy. It's watered down psychopathy. We need to stop studying uh redundant constructs. And so Dell and his student Kevin Williams got together and said, well, you know, let's let's let's really examine this before we jump to conclusions. And so they took what was the three mo what were the three most studied uh toxic personality traits at the time which was psychopathy, narcissism and machionism and wrote a paper and and coined it the dark triad. Um and uh they argued for their distinctiveness. they were making a specific argument that these traits are distinct and we need to study them in tandem at the same time to see which trait is going to go with which outcome or which behavior um rather than just be isolationists in the research literature and well I study psychopathy I don't I don't care about the other two um that was no longer acceptable according to the agenda that they were outlining they were saying hey look we all got to talk to each other the forensic psychologists were off doing psychopathy the clinical psychologists were off doing narcissism and the personalized social psychology just were off doing Mackie valianism. He said these different camps need to start communicating because they're they could be studying the same thing in some situations but they're depriving the field of understanding the differences which was very very important.

So why is it important to understand the differences?

One model that I've heard of is sort of a low conscience umbrella. And this is a term that's suggested to help people who have been through relationships with highly manipulative, dangerous people. So that you can just get a sense that I don't know if he was a narcissist or antisocial personality disorder. I just know that he operated without conscience and now I need to protect myself. What's what's the value in these distinctions?

Well, first of all, if you focus on one trait to the detriment of the others, you're going to create blind spots in how you could be manipulated. One of the common things I tell my class is a Machavelian is focused on long-term bottom line tangible goals. So if somebody says, "You know what? Darn, you were right and you're really smart at this." They'd say, "Well, they can't be narcissistic cuz because of how they just publicly self- aaced and and complimented me. I guess I'm going to be okay." And then three months down the road, all the private things you've told this person, all the things that you were negotiating with person suddenly come to light in an inappropriate way. You said, "Wow, I was blindsided. I thought I could trust that person." And and vice versa. Somebody turns down a very tangible gain um in a negotiation or something like that just for a sacred value or for a public praise or for a compliment. Say, "Wow, this person is is really just not Mackie at all. I guess I'm in the clear. And then of course the narcissism comes out. So when you focus on one trait to the detriment of you you create a a a blind spot to the detriment of the others. The other thing I would say is how you handle these traits um in in situations because it is a matter of fact that you're going to come across one or more of these types of people in your life or career and the truth of the matter is they they need to be handled in different ways. So, in negotiating, for example, in a business context with a narcissistic person, giving them uh symbolic concessions, giving them uh sacred value concessions very often works to increase your bottom line outcome and tangible gains. So, if I say, "Look, Brad, I I I really want to be on your podcast. I'm I'm going to, you know, uh give you all these uh social ad, you know, praise and I'm going to give you all this social social uh recognition. um but I'm not actually going to give you any money if you're narcissistic. That's actually going to work better than saying Brad I'll pay you 500 bucks to be on your podcast type of thing. Where in the reverse would be true of Machavelianism. So knowing who you're negotiating with knowing who you're dealing with is going to empower you to be able to negotiate those relationships in a productive way.

Okay. So, I see then this this narrowing down as useful in a forward-looking situation where I I suspect that I'm going into an endeavor where I'm going to be around one of these people. This is very relevant for what you're talking about earlier with management, the workplace, things like that. Whereas, if it's retrospective, you don't need to know whether he was Mchavelian or antisocial personality disorder or whatever. You just know that looking back, you were manipulated, abused, whatever, and you want to recover. Is it am I getting you?

I I would say so. I would say in in terms of learning from the situation, if that's a goal, then understanding what type of tree and what your attack surface was and what your vulnerabilities were so that they don't get repeated is going to be important even then and understanding what trait was at play when you got manipulated. But no, if you were uh uh in a relationship or exploited by somebody who's high in one one or one or uh one or more of these these traits, now it's what's crucial to understand was it wasn't your fault. They were playing by a different set of rules than we've agreed upon in humanity. We we have a basic sense of benevolence towards other people and a basic sense of integrity. And we go into research and there's a great researcher in uh Alabama named Timothy Lavine who argues that it's his theory is called truth default theory and he argues that a default setting for most human beings is to trust. If I say Brad hey look it's going to rain by you later today. You really should take an umbrella. Your default setting is to take me at my word. Okay. Um where uh you know if we didn't we we'd collapse as a society. It's very important that we take most people uh as being benevolent, benign and and taking them at their word. So our default setting is to trust. And so consequently um if we change that, you know, obviously there's consequences consequences to that. And so you have to reduce your vulnerabilities. And so yes, looking back, if somebody violated those rules of engagement and said, "Hey, look, you know, uh this is this X is not X." And they manipulated you, no, it's not your fault. And to that degree, absolutely. any one of these traits can be interchangeable in the fact that it wasn't your fault that you were victimized or are harmed by one of these people. Uh so to that degree I agree and and you know if something's really critical that you need somebody high in integrity and benevolence to be handling a situation then yes screening them all out as a common core a common element makes sense. But if you're trying to make sense of the situation going forward you really do have to differentiate them.

And you you said to be aware of your attack surface. Um, what does that mean to you?

So, so that's that's vestigial left over from a lot of the research I do in cyber security. Um, so we've actually done a lot of stuff looking at the personality behind the keyboard and the types of people and how they're going to about go about trying to infiltrate an organization or hack a system or an individual. And so uh we find differences even there that people will do a lot of pass what they call in the the computer science literature and the cyber security literature passive reconnaissance on people. So if you've ever gotten a spear fishing email or one of those phone calls that knows a lot about you knows where you are what your what your address is um maybe your profession and what types of knows the the buzzwords that you you may tweak to um that's usually Machavelian at play because they've done their homework. people who just spam out and brute force and and try the same tactic on 100,000 people playing a numbers game are much more likely to be psychopathic um for the very nature of the deception and the tactical manipulation they engage in where somebody who tailor to a particular system is going to be more machavelian and so we talk about in cyber security minimizing your attack surface simply knowing how much what you put out on social media what you put out on the internet where your vulnerabilities are and making sure you stay vigilant to them. So yeah, that's just left over from some of the research I do in cyber security.

Well, it seems really relevant to to, you know, a person in just daily life, too. Um, I' I've dealt with one particularly dangerous man and his favorite thing to do was I would call it pre-stalking. I think he was he was getting as much information on someone as he could. He he was using uh burner accounts on social media so that he could be uh moving through those spaces digitally without um being recognized so that he could meet someone as though he didn't know anything about them and they didn't know anything about him when in fact there was a huge asymmetry of information. Um so I I see this is important in all domains.

Absolutely. And and to be clear to all the people listening right now I have fallen for these almost been victimized twice and I study this stuff. So once for my nonprofit here in Nevada, I'm a vice president of OCD Nevada and we had just started uh filings and putting up our website and all these costs. And I was also the treasurer at the time. And so I got a phone call or an email saying, "Hey, uh ostensibly from the president saying, "I need you to make this payment immediately. I'm in a meeting. Please do this." I was so worried about her and making sure that our accounts went through. I did not check the email from which it was coming. and I went to Wells Fargo and tried to uh do it and the email did not match the account so they shut it down but that would have bankrupted us and the person had done their homework. They knew we I was the treasurer. They knew who the president was. They knew that we had just filed and that we were doing these accounts. And then I got a call, this was maybe 6 weeks ago from something from a sergeant and they knew I had been an expert witness on several court cases. They knew I was going to court shortly. The phone call said, "Is this Daniel Jones?" and stated my address and said, "You realize you failed to appear in court 2 weeks ago for a deposition on a child abuse case and you are there is now a warrant out for your and for about 5 minutes I was convinced I was going to jail for failure to show on a case until I started pumping the brakes and asking some very basic questions. Wait, I'll go down to the station now. We can clean this up." No, if you hang up the phone now, we're going to send the National Guard or whatever after you. Then I started to realize, oh my goodness. And then when I he transferred me to his uh supervisor immediately and they wanted my social security number, my credit card and you know you you guys were a little too the second guy was a little too brash. But again I almost fall for these things and I studied them. So people should not carry this guilt and shame they carry when they are manipulated because these people have been at it a long time. They live breathe deception and we as I said are at a default of trust which is a good thing. So of course these things are going to slip through the cracks from time to time. So we have to stay vigilant, but we should still be decent people and trust each other.

Mhm. So you you get into a lot of the different types and I've I've heard you talk about Machavelianism in particular in a way that I haven't heard other people and I do want to get to that, but just in broad strokes first. So we've said that this science has failed. What do you think is the solution?

So, first I think the solution is understanding these traits and their differences and how people are going to potentially come at you um based on your vulnerabilities, you know, um and understand what your vulnerabilities are. So, I think everybody should take a a long hard look in the mirror and say to themselves, what have I put into the world? What do I expect to get out of the world? And in in that situation, what what based on my desires and my expectations and my my the way I've presented myself to the world creates a vulnerability. And I think people understanding that these folks do lie in plain sight um in the general population can really create uh these vulnerabilities. So I think understanding how they can come at you with different ways and different manipulations is key. But as I said in in my TEDex talk that I gave here in Reno, um there are three big components that people need to focus on when they've recognized that somebody who's not playing by these integrity and benevolence rules that we we have of engagement. And so I say in in the talk um and the title of the talk is how to recognize a master manipulator. And basically what I argue is if we use CPR to help somebody breathe when they're suffocating, then we use CBR to help people breathe in a toxic relationship. And that stands for cold, bottom line, and rational. And so I'd argue anybody dealing with somebody who has one of one or more of these traits, um, toxic elements, um, to think brass tax, be cold about the social relationship. Uh, they're a paycheck, not a pal. If it is your boss for example manipulating you they are you have to focus on their external utility at that point and I don't say we do this with all our social relationships just those who are trying to manipulate us cold what's the brass tax here what is the relationship what is their external utility if it's none cut them off get rid of them but if they are your boss their coworker somebody who with whom you have to associate with at least for a period of time you have to see the relationship in ter of external utilities and the second one is bottom bottom wide focus. What do you need to get out of this relationship? Maximally speaking, uh survival speaking, if they're holding the purse strings of your uh income, then you obviously have to focus on taking care of your family, taking care of that income, maybe moving on to another job. This is a springboard job. And then rational is the most important element. Rationally speaking, how are you going about going to go about accomplishing that bottom line task? Is it going to be through staying off their radar? or is it going to be through agreeing on some things that don't matter? Is it going to be um talking to your boss in a way that uh keeps the situation moving towards that bottom line goal irrespective of um you know whether or not you think this is uh an appropriate thing and I'm not saying anybody should break the law. I'm not saying anybody should betray their values. But moral victories fighting on principle isn't going to get you anywhere because they don't have principles and they don't have morality. So to say, I'm going to I'm going to prove to this narcissist that to the world that this person's a narcissist. Well, good luck. They're going to spend the rest of their waking days proving you're the problem. And they're just they've got they've been at this longer. So no narcissist in history, to my knowledge, has fallen to their knees and said, "Oh my god, what have I done? Uh what a horrible person through all these years." It doesn't happen, right? And so you have to think strategically about what can I get out of this brass tax instrumentally and then you use this CBR to breathe until you can formally get away because ultimately they're going to keep at it with the manipulation and and you're going to fail at some point. It's like fighting an MMA battle with only blocks and defense. I mean at some point you're going to get hit. So get out of the arena once you've dodged enough and you've gotten what you need out of the situation. get out of the ring because you're never going to be able to play defense forever.

Yeah. And then you started by saying that we need to assess our own vulnerabilities. How do we effectively do that?

I think some people maybe find themselves spending a lot of time and energy on things, you know, trying to do some therapeutic process or something to look back on what happened in a relationship. But to be prepared going ahead, um what what do we do?

So, first of all, and I want to be crystal clear as I said this earlier, I am not blaming the victim. I mean, we should all be able to let our honest integrity uh full disclosure uh be exposed and and and nobody should ever take advantage of that. So, I I don't want anybody to feel that I'm I'm somehow uh putting the onus back on uh the victim or the the survivor. This is this is not your fault. Um and it never will be. uh so but it it's looking ahead to practical solutions and dealing with them. You have to think am I do I have biases and how I see things right and so one of the things that I talk about is if you um are likely to trust easily because you are high in agreeableness which is one of the big five factors of personality then you take people at their word more than the average person. you tend to trust earlier in a relationship than the average person. I mean, I often heard an analogy that when we meet each other, even you and me, Brad, you know, we open a social bank account and there's a certain amount depending on the context and your perception of the individual that's in that bank account and that represents interpersonal trust. And so, you know, you may have $500,000 in my bank account if I trust you a lot at at at at first flush or you may have $5 in that bank account. Um, and so understanding that you may have a predisposition to trust, understanding that you may have a predisposition towards uh falling in love quickly and easily and often, um, then you're more likely to be excited when you meet that really exciting character. And so you may want to start sketching out how that might be a vulnerability. Um people who have previous traumas um may be depending on the nature and how deep that went may be resilient to these types of folks or they may be vulnerable to these types of folks because they want to believe that this is not going to happen again or that they may feel um guilty about certain aspects or traumatized and and sadly and sickeningly these folks uh can can detect that. There's actually research coming out of um uh parts of Canada by Beth Visser and Angela Book that show that individuals who are very high in psychopathy can actually tell just by the way a woman walks whether or not she's been victimized in her past. Um and so as creepy as that is, people have radar and these folks are experts at reading unconscious human radar and so they'll find ways. So that's why again if you know you cannot you have certain predispositions, you have certain vulnerabilities, you have to put in guard rails to make sure that you're you're you're protected and you're you're either checking in with friends, loved ones, um you're not um letting yourself fall into the fantasy that these people like to create. So if you know you're prone to that, that doesn't mean that's anything wrong with you. Sometimes it can be fantastic to fall in love uh quickly and easily. It's exciting. It's romantic. It's uh and you know it's great that you trust right away you can build a lot of relationships very quickly and effectively and efficiently that way but if you know you have those tendencies then also have a system of checks and the way I would say it is just trust but verify right if there's any resistance to having a friends come along if there's any resistance to having verification of what they said that should be a big red flag.

Mhm. Yeah. I I still want to get to Maki alianism, but you you open a couple of things that I know that you've you've done work on, you know, falling in love fast, which you have a book coming about. Um, yeah, and the the sort of aspect of people who who've been through things like this being more susceptible to it. You sent me a paper called social allstatic dysregulation which I understand to mean basically um if there's a sum of many very stressful toxic experiences in your life it makes you disregulated and more vulnerable to them in the future. Um so maybe could we talk about about those since you have gone so deep on them and how people can better understand them in themselves.

Absolutely. So, one of the things that I compare narcissism to is the the drug, street drug cocaine. Um, because individuals high in narcissism are unrealistic in how they present themselves and they're unethical in how they present themselves. What cocaine does I spent some time when I first uh was s seeking a PhD at the National Institute of Drug Abuse in uh Baltimore, Maryland. And you know, one of the things I learned about cocaine is even one-time use can stretch and um demolish your hideonic regulatory system because what you're essentially doing is you're taking in artificial dopamine into your system. You're flooding your brain with that artificial dopamine to the point where no lived experience really can match that pleasure that's artificially saturating your brain. And so milk and cookies or a good night out uh actually starts to pale in comparison all things being equal after you've done cocaine even one time to before because you stretched that pleasure scale. And so now something that was here feels like it's down here in in a sense of pleasure. And especially people who have sensitivities in meolyic regions in their brain which is you know the emotional centers of the brain to dopamineergic stimulation are going to experience could even be depression as as a result of one time cocaine you use. So what what does that have to do with narcissism? Well, narcissism again is an artificial synthetic way of promoting yourself and presenting yourself to others. So, if you have multiple dating experiences with somebody high in narcissism, they may stretch that excitement, that interpersonal uh regulatory system of how exciting somebody is and how amazing they are because they're artificial and unethical. And so, when you go out and date somebody who's not narcissistic and realistic and grounded in reality and humble, they're going to seem boring by comparison after dating a narcissist as when they did before. So, I actually argue narcissism has the same dysregulatory system or effect on the brain that cocaine does um just in a social setting.

So, so being around a person who's extremely narcissistic, dangerously narcissistic is like cocaine in that they're larger than life and and the cocaine experience is also a pleasure larger than real life. And so, it's stretching your your sense of what's real. What what can be expected.

That's exactly right. And even if you're not enamored with a person high in narcissism, I don't know if she ever published this, but a friend of mine uh named Joey Chang, she was actually uh at University of British Columbia with me as a PhD student in a different lab, but she did a study, she presented on it many years ago at a conference, and I absolutely loved this research. She showed that even even just being around somebody high in narcissism brings the egotistic temperature up in a room. So, if you're in a meeting and somebody starts bragging and self-promoting and nobody's really knocking them down, people take a cue from that and they start self-promoting. And so, it actually brings the egotistical temperature of the room up just being around narcissistic people. Um, I had a a really talented uh PhD student who actually uh went on to work for the government. His name is Aiden Aria and he came up with the idea of Machavelian cadet and how Machavelians produce really effective rationalizations for misbehavior. And so if you're hanging out with Machavelian people, eventually you start to think in a more dis morally disengaged way than you normally would. So I think you've hit on something really important, which is careful the company you keep. Even if it's not romantic or really interpersonally uh uh blended, uh you still start to take on characteristics of some of these folks. Even if they're on your side, you start to think differently. You start to act differently. And it's something that people need to be aware of.

Mhm. And so you see this um this social ales dysregulation as linked to the emopilia, the the falling in love fast as well. They they kind of go hand in hand.

I absolutely do. Uh so I did a paper with a really talented young assistant professor named uh Jacqueline Luga uh out in Texas who we she first authored the paper but we found that individuals high in hemophilia tend to be drawn to these these toxic personality traits especially narcissism not so much because of their uh a differential preference but because of a failure to recognize red flags. they don't necessarily count them out um and they ignore the red flags if the person's exciting. And so we did several studies looking at mock dating profiles, personality assessments, and we found that individuals high in hemophilia are more are more willing to date open the door to falling in love to these types of people uh because they don't shut it down based on the red flags. And so yeah, the the people who are emophilic, right? People who fall in love quickly and and and often they have a hair trigger for saying, "Wow, this person's amazing, getting so excited, feeling that connection right away." And narcissistic people, they're synthetically manufacturing that sense of connection. They're they're they're artificially inflating the excitement. So, like somebody who has those vulnerabilities to dopamine in the brain with with cocaine, somebody who has a vulnerability to those social excitatory processes is going to be vulnerable to narcissism. And that's why I say it's it's a match made in hell when you have somebody high in hemophilia and somebody high in narcissism get together.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean that's exactly what they're looking to do is to is to get that rush and to get you emotional and thinking that wow I've I've never known anybody like this person. We're so connected. We're so close. So if you're already prone to that um then you're you're at risk.

So how does someone know if they are already prone to that? Because if that's your whole life then you just think well that's what love is. So, so how would you know?

Well, the first thing you could do is is take an emophilia assessment, which I I have on my website. People are happy to welcome to uh to take it. Uh, let's plug that. Where where they find that and we'll put the link in the description. It is darkriad.co is my website and we have several surveys. People are welcome to take any of those that they want and we provide self assessments on those and things like that. Uh, and it'll tell you exactly where you are on the scale. Um, and so if you you tend to air on the on the on the upper end, then yeah, you you have these these tendencies and and I I don't see it as a pathology and I don't think anybody would. I'm not trying to say that you're somehow damaged or broken if you fall in love fast and often. As I said, it can be a fantastic uh journey in life and a way to way to be and and and likewise being too low. You know, you fall in love once and never again or never at all. You don't experience that one of the most amazing things of life which is which is romantic love. Um, so I'm not saying it's a pathology, but it is an individual difference and it can create vulnerabilities when you're exposed to those people who are self-promoting in an unrealistic way. Um, so that's one way. The other way is is basically looking back and saying, you know, like we were talking about earlier in in in the show, um, what what types of folks have I habitually been attracted to? Have they turned out to have these egotistical tendencies, these uh fragilities towards any kind of challenge or disagreement? And if so, those are hallmark signs of narcissism. And so, you can look back and say, you know, I fell in love with three or four people and they all couldn't be challenged. I couldn't disagree. There was a sense of ego fragility. Uh, it quacks like a duck. It walks like a duck. Uh, you you've been, you know, it's it's a duck. So, you've been dating, you know, a consistent pattern of narcissistic people.

Yeah. This is interesting because it's it's one of the um criticisms kind of of of the the work that I've been doing, you know, getting the word out about these kind of people and stuff is is that well, everybody says that, you know, all their exes were narcissists and things, but in fact, it sounds like there's there's real evidence that if you've had a couple, you've probably had a lot that it seems to be more of a string thing. So I was I I that's something I really want to expand upon because I was giving a talk to the National Guard a year and a half, two years ago on leadership and potential pitfalls of leadership. Phenomenal crowd and one person did ask, "So what if somebody says every single person in their, you know, platoon or every every leader they ever had is narcissistic? Why do people do that when we know it's not true?"

And my explanation for that is because it's so painful to go through the manipulation that narcissistic, psychopathic, other types of people, dark dark personalities engage in. Um, it's so hurtful that we understand immediately and it's a hair trigger to empathize with somebody. So, if I say, "Look, Brad, my ex, man, was she narcissistic, right? What does that do?" Right away, it gives us a common vocabulary for what types of behavior she had engaged in. It elicits complete sympathy for me and most importantly it absolves me of any wrongdoing because no matter what I did I was in a relationship with somebody who dispositionally couldn't reflect the same level of love and empathy to me that I could for her. So I called her a narcissist because I know what that does socially. It absolves me of wrongdoing and it allows me Now again I want to be very crystal clear. If you if they were truly narcissistic, then you do deserve the empathy and the sympathy and it wasn't your fault. But that does require some soularching in terms of does this person actually fit a pattern of narcissism or was there something there that they may they did have benevolence and integrity and the situation created a a the relationship to take a wrong turn. You know, very often people will say, "Well, he cheated on me. She cheated on me." That's narcissistic behavior. Not not necessarily. There are a myriad of reasons why somebody's unfaithful in a relationship that has nothing to do with a dark tribe. Emophilia being one of them. People who fall in love quickly and often that doesn't turn off once they're in a committed relationship. They want it to, they think it will, but ultimately that hair trigger for falling in love continues in perpetuity. And so they meet somebody else and it's like, ah, you know, I'm in love with both of you now. or somebody who has attachment issues and feels that they're not getting the reinforcement they want from their primary relationship and somebody else is really courting them and saying, "I'll give you all the security, the love, I'll love you forever." Those words are very attractive to somebody who's anxiously attached and maybe not feeling that same level of commitment from their primary partner may also stray in and and none of those things have anything to do with being narcissistic or high in the dark triad. So people do throw these labels out um sometimes uh recklessly. Uh and so if the person showed clear ego ego reactants to threats or challenges, if the person showed clear sense of entitlement to things that were above and beyond what the average what what they were entitled to just cuz they were them. You know, if the person is showing authoritative ways of thinking, absolutely, that's narcissistic patterns. But as we talked about earlier, it's not just narcissism, right? Somebody could have been cultivating information this whole time from instrumental gain. Maybe you had something they were after and they used that romantic or social connection to leverage the instrumental gain. Or maybe the person was very tactical and reckless and they were engaging in deception and lies um out of a sense of immediate gratification um or a perverse sense of pleasure duping you. There's concept that Ecman came up with called duping delight, right? And they just enjoy the game. Those are all very different types of traits, but they all have the same outcome, which is you get really hurt, manipulated, and and and uh exploited at the hands of this type of person. So, there's a lot of variables in these these equations. And so, I I encourage people to think beyond the narcissistic myopic view of why why a relationship went went south.

Yeah. So, let's get let's get out of that, you know, their narcissist view for a bit. I agree. We've we've done I've done plenty of that. Um, yeah, I'm thinking so, so far we've talked about how looking back there, you can look back with sort of a broader umbrella of of low conscience. How looking at yourself after one of these experiences or going forward, you can assess what's going on with me? What am I most vulnerable to? What is that attack surface as you said to to use your terms? Um, all of that you can be cold, bottom line, rational going forward. Now in that process understanding different types I hear a lot about narcissists. I hear a lot about psychopaths. The word that I hear tossed around but not explained a lot is mchavelians. What what is that? I know that you you know a lot about it. You've paid a lot of attention to it.

So machavelianism is the sneaky of the three traits. And and as you know, as I've said many times in my career, and I continue to emphasize, they're the most society dangerous of the three traits, um because they're not the most transparent. They're actually shrouded in in secrecy, which is why people often get the trait confused for other traits. Um they're shrouded in secrecy. They're very situationally dependent. they can be the nicest, most ethical, ethically behaving person depending on what is in it for them. And so there's a lot of research in the organizational behavior literature showing that they'll engage in voluntary behaviors. They'll there's a great researcher out in Hungary called Thomas Betsky who showed that they'll volunteer at a high or even higher click than others if they get social or instrumental recognition for it. Um so the situation is very much um uh indicative of how they're going to behave with respect to ethics. Now to be clear there's no behavior they would object to on ethical grounds much like psychopathic narcissistic Machavelian they're all willing to do whatever it's just whether or not it's going to be expedient in pursuing their goals. It's just pragmatics as to whether they'll actually engage in the behavior or not, which makes them so dangerous because they'll hold off. The example I always give is a wallet on the table. If there's a wallet on the table and there's absolutely no consequence, it's a stranger's wallet, all three will take the wallet and help themselves to the content of the wallet. But if it's your CEO or your boss or your leader that left the wallet in the room and there's a lot of money there, but there are cameras everywhere and things like that, the Machavelian will be the first one to turn return it in full cash, nothing taken to the boss and say, "Hey, I found your wallet. Just want to protect you and make sure nobody else took it." Mackie will do that. Psychopath may still take the contents of the wallet because of the immediate gratification associated with the trait. So that is a key differential factor in how Machavelians behave is the situational consequences associated with the behavior.

So a Machiavellian has the low conscience of a psychopath but doesn't have the impulsive behavior.

Exactly. They have the they're thinking down the road. They're thinking long-term goals. They're thinking strategically. There's another great paper by uh uh Esper and Beretsky, that same author I was talking about, that shows they spontaneously mentalize when they're interacting with somebody who is there's a a zero someum negotiation or there's some uh conflict uh whether it's, you know, positive or negative going on. They think like a chess match. They're thinking, what is Brad going to do next? And how can I counter what Brad's likely to do based on this situation? and how can I make sure I come out of the situation with maximal gain for myself but don't look like I'm trying to so they're they're thinking strategically spontaneously mentalizing what their opponent's going to do so they can stay one up in in the interaction none of the other dark personality truths do that type of stuff as far as I know and so that I think is really makes them the most society dangerous as I said as I said in my in my talk you know psychopaths will mug Narcissists will charm you. Machavelians will invade you. They will cultivate an army and a coalition. And before you realize they're a threat, it's already too late. And that's they're the ones that keep me up at night. They're the ones that freak me out because if they're smooth and thoughtful enough and intelligent enough and strategic enough, you'll never see it coming.

Well, this is interesting because it's often said that, you know, someone who's a cult leader is a narcissist or a psychopath. But to to lead a cult would take a lot of forward thinking um because you're going to have to gather people, you're going to have to create a facade, that sort of thing. So, how do you see that cult leader persona fitting with these models?

I would say there are unusual types of combination of strategic thinking as you've articulated and the charm that needs to come with being able to be appealing to large masses of people. So that's why you have a maybe a unique combination of that charm, that self-promotion that typically we see associated with narcissism, but the strategic, instrumental um flexible, calculating thinking, planful thinking associated with Machalianism. And so you may have some construct uh overlap there among those cult leaders. But the thing that's really critical to understand is and I'm I'm developing several models now to try to explain this is the cut point between whether you're dealing with somebody narcissistic or Machavelian is who's their master. Is it instrumental financial gain and will they sacrifice public appearance, public persona, popular opinion of themselves for that instrumental gain or are they slaves to their ego? And so if they will sacrifice instrumental gain and long-term um financial profit for public persona um and and appearance, then they're narcissistic. And so I think at some point there are mutually exclusive categories and a zero sum where you either go this way or that way in a particular situation. And that's what I argue demarcates these traits. Other types of aspects can float around. you know, show me a pureb blood narcissistic person who's never strategically manipulated. Show me a machiavellian who's not egotistical. And so, because these things are blurry and chunky in nature, we really need to get down to what's mutually exclusive. As you beautifully articulated, you either have impulse control or you don't. Now, Machiavellian can act impulsively. If they're not thinking, if they're sleepd deprived, tired, um being uh for whatever reason the situation is making them not think clearly, they can act. But a MAC, a psychopath doesn't have the requisite cognitive ability to think, delay gratification, and strategically plan. So either you have those capabilities or you don't. If you have them, you're on the macallianism spectrum. If you don't, you are on the psychopathy spectrum. And that's what I would argue demarcates these traits.

Okay? Okay. So if you if you have the ability to be that rational, to think that long term, to let go of your ego, then that that makes the Mchavelian even though without that they would look like a narcissist or a psychopath.

Precisely. And that's what's so deceptive is that these behaviors are identical. We can't look at somebody's harmful behavior and say, "Ah, that's a psychopath." Because you don't know why outside of context. You don't know the environmental forces that could have been creating that behavior or the motivations behind the behavior. All you saw was this person got hurt and that doesn't help us in differentiating the traits. Back to your original point, when we're thinking backwards, I was manipulated. Does it matter for my sense of guilt or no, you were you were betrayed and that all of them fall into that bucket of willing to betray.

Okay? Okay. So the big questions that people usually have around dark personalities would be where does it come from and how do I spot it? So with the mchavelenism I I wonder how where it comes from because there's a lot of evidence that uh narcissism is you know this trait that some people are higher in and lower in that there's genetic influence as well as environment that psychopathy too that there are studies that show difference in brain structures and things like that. with the Makavelianism, where do we start with understanding where it comes from?

So, that's a really great question and the best paper I've ever seen that addressed that was uh led by Tony Vernon in 2008 with his team at University of Western Ontario uh looking at behavioral genetics and the dark triad. And what he found, I think, was pretty groundbreaking and I don't think it's been celebrated as much as it should have been in terms of the the revolutionary nature of the paper. They found that yeah, narcissism and psychopathy in self-report are reflected almost entirely

Genetically. Uh, there's no shared environment component, which means the shared environment component means we know, based on how you were raised in the house and the parent that that created, there's variance associated with that environment, so that it's unique and it definitely affected your personality. Um, so all they found was the genetic component associated with narcissism and psychopathy. Machiavellianism was almost equal parts shared environment and envir and and genetic. So you can raise a Machiavellian as much as you can birth one. And again, I'm not blaming parents. I mean, these things are genetic luck of the draw, and sometimes these things happen, but the environment is the Machiavellian isn't the only one that is really sensitive towards that developmental environment. And so, yes, there are parenting styles, maybe maybe, um, socioeconomic conditions where somebody's growing up in poverty and needs to survive by being duplicitous, um, that may produce or other types of parenting styles of entitlement. You know, you don't have to play by the rules, little Jimmy. You're special. And again, that can be narcissism, but it could also be, hey, look, you know, if your teacher's doing this, I'll go in and and gaslight to protect you from punishment. That could also produce Machiavellian tendencies where you're learning from the parent, hey, look, I don't have to play by the rules. And so, the parent ultimately is modeling that type of behavior and getting reinforced for it. What is the child going to learn from that situation? I don't have to play by the rules. Mommy and daddy don't play by the rules type of situation. Wow. It's giving me a lot of questions now. So I wonder too if it can be something that can be parented, then there isn't a magic line when we turn 18. Can we be, can we be influenced as adults if we're in a work environment, let's say with people who are Machiavellian and we started to talk a little bit about this, how it can raise the temperature, but can it really turn the switch? I'm thinking, you know, can you, can you break bad like the like TV show? Like, you know, how far does it go? Um, you know, because these aren't, we don't deal in diagnostic categories. It's really tricky to say empirically when somebody crosses a threshold into problematically high in Machiavellianism. But I agree with your premise that absolutely throughout adult life, somebody can attenuate, um, their ego, their conscience, as you've, you've said, can be attenuated through environmental circumstances. Absolutely. And that was the premise of my student Aiden's, uh, some of his work that he was doing theoretically was that, yeah, it can attenuate our conscience ultimately. You habituate to your circumstances, and it can erode your ethical thinking, um, if you are constantly exposed and reinforced for these rationalizations and disengaging morality. I completely agree with that premise. There's no magical developmental threshold that turns off. Um, I would say it's probably much like a smoker that begins smoking at age 12 or 13. It's so hard to quit by age 45 because the neuroreceptors, the nicotine receptors in the brain have become so used to that chemical that it is just so painful to withdraw the chemical. Um, as opposed to somebody who started smoking at age 22 and then tries to quit at age 32. The brain didn't grow up with those neurochemicals. Um, so it's, I'm not saying it's ever easy to quit smoking, but it may be easier after 10 years starting at age 22 than after 40 years starting at age 12, trying to quit at age 32. So, I'd say the same is true of these rationalizations and habitual patterns of deception. If you grew up doing them, thinking this way, cognitively disengaging from morality, being cynical towards other people, believing humanity is evil, it's probably harder to get somebody out of that thinking than if they grew up relatively typical. But at age 32, maybe got a really bad work environment and they started thinking this way to survive. And then at age 42, they realized, wow, you know, that was really not really nice of me. And so it's probably easier in the same way to disengage from that, that amoral way of thinking if you developed it late in life. Nevertheless, I agree with your premise. You probably can develop some of these tendencies later in life, especially if you start getting reinforced for them. And with respect to narcissism, there were two major neoidian theorists who argued for parenting having a huge impact on narcissistic development. One was called Kernberg, the other was called Kohut. And they argued from separate perspectives of parenting. One said overvaluation produces this narcissistic trait, um, of the child believing that they are special. Uh, the other one argued that it's, uh, parental deprivation of affection that creates an overcompensation of self-love and produces narcissism. And it turns out in the empirical literature, both are correct. And actually, if you trace them back, one may be responsible for what we call overt narcissism, which is the high self-esteem, grandiose, I'm amazing, I'm going to put it out there type of narcissism. And the other one may be responsible for what we call vulnerable narcissism, where the person, or pathological, where the person feels very, um, vulnerable and fragile. They have kind of lower self-esteem, but they feel very entitled and they're very hostile. Um, so these both of these parenting, um, styles may also produce different types of narcissism. May have a huge impact on narcissism, uh, down the road. Mhm.

So then we have this model then that it's it's very much a developmental thing to be Machiavellian and that it doesn't necessarily stop at the end of childhood. Um, now the term Machiavellian comes from the name Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli, you're very precise about pronunciation, which is good. Uh, wrote, wrote The Prince. You know, people come across these books as adults. Robert Greene is a friend of the show, wrote The 48 Laws of Power. Um, you know, people come across these. Can literature stir a person's conscience or disturb a person's conscience and change them into a Machiavellian? Absolutely. Um, at least with respect to some tendencies. I don't know if it ever is powerful enough to move the needle from, you know, a completely good-hearted, trusting, honest person to a raging Machiavellian, but it would move the needle somewhat. Um, I've, I've read parts of Robert Greene's book, a lot of Robert Greene's book. I, uh, I really enjoyed it. Um, I've read, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I've read The Art of War. I've read The Prince. A lot of them advocate for some of these duplicitous tactics. They don't, you know, obviously. Looking Out for Number One is another one. I forget the author at the moment, but, um, you know, a lot of them argue for very much the same thing is that don't criticize somebody unnecessarily. Keep people on your side. Build these coalitions. Um, sometimes it's advantageous to not look the way to appear the same way you're going to, uh, actually behave. And so, um, and, and I want to be crystal clear that, yes, they can move the needle in the way people think. Even a 12-minute TED talk can do that in planting a seed. U one of my favorite movies, Inception, would say the most infectious thing on the planet is an idea, right? And so we can plant these ideas in people's heads. And so that's why I think it's also equally important to inoculate people to going down the path of unethical action and say, okay, there's at some point, and that's why I say even with my CBR training and the and the stuff that I do, um, in that realm, I, I always emphasize you should not be doing this if somebody is playing by the rules of engagement. They're being benevolent or they have integrity or anything like that, or everyday associations. These are very isolated tactics for very isolated specific situations where you're dealing with somebody who doesn't engage in those rules of engagement, and you do it temporarily till you can get away. Because ultimately, somebody who does CBR in perpetuity, even though it doesn't directly tell people to manipulate, and I don't want people manipulating, we don't need more jerks in this world, but that's why I say temporarily till you can get away, because ultimately, if you're doing CBR for 30 years with your boss, you're going to put yourself at greater risk for ethical slippage. Uh, and I don't want to see that happen to anybody. Um, so yeah, to that point, you go down the path of unethical behavior, um, that it was a seed planted from a book or stuff like that. And I think if you look at 48 Laws of Power, you can apply so many of those principles to the greater good. If you look at Dale Carnegie's book, you can apply so many of those principles to the greater good. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, and so on. And so I don't, I don't think necessarily that people, um, who are thinking strategically and maybe a little more utilitarian are are evil and are are in always inflicting harm on the planet. And, you know, one of the my favorite papers in in a journal called Leadership Quarterly by an author named Duga, ranked the first 39 presidents of the United States using historians and psychological experts on Machiavellianism. And what he found was the number one most Machiavellian president we've ever had in history was also the one credited for saving us from recession, depression, um, and falling into fascism, which was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. Most Machiavellian president, um, also the only president to get three terms. Was he inflicting harm on the United States? Now, I'd argue that his the influence of his presidency was positive and long-lasting. But if you dig into the personal details, he used duplicity and and deception to manipulate, uh, certain folks into getting what he needed. So was he pure evil? No. But did he have Machiavellian tendencies? Absolutely. So again, I'm not advocating for manipulation, but I'm saying that if somebody's goals align with a particular outcome that is pro-social, uh, and they're bending rules to get that done, some people would find that appealing. Yeah, I do want to get into the the the red flags of trying to spot a Machiavellian, which sounds actually extremely difficult as we're getting clearer on that, but it is. First, I'm curious. So with your CBR model, cold, bottom line, rational, did that come from researching Machiavellians and the idea was to sort of to to turn, but without becoming like them? I mean, that sounds like a, you know, a villain's path a lot of the time is, oh, I'm just going to take from the bad guys until eventually you become one. So how, how did that all come about? That's a really great question. So it actually started with a paper and a study I did with my colleague Alexis Hannah and Peter Holm. Uh, Alexis Hannah is here at University of Nevada, Reno. Peter Holmes at Arizona State. And we got together after reading this paper by her sting colleagues in 2019 in Journal of Business Ethics that found that callousness of manipulation created resiliency under abuse of supervision. And now, callousness and manipulation is something that's germane to all three dark triad traits. So we're like, gosh, that's really interesting. So we, we actually applied the dark triad, um, in that situation. We did several studies looking at how individuals high in different dark triad traits responded to exploitative, abusive, you know, psychopathic leadership. And what we found was that individuals, especially individuals high in Machiavellianism, were most likely to have less mental health problems under those types of leaders. They were more likely to be promoted, significantly more likely to be promoted under those types of leaders. So when the average person sees chaos and harm, Machiavellian individuals see opportunity and growth. And so, those findings got me thinking, like, gosh, you know, what are they doing that we're missing? And is there anything we can harness from that trait that's not manipulative or toxic or callous? Anything we can harness from that trait that I can teach good-hearted people to survive in those situations? So when this idea hit me, this was maybe three, four years ago. I remember it was New Year's Eve. I had a flashbulb memory and I ran to my bookshelf and I have studies of Machiavellianism on my bookshelf and I started flipping through the chapters, started reading very carefully what, what are these chapters, what are these aspects of Machiavellianism and the associations and behaviors of Machiavellianism telling us that we can harness? And initially, I had a model called COBRAS, which was cold, observant, bottom line, rational, uh, apathetic, and socially aware. And it was just, it was some of them were redundant, it was too long. And so I, I, after discussions with my wife, who's far smarter than I am, uh, we, we shortened it to CBR. And it sounds like CBR. Um, but we were able to narrow it down to the three most important aspects. But yes, you're absolutely right. That was exactly the origin. I got really inspired by learning Machiavellian, you know, but I don't, you know, again, what are the non-toxic elements that these folks are using to be resilient in situations and can we teach them? And it turns out we can. Yeah, that that statement is is important, too. I'm not sure exactly how you said it, but roughly that the person who is Machiavellian is more resilient when they have a toxic boss. I mean, you would think that we'd all still be just as bothered by a toxic boss, but that someone who who has these toxic traits themselves has found a way to deal with it, and that we can steal the best of that is is very interesting. That's right. And I, you know, the way I put it to my class is like, hey, look, I grew up with a pure blood Italian grandfather. One of his favorite things to do was sit us down and we watch The Godfather. And so I channel my best Michael Corleone in these situations. Just it's just business. It's not personal, you know. And if you think, if you think that way, you know, all the other killing and manipulation and embezzlement aside, if you think about it's just, it's just business. It's not personal. And that mantra starts to filter into how you interact with people who are trying to abuse or exploit. The bottom line and rational approaches to dealing with that become a little more clear. And so exactly what we're trying to cultivate in people is just try not to, that's where the cold part comes from. Try not to take it personally. This is how they are. This is how they interact with other people. It's not right. It's not healthy. It's not the way it should be. But it is what it is. And so based on what you know now and the cards you've been dealt, what is your goal and how can you best achieve that goal? Get the personal feelings out of it. And that's what we try to teach people exactly is is that. And what we find is that people who are rigid in, you know, matters of principle, people who really need to, um, stick to a particular path based on their, you know, this is, this is I'm not going to put up with that. They tend to struggle the most under those types of leaders because they, they have to challenge things that are not, uh, are counterproductive to challenge. And again, I'm not telling people where their ethics should lie or where their goals should lie. And, and one of the things that I constantly emphasize whenever I'm talking to somebody, dealing with somebody, consulting, whatever is, if you are under this umbrella of somebody who's toxic, manipulative, you should also be seeing a therapist. Um, because managing those emotions, you're not a machine. You're not a computer. Managing those emotions is going to be really important, especially to do with a professional. Um, I've seen a therapist since I was 14. I have no shame in it. I don't think there's any, any shame in doing. I mean, if I have a toothache, I go to a dentist. If I have, you know, emotional struggles, I go to a therapist. I don't see why that becomes such a big deal in our culture. For some people, sadly, it is. But I would encourage anybody who is exposed to these traits immediately to get to a professional to manage those ancillary and downstream emotions that you're going to inevitably deal with. But in terms of pragmatics, yes, you, you need to think about it bottom line and rational so you can get through the situation and get out of it what you need to get out of it. Yeah.

So Dan, our, our Godfather sort of attitude is this, it's just business thing. It's just business. No one has ever said it's just business before going and like doing something good for someone. So that's fair. So it's a, it's a little bit tricky. But what I'm understanding is that when you are dealing with the toxic person and they are mistreating you, that the value in saying it's just business, I'm just putting up with this person because I'm doing my job. That can be a relief for the targeted person. I think so. And again, I think that's where a lot of self-awareness, uh, is really required because if I'm taking care of my daughter, single parent, and this paycheck is her path to a better life, um, and, you know, go getting up to my boss and saying, "Hey, that was a violation of of my personal standard of how you should talk to me and whatever." Yeah. I mean, that's that's absolutely you're within your rights to say that, but is it going to get you to where you need to go for your daughter? And so, that's where I say disengaging from that personal sense of, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to speak up at the way you talked to me. Um, it may be advantageous. It may get you where you want to go. But that's where I argue people need to to think cold utility, where what is my goal? If it's to get my daughter through college, it's to make, get my daughter to have the life she deserves, and I'm going to go about this in the most rational way possible, that's where I'm invoking that, hey, it's just business. Because ultimately, it is personal, and, and you want to see your daughter grow up to be the most successful person she can be. And that's why you're working this job in the first place. But ultimately, if you can get away, get away. Get away. Don't work that job. If you have alternatives, find another job. Find a way to support your daughter in that. And so, that's where I would argue the bottom line and rational, um, and cold go far beyond just the situation because if you're dealing with a boss who's being cold and manipulative, a lot of times they will say, "Hey, we're family here." A lot of, a lot of organizations like to play that card. And so you may feel guilty for leaving with two weeks' notice and no replacement. You may feel guilty for quitting on the spot because, gosh, you know, I, I, they've created this, uh, aura of you owe them. You don't owe them anything. And so thinking cold and utilitarian about how you want to go about this situation. Bottom line, I want my daughter to grow up healthy and rational. How am I going to get about doing that? Most likely, it is eventually going to be with a different job. And so I do want to remind people that these are not strategies meant to be done in perpetuity. They are temporary stopgaps so you don't melt down and feel crushed under the weight of the manipulation. And always, like I say, be seeing a therapist, be seeing somebody professional to help you manage those emotions because there's going to be a lot of emotion and pain that you're going to go through, no matter how good you are at this. Mhm. Yes. Yes, it seems we've been talking about how to get to that that bottom line attitude, but the cold and the rational would be much harder if you are under emotional manipulation, which is meant to to disturb all of that. So, we've talked about going to a therapist as a strategy. What else have you seen that works for people to hit the cold and the rational? So, for the cold, one of the things that I stumbled across in the literature of aggression is what they call the fly on the wall paradigm. And I really like this because, um, they argue if you look at a situation, especially when you ruminate or replay it, and you're seeing it through your eyes, you're retraumatizing yourself all over again. You're seeing your boss right in front of you screaming at you, red face, throwing things, um, and you're reliving it. And so it hurts again, and you're seeing it personally. So, what I'd advocate for somebody who unfortunately, sadly, may be going through such an abusive workplace environment is be on the wall. Imagine you're a security camera and you're watching the interaction. Imagine you're somebody looking through a window or an office door at the interaction. Remove yourself as you replay it from that situation emotionally in the first person. Look at it from a third person, and then take on the persona of a superhero in that third person. I always tell people, you know, think about it from the mo, the super rational, you know, and, and I'm, I'm a super, super. And more importantly, when you tell that story to other people, right? Don't tell it from the first person. Tell it objectively. Tell it from the perspective of that superhero. How would you, if you observed somebody being abused by their boss? How would you, as a third person, tell the story to somebody else? You stick to the facts. You'd be objective. You'd say, "Hey, look, the person was standing in this way, and they were saying these words." Then, then do that for yourself. And, and so by being a, a superhero on the wall rather than a victim in the situation, you can remove a lot of that personal feeling associated with the abuse. And in terms of rational, what I've come up with is basically, um, that's where we can use and leverage therapists, especially, but that's where I say, you know, the key question you need to ask yourself is, why do I want to get my daughter through college? And I need this job to do that. I'm going to tell my boss tomorrow that I will take on that extra assignment. Why is it going to serve that and feed it back into the bottom line? Is this the best way to get that bottom line focus? Well, yes, because even though I hate my boss and this would actually make my boss look good, there's a stipend or fellowship or bonus associated with it that I would be able to put in that 529 account for my daughter's education. And so, even though I hate my boss and I want to tell them to go to hell and I'm not going to do this extra project, ultimately it will make me look good in this front. It'll pay a stipend on that front. It fits with my skill set. I want to tell my boss to f off. But, you know what? Bottom line, why? Why do I want to tell my boss to? Is it emotional? Is it a, a principle out, a matter of principle? Is it moral victory? Or is it actually feeding that bottom line? Why? Why do I want to do this? Why am I going to take this approach? And then keep challenging yourself and refining that through a feedback loop. You'll find that the more rational and expedient ways to serve that bottom line become clear as you go through those why questions. And so those are the two tactics I've really instructed people to think about to get that cold and that rational stuff because you're right, the bottom line is very easy to identify what matters most to you. What, where is your heart outside of the organization? And that's your bottom line. The devil's in the details. How do we not fall into a manipulative trap of emotion and how do we pursue that rational path? Those are a little trickier to teach people. Yes.

So, the devil is in the details. And Dan, you, you have these details. You've, you've spent decades understanding this concept. Are you, are you a manipulation ninja now? Like when, when it happens, do you just see it and just brush it off? No. As a matter of fact, you know, and it's funny because like I told you earlier in the show, I've been tricked on cyber things and I've been spam calls and I've been, no, because my nature is still to trust. I would say one of the things that, um, my former PhD students will tell you and some of my, some of my friends will tell you is that I'm too nice and I very often trust because I do still believe in the best in humanity. I, I know it's bizarre for a dark triad researcher to be thinking that way, but I force myself to see the good in people. And very often I, I do find myself saying, "Oh God, I got played." And, and things like that because of my agreeable nature. Um, and so I, I feel guilty, uh, a lot if I have to sit somebody down and really read them the riot act as to how they're behaving or be a disciplinarian, give somebody bad news. I get very uncomfortable because of how that is antithetical to the agreeableness construct, which I'm very high in. So, no, I don't, I would say I, because of my knowledge, I am able to put the brakes on, like I was able to articulate with the, the sergeant that called me over the court case. I, I am able to, my initial reaction is to take you at your word, you're a sergeant, and I was supposed to be in court and I missed some document that came to my mailbox. So that's my default setting because I am agreeable. So I've learned to train myself, not necessarily change my personality because that's very tricky. I've learned to put guardrails on and say, "Wait, before we go further, I need to verify your badge number. I need to verify some facts. I need to, I'd rather come down to the station, basically. Let's pump the brakes." I've learned to compensate for that agreeable nature by through the trust but verify paradigm that I talked about. I was like, "Okay, so if you are who you say you are, you should have no problem giving me a name, a badge number, and letting me come down to verify. If you're in the downtown Reno Police Force, I should be able to come down and chat with you face to face rather than this very high pressure phone call." And so, learning to compensate for my nature, uh, of agreeableness has helped me not go down the full path of being manipulated. Yeah. But people still try because I am very nice and I trust and I wouldn't change that. I, I again, I think that it's really important that we take care of each other, that we display empathy with each other, and we don't walk around, uh, suspicious all the time of every single person and every single interaction. I think that's a horrible way to live. It's a sad way to live. Um, I would just say if you have, if it's something big and it's something that makes you very vulnerable, have a safety net. Trust but verify. I said, "Look, I know this is going to be uncomfortable. Uh, I don't want to, I, I hate to do this, but I, I do need to verify these things, or protect myself. I hope you understand." And if they bark or they don't understand, red flag. So, yeah. Well, that's an inspiring story, um, you know, to see that you have been able to work with with your own personality and keep to your values at the same time. Red flag. What are, what are the red flags for spotting a Machiavellian? So for spotting a Machiavellian, you're going to, if they're, if they're really strategic and they're really good, you're going to have to be, uh, lucky. I hate to say it, but if they're cultivating information, they're asking personal information, if they're not sharing back that same level of information, or there's no way to verify the information they're giving you, if all the deals they want to do are verbal, those are red flags. So, I actually was, was a candidate for a trial consulting case about a year and a half ago where they had, uh, basically a Ponzi schemer, and they were trying to identify this person's nature. And they, the, the rhetoric or the CA, the prosecuting attorney kept saying, you know, and he would leverage his girlfriend's brother, he would leverage his sister's husband, he would leverage any social relationship he could to cultivate investments and money, and nothing was ever in contract. He, it was always in a bar, coffee shop, a back room. It was always handshakes and verbal agreements. He left no paper trails whatsoever. When somebody is reluctant to put something in writing, that's a big red flag for Machiavellianism. When somebody is reluctant to have you verify, take the time to verify, uh, you want something documented that could be record of something, that is a big red flag. If somebody doesn't want to go on the record, huge red flag. And that would be the best way I'd say to protect yourself from somebody high in Machiavellianism. There's a phenomenal prosecuting attorney that I'm friends with named, um, Kathy Phelps, and she wrote a book on protecting people from Ponzi schemes. And one of the key mantras of her book, uh, she keeps harping on is if the person is irritated by your taking the time to verify, somebody's irritated by you taking the time to background check, run, because the irritation in a person who is on the up and up will understand the need to protect themselves. Somebody who is trying to force you or cajol you or, uh, strategically walk you into an agreement, um, that they don't want verified, that is a huge red flag to pump the brakes. And even back to the story I told you about the sergeant that called me, when I started pumping the brakes, there was a sense of irritation when I said, "Wait, time. Wait, we need to, we need to walk through. Hey, look, I need to do this now." That that rush, that scarcity that here today, if you make a deal with me, you can get out of this, but this expires the second I hang up. Big red flag. No law enforcement officers can do that. Most business deals, it's not an exploding offer as of 15 minutes from now. You have to, where they're using these manipulative tactics. And, and Robert Cialdini, obviously one of the masters of influence research, says there's, there's six key tactics people use, and scarcity is one of them. It's here today, and this is going to disappear if you don't do what I say immediately. Big red flag. So again, I would say a misanthropy, a lack of trust in humanity in general, if they're gossiping about other people to you, big red flag. You know, just like we always say, if somebody left, cheated on you, cheated with you on their partner, guess what they're going to do once you get into that relationship, likely in the future. Well, the same is true of gossip. The same is true of manipulation. The same is true of strategic information that they're filtering to you. If they're saying, "Keep this between us." What eventually is going to happen with the information you disclose to them, and they're with another party? Keep it between. So, those are those are little warning signs. They're not guaranteed because Machiavellianism, I've dealt with people who've been married to Machiavellians for 10 years and didn't know it. So, they are the slippery pickle of the three in terms of keeping their their dumpster fire quiet until it's time to unleash it. Um, but those are the best, best things I could possibly give. Yeah. Yep. And on the hurrying one, another flavor of that that can be done too is rather than the brandishing of anger and trying to push you that way, is to play the victim. Oh, I thought we already agreed. You know, where are you on this? I, I really need you. I've already put down the money. You know, that's exactly right. Or why are you doing this to me? I thought, I thought we were friends. I thought you trusted me. Playing that guilt is a huge tactic among Machiavellian individuals. And they'll play morality, too. They'll say like, you know, no honest person would put me through this. No, you know, why are you, shame on you for making. Yeah, that those are all. Absolutely, Brad. That is that is a really good observation. They'll turn it back on you. They'll play on your guilt. They're playing on your emotions because one of the things that even back to the 1970 book, they show is they do best when emotions are involved because they stay emotionless, but they feign disingenuous or selective outrage. How, you know, why would you do that to me? Or they're pretending to be offended. They're not offended. It's strategic, and they're trying to get you to feel guilty, you to feel moral emotions to do what they want. That's exactly right.

So Dan, you said you've known people who were married to a Machiavellian for 10 years before they found out because that's the patient waiting game of the Machiavellian. I hear people say that sort of thing about narcissists and psychopaths. So are we misdiagnosing if we sort of speak? I mean, we don't necessarily diagnose unless we're medical, but you know, to say that if someone can play that long a game, very often that that is the case. People will say they were manipulative. They were callous. They didn't feel anything. They were out for my 401k, my retirement, my money, my whatever. Psychopath. Doesn't sound like it to me. Now, as it is very possible, depending on what level of vigilance you had, depending on where your radar were at the beginning of the relationship, and what red flags you were looking for, it's very likely a narcissistic person could play out that relationship for 10 years and you not really realize the full gravity of what you were in until much later. But that's a different mechanism, right? Narcissistic individuals very often use that charm and that, you're never going to find somebody as good as me, and that unrealistic sense of superiority, and then, you know, my ship's coming in very soon. If you leave me now, you know, when I become a multi-millionaire, you're going to feel like an idiot. That's a different mechanism. The Machiavellian plays the benign. They don't manipulate overtly with that those types of tactics. They'll just, they'll just lie and wait and they'll play a very humble, normal appearing, typical hand, and then strike when it's advantageous. And psychopathic individuals, yeah, again, depending on if you're not recognized and educated on these traits, you may miss the red flags of duplicity and things like that. So, it's possible that person that he was talking about that he was married to, uh, was narcissistic and didn't realize it for 10 years because of just a lack of awareness about the types of traits and the ways they manipulate. But if they were aware of how all these types of things and they were just really the wool was pulled over their eyes and they were betrayed at an opportune moment, it's very unlikely you were dealing with narcissistic or psychopathic individuals because there are telltale signs that would leak. Somebody who really keeps it together, duplicitous, strategic. Uh, yeah, you're probably dealing with Machiavellian. So I can't tell for sure. It really depends on how aware they are of the different traits and the red flags. But I would say that most often if they kept it really under the radar, it's Machiavellianism. Yeah.

Okay. And I'd say the same thing for corporate leaders. A lot of people say, "Oh, these psychopathic CEOs." I don't think there's very many psychopathic CEOs. There's a paper published by, uh, Paul Babiak, Craig Newman, and Robert Hare in 2010 that looked at the psychopathy checklist revised among 203 rising executives in the business world. And what they found was the only thing that moved their career forward of those four components they diagnosed in psychopathy was the interpersonal manipulation component, which is shared between Machiavellianism and psychopathy. What they found was that inter, higher the interpersonal manipulation factor, the more they received positive and advancing reviews of their career. But what that giveth, the reckless and antisocial nature of psychopathy taketh away, and that compromised their ability to advance and move forward and get positive reviews. So if you look at manipulation shared by Machiavellianism and psychopathy, but impulsivity and antisociality only shared by psychopathy and antithetical in a way to Machiavellianism, it makes sense that it's the Machiavellians that are rising to the top of these organizations and then wreaking havoc once they get there. Psychopaths don't have the self-control. I, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's less likely they're going to have the self-control to negotiate, co-build the coalitions, and strategically manipulate their way to the top. Okay. So the so-called successful psychopaths, the ones who become CEOs and things like that, you're saying that evidence from the paper by Paul Babiak, Robert Hare, the guys who wrote Snakes in Suits, Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office, are the data actually suggests that what we're dealing with is most likely the Machiavellian. More often than not, I'd say it's Machiavellianism. That's right. Um, is there such a thing as a successful psychopath where, um, I mean, there could be a thin sliver of real estate between a psychopath and a Machiavellian such that you don't have the cynical, misanthropic, uh, cynical worldview that a Machiavellian has, and you don't have the impulsivity that a psychopath has. Instead, you have this superficial, glib, charming, and manipulative person, but doesn't have the impulsivity. Is there something in there that we could call successful psychopath that doesn't fit the category of Machiavellianism and doesn't fit the category of psychopathy? Maybe. Um, but I would say most often the Machiavellian individual is the one who's displaying these environmental sensitivities, delay of gratification, and strategic qualities necessary to rise to the top. I say more often than not, it was mis, misinterpreted as being psychopathy when it was really Machiavellianism. Yeah.

Okay. So I, I talked with Dr. Fiona Gerkin, who's from Australia. She uses the term secondary psychopaths. How would that fit? I would argue that secondary psychopathy is a bit of a mess as a construct. Um, I think if we take Hare's four-factor model, which is interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, anti, erratic lifestyle, and antisocial behavior. And what she's arguing is that you split, so you have four things and you split them into two groups, right? The manipulation, callousness go factor one. The erratic lifestyle and social behavior go factor two. For those listening on audio, Dr. Daniel Jones, by the way, has just held up four fingers and then split them into two and two to make a Spock sign. That's right. That's right. And live, and I want you to live long and prosper, even if you have to deal with these dark personalities. Um, and so the first, the first two components, the manipulation and callousness, is what the people who are advocates of primary secondary psychopathy call primary psychopathy. And then the erratic lifestyle and antisocial behavior is what they're calling secondary psychopathy. Well, the problem with the concept of primary and secondary psychopathy is that primary psychopathy is related to all three dark triad traits. They're all callous, and they're all manipulative. So, how can we really differentiate a personality trait when it, it's a common vein that runs through all the dark triad? And this is a paper I published with my friend, uh, AJ Figueredo in 2013. Is we showed if you broke all the facets of the dark triad apart and then you analyze them, callousness and manipulation is relevant to all three. It's the erratic lifestyle and antisocial behavior that's unique. It's the cynical worldview and strategic thinking that's unique. It's the, uh, grandiosity and the authoritative nature of narcissists that's unique. And so you need the full four-factor model that all correlate with each other to round out the construct of psychopathy. So I actually disagree that there are two types of psychopathy out there. Now, it's certainly the case that people who have antisocial personality disorder or people who have acquired through a harsh life, poverty, abuse, trauma, these tendencies for an erratic lifestyle and antisocial behavior in the absence of the dispositional genetic nature of being manipulative and callous. That is absolutely possible. And if we want to call that secondary psychopathy or something like that, I, I completely can understand that there are reasons why somebody may have that erratic, impulsive, antisocial nature but not necessarily have the callousness and manipulation. I do think that could possibly be a thing. But if somebody is psychopathic in the definition, construct definition, as per Hare's four-factor model, or even if you were to move to other alternative models such as this triarchic model or something like that, the manipulation, the callousness, and the erratic lifestyle, and the, they cluster, and so I would say there's that if you're looking at primary psychopathy, which is just manipulation and callousness, that doesn't tell us much because that applies to any of the dark triad traits. H.

So Dan, with what I'm hearing you say, if it's distinct, the Machiavellian is distinct from the psychopath, and the big part of that is impulse control. And we know that there are many studies that show that psychopaths have different brain structures, and that those may make them even more prone to the impulsive behavior. Would that be the distinction? Do we have sort of Machiavellian being the conscience of a psychopath, but without that difference in impulse control that comes back to the brain? Exactly. I have done several systematic reviews of the literature, and there's just not enough, not enough data, not enough, not enough research. No, not, we haven't reached a critical volume of studies that actually assess the dark triad and these brain structures, the dark triad in these brain imaging studies. Uh, if you're listening and you're one of these neuropsychology or neurobiology folks, please put all three dark triad traits in your imaging studies. We would love to know what the brain structures of Machiavellians are. Because if you, there are some. So Thomas Betzsky, the researcher I told you about from Hungary, and several others have done neuroimaging studies, whether it be functional or general, uh, MRI studies of the brain. They've done with just Machiavellianism, and the brain structures do look different than what we see from a quintessential psychopathic person. But it's really hard if we didn't assess them both in the same person to make any kind of real firm conclusions. The other problem we have with neuropsychological neuroimaging studies is they're, they're chronically underpowered in a lot of the things that they've done. So as we go through the field of psychology, replication crisis, we need to increase those sample sizes to make sure that our correlations and our associations and observations are stable and replicable. And so that's one thing that I think the neuroimaging folks need to overcome as well, is is the, because it's expensive to put somebody through an fMRI. It's expensive and time-consuming to put somebody through a PET scan or an imaging study. But I, I encourage it's necessary, uh, very valuable to do that simultaneously with the same people and look at the brain structures because I think your suspicion is exactly right, Brad. I think the structures will be different. Very interesting.

So Dan, we've established that the Machiavellian may be the most dangerous of all because they have the lack of conscience, but they also have the ability to be much more patient. So they can, they can play a longer, more dangerous game. Um, and that there's a lot of question as to whether or not when we say someone is a psychopath or something like that, that we're actually dealing with a Machiavellian. Now, I've heard numbers around psychopathy as being maybe 1% of the population. Narcissistic personality disorder. I've talked with Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia, one of the most published on the topic, says something in the neighborhood of 1 to 4%. He likes the number 2%. Um, I like that. What do you think about the prevalence of Machiavellians? It's a phenomenal question. I've grappled with that really, uh, extensively in my career because it's not a diagnostic category. It's on a continuum. So how many people reach a threshold or a level or way of thinking that becomes problematically, demonstrably problematic? At what level and what percentage of people in the population are out there? I pin it. If I had to give you a number, Brad, I'd say around five to 6%. I think it is more overrepresented because it can be developmentally, um, generated as well as. And so if we take the three percentages, how many people reach a problematic threshold of psychopathy, how many people reach a problematic threshold of narcissism, how many people meet a problematic threshold of Machiavellianism, and we account for their overlap and cumulative percent, I'd say anywhere between 8 to 10% of the population has some form of problematic disengagement from empathy and honesty, or empathy and integrity. So some 8 to 10% of the population, I'd say about one in every 10, one in every 12 people have some level of callousness and manipulation that is going.

to reach some problematic level in their lives. And that actually is consistent with research that's been done on frequency dependent selection.

um folks who have done simulations with how many cooperators in an environment are present and how many cheaters are going to be able to survive in a bit of an equilibrium. Uh for those who may not be familiar with what uh frequency dependent selection are or anything like that. If you have and one of the common simulations is um doves and hawks. So they say if you have two doves come across a resource they share it. You have two hawks come across a resource, they fight to the death. And if you have a hawk and a dove come across a resource, the hawk kills the dove and takes the resource.

Well, if we look at that in terms of manipulation, too many cheaters and it eventually becomes too beneficial for you and me, Brad, to cooperate and trust each other cuz two heads are going to be better than one in this game. And so we'll out we'll outperform everybody else if everybody's a lone wolf out to manipulate everybody. But if there's so many of us like you and me cooperating and a person comes in and says, "I'm one of you." And we're not used to that. It becomes too advantageous to be a cheater. So there's forever a frequency, an equilibrium that gets formed between cooperators and cheaters. And the cheaters are always a minority of that population. And those numbers in those simulations tend to hover around that type of percentage. I think it's a reasonable percent to say 8 to 10% have some aspect of a dark triad trinity. Uh so I would I would say about five, but you know I don't have I I've I've seen enough data sets to tell you that that's a that's a good estimate, but I I can't tell you for sure because it's it's very mushy in terms of the actual analyses and who crosses thresholds is very subjective.

Wow. Well, Dr. Dr. Daniel Jones, before we get to our last topic, for people who want to follow along with you, better understand that dangerous maybe 10% of people and hear about your new book, where should they look for you online?

So, my website darktriad.co. I am also on blue sky under darkriad.co. Uh the dark the D3C lab. Um I you can also find me on um X and Instagram. Um, if you search my name in the University of Nevada Reno, I should pop right up.

And your book.

And my book. Yes. So, my book is entitled Falling Fast: The Perils and Possibilities of Emmophilia. It's published by Oxford University Press. It's available everywhere April 30th on uh you find it on Amazon or you can pre-order it on Oxford University Press with Looking for Emophilia. Um, and you can get it a little earlier if you go through Oxford's website.

Okay. We'll put links in the description for everyone to check out. And Dr. Jenner Jones, last of all, I'd like to talk about how this science is getting better. Uh we started with the problem of how it has failed people. Um what is getting better? Where are we going? What can we look forward to?

Well, the reason why there's there's reason for hope is that we are evolving as a field. I think some of the really positive things that have come out of the dark tribe research and dark personality research is not just the cooperation that we're seeing among different countries and different nationalities. I mean I'm collaborating with people now with whom I was we were not very uh closely aligned and collaborative. I think the field is building uh collaborations and alliances across the world that uh we hadn't seen before. I also want to credit some of the people who have held my feet to the fire and challenged me. There are researchers um at the University of Georgia, Purdue um who don't agree with me and have been very vocal in their disagreement with some of the research I've done and I give them a lot of credit for holding challenges. Um I think there are things that they have said that are valuable. I think I disagree with them on a lot of points. said there's a lot of things that uh challengers of the dark triad have gotten wrong and I think they have straw man some arguments but I really enjoy that discourse because I think ultimately making the science more replicable making sure that we are uh integrating experimental and personality research but using proper modern tools like pre-registration um like um making sure that we are making replicable uh producing replicable findings are challenges that people have held for the dark tribe research and although the dark triads research doesn't have much of a replication crisis as far as I can tell. Um it's always good to make sure that what we find is going to be found by other people across the world and across different labs. And so I think holding people's feet to the fire on that replication stuff is really valuable. I think the collaboration internationally um for there are a lot of folks in Poland and Canada and uh we have researchers uh across uh Eastern Europe and Japan doing phenomenal work on dark personalities. I love that. I want to keep it up. I want to keep that momentum going because ultimately as this spreads and we start including these different traits and these different situations across these different traits and outcomes, I think we're going to see uh massive improvements in our understanding not just in the United States or in westernized countries. I think we're going to see understanding of how these traits play themselves out in collectivistic cultures and internationally. I think it's a very exciting time to be a dark triad researcher and I I credit Del Palace for getting this ball rolling. He's still a dear friend of mine. um we we talk and collaborate uh when we can and and and you know none of this would have happened if he never took me as a PhD student. So, you know, I give him I give him a lot of praise and credit. He's he's and he's a phenomenal guy. If anybody's ever had the opportunity to talk to him, he's uh even as a PhD student, he always allowed me to challenge his idea. In fact, he he insisted I challenge his concepts and ideas and he empowered me to think for myself and I I give him a lot of credit for that.

Wow. Well, that's a great note to end on, Dr. Dr. Daniel Jones for for the work that you do and and the extensive knowledge that you have and that you shared in this interview and for taking the time to do this with me. Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you, Brad. I I had a phenomenal time and I really I really love your show and I'm I'm just so proud I get to be a part of it.