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Concept
Machiavellianism (psychology)
Summary
In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is a personality trait centered on manipulativeness, callousness, and indifference to morality, with a strategic focus on self interest. Psychologists Richard Christie and Florence Geis named the trait after Niccolò Machiavelli, as they used edited and truncated statements inspired by his works to study variations in human behaviors. Their Mach IV test, a 20-question, Likert-scale personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool and scale of the Machiavellianism construct. Those who score high on the scale (High Machs) are more likely to have a high level of deceitfulness and a cynical, unempathetic temperament.
It is one of the dark triad traits, along with the subclinical versions of narcissism and psychopathy.
In developing the construct studying manipulators, Christie theorized that they would possess the following characteristics:
- A relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships: Manipulators do not empathize with their victims. The more empathy one has, Christie says, the less likely one will manipulate a person to do their bidding.
- A lack of concern for conventional morality: Christie asserts that the manipulator is not concerned with the morality of behaviors such as lying and cheating.
- A lack of gross psychopathology (mental illness): Christie states that manipulators usually have an instrumentalist view of the world, which shows a lack of psychosis or other mental impairments.
- Low ideological commitment: Manipulators prefer to focus on getting things done pragmatically rather than focus on ideological allegiances. Christie states that while manipulators are to be found in organizations of differing ideals, they are more likely to be involved in tactics that achieve individual ends than inflexible idealistic ones. Under the recently devised Five-Factor Model of Machiavellianism, three characteristics underlie the construct: Antagonism: manipulativeness, cynicism, selfishness, callousness, and arrogance.
Official source
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