Darkness of soul

[Pegasus]

The Dark Triad. It could well be a cast of villains in an epic tale of fantasy. All three of these dark powers are callous and exploitative, but each is also malignant in its own way. One is charming but remorseless. The second is known for its cynicism and deception. The third is grandiose and entitled, the ultimate egotist. You don’t want to cross this evil trio.But you may have no choice, since the Dark Triad is not a literary phantasm at all. This threatening title comes out of formal personality theory, and refers to three traits that, taken together, capture the worst of humanity. They are the three faces of what’s considered an anti-social human core, and their formal, scientific names reflect their inhumanity: psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism.
The Dark Triad of personality theory has been studied for years, and is fairly well accepted in psychological science. But now a triad of scientists is challenging the Dark Triad. Erin Buckels and Delroy Paulhus of the University of British Columbia and Daniel Jones of the University of Texas at El Paso are not questioning the legitimacy of the three traits, but suggesting that the construct is incomplete. The true dark core of human personality, they say, is a Dark Tetrad. The missing villain is sadism.
Sadism is most often associated with cruel sexual fetishes, thanks to the Marquis de Sade, but this notion is both inaccurate and unfortunate, these scientists believe. A true sadistic disposition, they argue, is one that craves cruelty. Sadists find the act of hurting innocent people—including killing—pleasurable and exciting, and what’s more, they seek out opportunities to satisfy this appetite for brutality.
That at least is the construct that these scientists are proposing in the journal Psychological Science, along with some preliminary evidence to bolster their claim. It’s obviously difficult to study horrific behavior in a laboratory setting, so it took some ingenuity to illuminate this dark corner of human personality. Here’s what the scientists did.
To study sadists’ appetite for killing—since human murder was out of the question—the scientists used crunching bugs as a proxy. Under the pretense of studying personality and job preferences, they asked volunteers to choose among four tasks that mirrored odious real-life jobs: If they liked working in the cold, they could choose to endure pain from ice water. If sanitation work was more appealing, they could clean a dirty toilet. Or if exterminator was their job of choice, they could choose to kill bugs, or to assist in the killing of bugs.
The scientists were most interested in the aspiring exterminators, and to study them more closely, they invented a “killing machine.” This machine was actually a coffee grinder, but it was modified to maximize gruesomeness by producing a distinct crunching sound. The exterminators were given three cups, each containing a pill bug with a name: Muffin, Ike and Tootsie. The cute names were intended to humanize the bugs. The job was to drop Muffin, Ike and Tootsie into the killing machine, one at a time, and grind them up. (Don’t worry. This was also a ruse. No bugs were hurt in the experiment.)
The scientists measured how many bugs the volunteers crunched, and also their pleasure afterward. In addition—before the task—the volunteers completed standard measures of sadistic tendencies, sub-clinical Dark Triad tendencies, and their sensitivity to disgusting things. The idea was to see if those with a sadistic personality trait would actually act sadistically—choosing the cruelest job option and deriving the most pleasure from killing.
And they did, unquestionably. Those who scored high on sadism clearly preferred the visceral experience of crunching the bugs over the other tasks, and importantly, this connection was independent of any other dark personality traits—psychopathy, narcissism or Machiavellianism. Also notable, the sadists were not especially prone to disgust, which means that their cruelty cannot be explained by a high tolerance for blood and excrement and bugs.
The volunteers’ post-killing emotions were intriguing. Surprisingly, the sadists experienced less positive emotion than non-sadists, no matter what task they chose. The scientists think that the sadists who opted out of the killing opportunity regretted their choice, and indeed the sadists who crunched Muffin, Ike and Tootsie did experience more pleasure. This pattern suggests the disturbing possibility that sadistic types use cruelty to compensate for a general lack of positive emotion in their lives.
All of this suggests that sadism may be another, equal dark power—and perhaps even more sinister in a way. Psychopaths have no qualms about hurting others, but their aggression usually has a purpose. Narcissists are usually hurtful only when threatened. And Machiavellians are too calculating to risk retaliation unless there is a lot on the line. Sadists may be unique in engaging in unprovoked cruelty—cruelty that takes effort and has no discernible benefits.
To test this, the three scientists ran another experiment. They again administered the standard personality inventory to volunteers, who proceeded to play a computer game. They believed they were competing with another volunteer in another room, and whenever they won, they had the option of blasting their opponent with loud noise. They chose the loudness and duration of the penalty. Importantly, the opponents never blasted back, so there was to justification for retaliation.
Half of the volunteers also had to “work” for the opportunity to be cruel. Once they won a round, they had to complete a tedious and monotonous counting task before administering the blast of noise. The idea was to see who would make that effort to engage in unprovoked cruelty.
The sadists did, and only the sadists. All of those with dark personality traits were cruel to an innocent opponent when it was easy to exert pain. But the sadists increased the intensity of their attack when they realized the innocent person would not fight back. And what’s more, they were the only ones willing to spend time and energy for the opportunity to be cruel.
All of this suggests that sadists are motivated by an intrinsic appetite for cruelty. The act of inflicting suffering on innocent people is apparently pleasure-driven and so rewarding that sadists will pay a price for the chance. In that sense, these scientists conclude, sadism is arguably more morally upsetting and more dangerous than the other dark personalities—and deserves a place in a new Dark Tetrad.

[Pegasus]

Machiavellianism is a tendency to be manipulative and deceitful. [more] It usually stems from a lack of respect or disillusionment for others. [less] It is overrepresented in management generally.

[Pegasus]

Here is how pua think about the dark triad.

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Why Are Men With Dark Triad Personalities So Irresistible To Women?

April 26, 2013 by CH
It’s a scientific fact that women are attracted to men with the suite of personality traits known as the “dark triad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; aka the stuff of which jerks, assholes and badboys are made.
Any man who’s lived a day in his life knows that chicks dig jerks, but now we have the imprimatur of science to confirm what we can all see with our own eyes. The connection to game should be obvious. Many game concepts are essentially retrofitted Dark Triad traits and associated behaviors, allowing the practitioner of the charismatic arts to capture for himself some of the cryptic allure that men naturally blessed with badboy personality possess.
Explanations for the appeal to women of the male Dark Triad have been discussed before, within the hallowed halls of Le Chateau, but usually from esoteric evolutionary theory. Perhaps there are other, more immediate and practical, reasons why men who score high in the Dark Triad do so well with women? Let’s look at the definitions for each of the three relevant traits:
Narcissism

Narcissism is an egotistical preoccupation with self. Because of all their experience with maintaining their self image, people who score high for narcissism will often appear charming but their narcissism will later lead to extreme difficulty in developing close relationships.

Narcissistic men will be better at building an attractive identity, crafting an alluring image, dressing themselves for maximum impact, and comporting themselves with the utmost self-regard. Women love all these characteristics in men, even if these traits are not societally beneficial in numbers exceeding a tiny percentage of men. A man who is full of himself is a man who is full of women’s love.
Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is a tendency to be manipulative and deceitful. It usually stems from a lack of respect or disillusionment for others.

You cannot properly seduce women if you harbor illusions about their nature. A Machiavellian Man, owing to his willingness to engage in personally, and oftentimes mutually, advantageous deceits, is a skilled hand in the subtle feints of flirting. No seduction will take full flight without recourse to innuendo and barely concealed intent. The tacitly adversarial quality of seduction emanates from the fundamental premise that the reproductive goals of men and women are at odds, and the Machiavellian is the man best equipped to leverage that sweet antagonism to his ends.
Psychopathy

Psychopathy reflects shallow emotional responses. The relative lack of emotions results in high stress tolerance, low empathy, little guilt and leads them to seek extremely stimulating activities, resulting in impusivity and a disposition towards interpersonal conflict.

The darkest of the three traits. It’s a short neural skip from mostly benign, promiscuous psychopath to Hannibal Lector. What is it about psychopaths that women can’t get thoughts of them out of their heads? Besides their evocation of high status shamans and warriors of EEA yore, psychopaths bring one big advantage to the mating arena that quickly propels them to the top — fearlessness. That dead zone in their prefrontal gray matter means that psychopaths don’t feel much when women reject them. No hurt, no guilt, no shame, no doubt, no anger, no nothing. Imagine the power at your fingertips if you had the ice cold stones to approach thousands of women nonstop without suffering even the slightest ding to your emotional state from any rejections. Imagine that, coupled with this exotic imperviousness, you impulsively hit on any woman who piqued your interest. I don’t think you’ll need a calculator to figure out how fast your notch count would rise given these personality priors. Chicks dig a go-getter.
While the average self-deprecating beta male will find it nearly impossible to reconfigure his emotions and thought patterns to match that of the natural born narcissist, Machiavellian, and psychopath, he has now at his disposal tools and concepts — which fly under the banner of “game” — to inch himself closer to Dark Triad triumph. A small adjustment here, a studied mimickry there, and that invisible boring beta male is suddenly finding that the veldt of vagina open to his predations has expanded in every direction.
Unquote

[Pegasus]

Individuals who possess characteristics of the Dark Triad do not make for good friends. Not only are they not concerned with others, they are constantly focused on their own wants and needs and will do whatever they feel is necessary to achieve their goals, regardless of the consequences to others. This blatant disregard for others may lead individuals with these aversive personalities to behave anti-socially

[Pegasus]

When I first encountered the concepts of Alpha/PUA/Dark Triad I pretty quickly (for me) noticed they had certain things in common: they were all narcissistic. The accepted definition of an Alpha is an almost clinical definition of a narcissist; the Dark Triad is about narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and PUAs have to be narcissistic to be PUAs. Their "game" is about useing Machiavellian and sometimes psychopathic traits to manipulate.

[AverageAndAhalf]

Cool post

[camaro]

This explains why some of the older crowd who have seen more of life have a disdain for PUA.

[Frog]

Here is how pua think about the dark triad.

Quote
Why Are Men With Dark Triad Personalities So Irresistible To Women?

April 26, 2013 by CH
It’s a scientific fact that women are attracted to men with the suite of personality traits known as the “dark triad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; aka the stuff of which jerks, assholes and badboys are made.
Any man who’s lived a day in his life knows that chicks dig jerks, but now we have the imprimatur of science to confirm what we can all see with our own eyes...

Scientific fact? Really? Pegasus, thank you for starting this great thread to open the eyes of young males on this site. Your thread will help to enlighten thousands of men mislead by the egocentric bullshit written by emotionally damaged men.

First of all, this female was attracted to the "bad boy" image only as a teen, when my own self esteem was poor. As I matured and my confidence grew as a woman, the "bad boy" image made me laugh and feel sad for the guy acting that way. It was painfully obvious to me he was trying to compensate for some kind of self perceived weakness on his part. Notice I said "self perceived weakness."

A good man...not a door mat or spineless man, but a good man is very very sexy and appealing to real women! Women with the brains and confidence of their own pay attention and look for the good men. You bad boys are just a piece of ass to us or the butt of a good joke.

Acting like a "bad boy" will attract the same broken personality in a woman. Remember people..."Like attracts like" this is the law of attraction. If you are tired of failed relationships, look in the mirror to see what personality you are projecting to the world.

[Pegasus]

Note post 3 is a quote .
Dark triad personality and pua both have a fast dating turnover ,that is they are bad at relationships.

[The Kidd]

Psychopaths. might be revealing a little too much about myself here, but i took the DSM IV and i got labelled that. the guy who ran the test on me said that essentially my logic half of my brain overpowers the emotional side so much that i basically see life and people like numbers. while im am terrible at math, i cannot help but feel that the dark triad or tetrad does not in fact have a place in the world, one that is invaluable.