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This new Live Science article provides an introduction to the "D factor" proposed by German and Danish psychologists in 2018 as a meta-level metric for evaluating aversie behaviors such as psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...he-driving-force-behind-your-darkest-impulsesScientists Have Identified The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses
Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.
But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There's also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of human darkness lies, according to new research.
In a 2018 study, psychologists from Germany and Denmark mapped this driving force behind all our darkest impulses and gave it a name. Meet D, the newly identified Dark Factor of Personality.
The theoretical framework of the D factor has its underpinnings in what's known as the g factor: a construct proposed by English psychologist Charles Spearman over a century ago when he observed that individuals who performed well on one kind of cognitive test were more likely to score well on other kinds of intelligence tests, too.
In other words, a 'general intelligence factor' could be measured. But it turns out that's not all scientists are able to detect.
"In the same way, the dark aspects of human personality also have a common denominator, which means that – similar to intelligence – one can say that they are all an expression of the same dispositional tendency," explained psychologist Ingo Zettler from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark back in September 2018.
In a series of four separate studies involving over 2,500 participants, Zettler and fellow researchers surveyed participants with questions designed to measure their levels of nine distinct dark personality traits: egoism, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychological entitlement, psychopathy, sadism, self-interest, and spitefulness. ...
With all the responses in hand, researchers ran a statistical analysis, with the results suggesting that while these dark traits are all distinct, they all overlap to some extent, owing to the central core darkness factor, D, which reveals itself in different ways in different people.
"In a given person, the D factor can mostly manifest itself as narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark traits, or a combination of these," Zettler said.
"But with our mapping of the common denominator of the various dark personality traits, one can simply ascertain that the person has a high D factor. This is because the D factor indicates how likely a person is to engage in behavior associated with one or more of these dark traits." ...