In Psychology
In modern psychology, Machiavellianism is one of the dark triad personalities, characterized by a duplicitous interpersonal style, a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and personal gain.
Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to be unemotional, and therefore able to detach him or herself from conventional morality and hence to deceive and manipulate others.
Poster's Note: The Machivellianism theory may help explain the personalities of two famous politicians:
- Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin for whom the term "McCarthyism" was coined in 1950 to refer to the anti-communist witchhunts he conducted. Today, the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.
- Prince Cruziavelli, aka Rafael Mendacii, who ran for President of the United States and is of various origins: Florence, Italy; Calgary, Canada; Cuba; Harvard/Princeton, and Austin, Texas.
Testing for Machiavellianism
In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis developed a test for measuring a person's level of Machiavellianism. Their Mach IV test, a twenty-statement personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool of Machiavellianism.
People scoring high on the scale (high Machs) tend to endorse statements such as:
- Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so.
However, they do not endorse statements like:
- Most people are basically good and kind;
There is no excuse for lying to someone else; or
Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives.
Motivation
A 1992 review described Machiavellian motivation as related to cold selfishness and pure instrumentality, and those high on the trait were assumed to pursue their motives (e.g. sex, achievement, sociality) in duplicitous ways.
More recent research on the motivations of high Machs compared to low Machs found that they gave high priority to money, power, and competition and relatively low priority to community building, self-love, and family concerns. High Machs admitted to focusing on unmitigated achievement and winning at any cost.
Abilities
Due to their skill at interpersonal manipulation, there has often been an assumption that high Machs possess superior intelligence, or ability to understand other people in social situations.
However, research has firmly established that Machiavellianism is unrelated to IQ. Furthermore, studies on emotional intelligence have found that high Machiavellianism actually tends to be associated with low emotional intelligence as assessed by both performance and questionnaire measures.
Both empathy and emotion recognition have been shown to have negative correlations with Machiavellianism. Additionally, research has shown that Machiavellianism is unrelated to a more advanced theory of mind, that is, the ability to anticipate what others are thinking in social situations.
Relations with Other Personality Traits
Machiavellianism is one of the three personality traits referred to as the dark triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy.
Machiavellianism has been found to be negatively correlated with Agreeableness (r = -0.47) and Conscientiousness (r = -0.34), two dimensions of the Big Five personality model.
Machiavellianism has also been located within the interpersonal circumplex, which consists of the two independent dimensions of agency and communion.
Agency refers to motivation to succeed and to individuate the self, whereas communion refers to motivation to merge with others and to support group interests.
Machiavellianism lies in the quadrant of the circumplex defined by high agency and low communion. Machiavellianism has been found to lie diagonally opposite from a circumplex construct called self-construal, a tendency to prefer communion over agency. This suggests that people high in Machiavellianism do not simply wish to achieve, they wish to do so at the expense of (or at least without regard to) others.
