Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito by Santi di Tito – Cropped and enhanced from a book cover found on Google Images. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Annotated Links
Goodness Has Nothing to Do With It This article from The Economist summarizes research by Daniel Bartels and David Pizzaro which suggests that people with a utilitarian outlook tend to be Machiavellian or psychopathic.
Humans And Monkeys Share Machiavellian Intelligence According to research by Dario Maestripieri at the University of Chicago humans and rhesus macaques both show a strong tendency for nepotism and political maneuvering.
Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People: Narcissistic, Machiavellian, Psychopathic, and Sadistic Research by Erin E. Buckelsa, Paul D. Trapnellb, and Delroy L. Paulhus published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (2014) found that Internet trolls — people who intentionally incite discord in online communities — tended to have personality traits related to sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
Personality Predicts Cheating More Than Academic Struggles According to research by Delroy Paulhus and colleagues published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied and summarized here, College students who admitted to cheating in high school or turned in plagiarized papers ranked high on personality tests of the so-called Dark Triad: psychopathy, Machiavellianism (cynicism, amorality, manipulativeness), and narcissism (arrogance and self-centeredness, with a strong sense of entitlement). Of the three dark personality types, psychopathy was most strongly linked to cheating. From Science Daily, September 8, 2010.
This personality test can signal if you have selfish or manipulative tendencies Do you deceive other people for your own benefit, see others as weak and untrustworthy, and ignore moral codes? If so, you may be a high Mach according to this summary presented in Business Insider, August 27, 2015.
Why Was Darth Vader So Evil? Blame His Lack of Parental Care, Say Psychologists Why was Darth Vader such a bad dude? According to a team of psychologists led by Peter Jonason, it’s down to his lack of parental care: the fact he was separated from his mother at age 9, and his father’s absence. The researchers believe such circumstances can catalyse the emergence of the Dark Triad of personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy. These traits are usually seen as negative, but Jonason and his colleagues believe they may be an adaptive response to tough early circumstances that signal to a child life is bad. From BPS Research Digest, August 5, 2014.
Assignments, Exercises, and Activities
Assessing Personality via Social Media Postings TruthSerum.com claims to assess personality though people’s social media posts. Users can analyze their own personality and see how they compare to Barak Obama, Mitt Romney, Abraham Lincoln, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and some 135 other famous people on Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy (aka, Psychoticism).
Case Studies
Why Was Darth Vader So Evil? Blame His Lack of Parental Care, Say Psychologists Why was Darth Vader such a bad dude? According to a team of psychologists led by Peter Jonason, it’s down to his lack of parental care: the fact he was separated from his mother at age 9, and his father’s absence. The researchers believe such circumstances can catalyse the emergence of the Dark Triad of personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy. These traits are usually seen as negative, but Jonason and his colleagues believe they may be an adaptive response to tough early circumstances that signal to a child life is bad. From BPS Research Digest, August 5, 2014.
Electronic Texts
The Prince by Nicolò Machiavelli The classic treatise by Machiavelli himself, written around 1505 and published 1515 is available here in a 1908 translation by W. K. Marriott.
Examples and Illustrations
The Harry Potter Personality Test According to a study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences by Laura Crysel and colleagues (2015), a person’s preferred Hogwart’s house from the fictional Harry Potter series may be related to their personality traits.
Lecture Notes
Slide Presentations
Tests, Measures, and Scales
Machiavellianism Scale Is it better to be loved than feared? Or is it better to be feared than loved? Find out the extent to which you think like Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), a diplomat from Florence, who gave advice to rulers of Italy. Based on Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. Academic Press.
Machiavellianism Scale This is an interactive version of the MACH-IV test of Machiavellianism.
Multimedia Resources
Ferris Bueller, the lovable high Machiavellian In this scene from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Ferris Bueller pretends he is Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago in order to have a fancy luncheon out with his friends. This situation contains the three conditions which allow high machs to perform their best: a face to face interaction, the latitude for improvisation, and the arousal of irrelevant emotion. (2 minutes, 53 seconds).