The dark + light triads
illuminating frameworks toward recognition, rebalance, and repair
In a dream this week, I grew wings, took flight, and circumnavigated the world. On my journey, I saw gigantic inflated figures floating in the sky like you might see in a parade, tethered by strings to their Earthbound counterparts. As I zoomed in, massive balloon caricatures of individuals I knew came into view (Putin, Trump, Biden, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bolsinaro, Xi Jinping...), and those I didn't – other oligarchs, dictators, autocrats, billionaires, celebrities. Each displayed a gargantuan, maniacal expression on their bloated, lofted likeness. A constant flow of energy, attention, power, and wealth was the air pumping them larger and larger. Below them, humanity cowered in their enormous shadows – laboring, straining, suffering. I felt an immense sorrow wash over me. Helplessness and hopelessness surged as the balloons swelled bigger and bigger.
Until, somehow, they began to explode, one by one. Like a cartoon, these monstrous balloon figurines sputtered and spiraled, crashing down to Earth, collapsing onto the person they represented. Humanity, now bathed in sunlight and starlight and moonshine under clear skies, looked around in a daze, mesmerized by newfound radiance. All the energy those balloons held flowed back to the sources from which they were extracted and exploited - the humans, the more-than-humans, the Earth. A massive celebration erupted. Collective clarity and coherence arrived immediately. Community and kinship returned instantaneously. It didn't have to be learned, only empowered and enlivened by the release and redistribution of all that was hoarded by the few. Meanwhile, the balloons weighed immensely upon their human attachments. They were defeated, trapped under the dead weight of everything they'd blown themselves into. Their burdens were theirs to bear. The scene was full of peace, as though the catastrophic orchestration of supremacist constructs corrected itself through a profound and instant karmic/cosmic rebalancing.
What a dream.
Ira Glass: “It's so crazy you have an entire country with millions of people that essentially just have to guess what one man will do.”
Richard Ensor (Ukraine correspondent for The Economist): “Yeah maybe more than just an entire country. Maybe the whole world.”
What will one man do? This is a conversation I've had a lot this week. Maybe you have too. None of us know. This dialogue opens the recent This American Life episode which weaves several stories to constellate and situate what is currently unfolding in Ukraine (I recommend listening). How far will it go? How does this end? The stakes are incalculably high. Putin’s fuse is terrifyingly short.
“...the governor says that he was just 'frustrated,' like that’s an excuse, like many haven’t died along the short road of a white man’s temper.” - Danez Smith, in the New Yorker
Many centuries of life on this Earth have been defined by a struggle for survival ‘along the short road of a white man's temper’. And these questions plague so many of us: how did/do we get trapped on these deadly roads, and how do we get off them? I have trekked numerous paths of inquiry wrestling with these questions toward untangling and uprooting what births and maintains such toxic constructs, including how so many eagerly enlist themselves in entrenching and expanding such dehumanizing, disastrous social formations throughout human history.
In July 2020, terrified of being trapped on Trump’s short road another four years, I stumbled upon a framework that quickly impressed me as one of the most fascinating conceptualizations in behavioral psychology I’ve yet encountered. It is explanatory and illuminating, incensing and infuriating. Particularly, it cracks into the disturbingly magnetic appeal of destructive individuals hungry to build empires, who not only amass sycophants and henchmen, but seduce and manipulate huge audiences of people who admire them, believe in them, who aspire to be them, who see them as positive influences on society as self-made geniuses, sometimes even as noble societal stewards.
It’s called the dark triad of personality, and it was first discovered by Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams in 2002. It is a highly socially, culturally, financially rewarded personality type, particularly when it is lived out in its extremes (as I'll explain below). The dark triad of personality consists of:
Machiavellianism: manipulativeness, callousness, strategic exploitation, deceit, amorality, ruthlessness, a drive to use whatever means necessary to gain power
Narcissism: entitled self-importance, all-consuming motive for ego reinforcement, acclaim-seeking, superiority, selfishness, antagonism, narcissistic shame, grandiosity
Psychopathy: callousness, cynicism, deficits in self-control, impulsivity, thrill-seeking, recklessness, aggression, detachment, unafraid of crossing moral boundaries
These characteristics converge toward a “socially malevolent character with behavior tendencies toward self-promotion, emotional coldness, duplicity, and aggressiveness.” In 2014, Palhaus expanded this research and added a 4th to create a “dark tetrad” with “everyday sadism: intentionally inflicting physical, sexual or psychological pain or suffering on others in order to assert power and dominance or for pleasure and enjoyment.”
What intrigues me most about this concept is that everywhere I’ve found it discussed, despite acknowledgment of its aversive, antisocial outcomes, it is also understood as advantageous, strategic, and evolutionarily adaptive. This tension is an inevitable component of hierarchy, which reduces access to the top, so even though many might follow the antisocial behaviors of leadership, mimicking what enables an ascent up the ladder, only a few can win the spoils. Further, followers can be punished as scapegoats for trying the same tactics, which enacts a double standard and reinforces a deceptive charade (“See? We’re tough on crime!). Here are some startling facts:
The base rate for clinical levels of dark triad personality is three times higher among corporate boards than in the overall population (source).
Dark triad personality is found to be positively linked to higher salary, leadership level, and career satisfaction (source).
20% of CEOs rank high in dark triad personality (source).
Higher social class predicts greater dark triad personality tendencies (a series of studies on this was conducted, but shouting out Dacher Keltner on this piece on unethical behaviors, he’s a real gem).
Unsurprisingly, Trump was linked with high dark triad personality type as are the world’s billionaires. One text that extrapolates on this research is Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible (linked for free here) which outlines the strategies the 1% employ to maintain the status quo (“change is dangerous; concerns over inequality are overblown; hard times hit those who don’t measure up; [the wealthy] are the ones being mistreated; critics of [the billionaire class] are un-American...” I added the brackets to make the point that these claims are recycled by white nationalists, imperialists, and autocrats with their respective terms replaced.
The dark triad was positively correlated with:
being younger
being male
being motivated by power, instrumental sex, achievement and affiliation (but not intimacy)
having self-enhancement values, immature defense styles
conspicuous consumption, selfishness
viewing creative work and religious immortality as routes to death transcendence
Another study links dark triad with espousing racist attitudes and right-wing authoritarianism. The dark triad is negatively correlated with life satisfaction, conscientiousness, agreeableness, self-transcendent values, compassion, empathy, a quiet ego, a belief that humans are good and a belief that one’s own self is good.
Without any shred of irony Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace is currently a chart-topping book. The intention is to level the gender playing field in the workplace with a “if you can’t beat em, join em” attitude, but arguing that women/femmes be more like men who leverage toxic masculinity to succeed is both regurgitating and reifying patriarchal thinking, a la Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. The author says what she loves most about Machiavelli is “he takes emotions, morality and ethics totally out of the situation. So it’s like a chessboard.” Right. . . emotionless, amoral, unethical. You got that women and femmes?? (Or, could men harness more ethical behavior, more emotionality, and more morality..? Where's that book? Oh yeah, right here.)
A society that suggests the dark triad persona is not only aspirational (Elon Musk is a hero! This is how you get to the top, ladies!) but it’s our birthright (Trump will make America great again! Rebuild the Russian empire! and other white supremacist, nationalist, and fascist ideas) means embracing a reality that necessitates high levels of antisocial, toxic, dangerous, and even fatal behaviors committed against the collective, instead of appropriately evaluating this as unhealthy, disordered, and antithetical to collective wellbeing. When you consider the DSM (the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) today, we see how survival responses to endure a society run by Machiavellian, narcissistic, psychopathic individuals are pathologized for the reasonable amount of PTSD, anxiety, OCD, phobia, etc they induce, yet the perpetrators of abuse are praised. This is called gaslighting. This sharpens the point in my prior piece, The Lie to Survive the Lie, and the sentiment expressed across spacetime, said poignantly by Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
I want to touch briefly on new research on a subsequent concept: the light triad personality type. First, the light triad is characterized by:
Kantianism: treating people as ends unto themselves, not mere means
Humanism: valuing the dignity and worth of each individual
Faith in Humanity: believing in the fundamental goodness of humans
The light triad was associated with:
being older
being female
having less childhood unpredictability
higher levels of religiosity, spirituality, life satisfaction, acceptance of others, belief that others are good, belief that one’s self is good, compassion, empathy, openness to experience, conscientiousness, positive enthusiasm, having a quiet ego and a belief that one can live on through nature and biosociality after one’s personal death.
“Individuals scoring higher on the Light Triad Scale also reported more satisfaction with their relationships, competence and autonomy, and they also reported higher levels of secure attachment style and eros in their relationships. In general, the light triad was related to being primarily motivated by intimacy and self-transcendent values. Many character strengths correlated with the light triad, including curiosity, perspective, zest, love, kindness, teamwork, forgiveness and gratitude.”
This research also found, importantly, that the average person is tipped more toward the light relative to the dark in their everyday patterns of thoughts, behaviors and emotions. In this scatterplot, we see extreme malevolence is extremely rare in the general population:
I’ll close by amplifying that perhaps this recognition is growing, perhaps more are awakening to collective solidarity, perhaps the living saints amongst us are appropriately coming into view to more accurately reflect what is true about us as a species, that the light triad is abundant and innate. I also think it's painfully deterministic and fatalistic to assume that just because it has been means it will be.
What does leadership look like rooted in Kantianism, Humanism, and Faith in Humanity? We don't have to have leaders, governance, guides, mentors that amplify the worst in us, we can heal our relationships to the concepts of authority as generous, benevolent, inspiring, compassionate. We can relate to money in a way that promotes equitable and ethical balance. Thousands of years of human civilization predated and continue to persist in technicolor contrast to white supremacist, patriarchal, colonial models of social formation.
In an address to his country last Thursday, President Zelensky said:
“I don’t want Ukraine’s history to be a legend about 300 Spartans.
I want peace.”
Zelensky has captivated global attention not only for his heroism, but for bearing his benevolent heart on full display. It has been deeply healing for me to tune in to Zelensky as a man on the world stage showing us something different.
Understanding these personality types through a behavioral psychological lens cracked open a new layer in relating more effectively to this time as well as participating in repair. May we amplify the “living saints” amongst us. May we redefine our aspirations of what “success” looks like. May we return to our hearts.
I would love to hear if this is new to you, and what your reflections and reactions are. Debate is welcome.
With heart, til next time.
Rachel
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What a dream! And how beautifully and clearly you’ve expressed these momentous times and the challenges we all face. The horrendous invasion of Ukraine is a wake up call that we ordinary folk must now act with awareness and compassion to enable future generations (human and non-human) to be nourished, to breathe clean air, drink clean water, to be able to rest and sleep well, to be able to live in freedom. 🙏
The light triad, I hadn't heard of that, but that's interesting to me in and of itself. Like, it's ironic that the dark triad is so on display nowadays and the light triad is not. I wonder if the buffer of mostly virtual and media-based interactions make it more acceptable for people to act out on these tendencies, whereas in the past, people had to directly face others more, making them more likely to keep their dark tendencies in the dark...