It can be difficult to articulate what just it is about one ’s roommate , or coworker , or practiced friend ’s boyfriend that make them so unpleasant . Luckily , pinning down definition for the " dark traits " that can compromise a individual ’s moral graphic symbol is its own area of enquiry . A recent study on the subject suggests that spotting ethically bankrupt people may not be as complicated as we once thought . The finding paint a picture that someone who demonstrate one dark trait is likely to have more of them .
For a serial publication of bailiwick , the results of which were published in the journalPsychological Review , psychologists from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Koblenz - Landau surveyed 2500 participants . They ask them how much they hold with statements such as “ It is sometimes worth a little suffering on my part to see others welcome the punishment they deserve , ” and “ I have sex that I am special because everyone keep telling me so . ” These interrogative sentence were mean to gauge the degree to which participant showed these nine personality traits with negative connotations :
If bailiwick exhibited one of the tendencies on this list , it normally was n’t their only confutable trait . The researchers found that someone who lacks empathy also tends to be manipulative and egotistical , suggesting that a saturnine personality is more than the event of a specific combination of traits . Rather , the traits are all symptoms of what the study authors describe as " the viosterol - factor . " According to a release from theUniversity of Copenhagen , all of these offensive behaviour stanch from " the general propensity to maximize one ’s single usefulness — disregarding , accepting , or malevolently elicit disutility for others — play along by beliefs that suffice as justifications . "
That have in mind people who are obsessed with only answer themselves and who do n’t mind , or might even bask , putting others down exhibit the five hundred - factor . Many universally unsufferable behaviors — like violence , lying , larceny , discrimination — can be sorted under this umbrella .
Psychologists may be able to use the research to further study the cause of and relationships between malevolent behaviors in the hereafter . The termination could also be utile to anyone who wants to know which type of masses to void .
