Have you ever suffered through tales of greatness from a self-absorbed “friend” who reminds you of Michael Scott from “The Office” – and not in a good way? Have you been betrayed by a colleague out of the blue, undermined on a project by the office mean girl, or had a work friendship dropped altogether without explanation?
If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you may have been dealing with someone who has what psychologists term a “dark personality.” These people score higher on three socially undesirable traits: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
As an organizational scholar, I’ve spent years studying personality traits in the context of the sales profession. In recent work, my colleagues and I focused on the ways people with these dark personalities succeed in sales organizations and the social factors that allow them to extend their successful tenures. Based on our research, here’s a primer on these antagonistic personality types – and how you can unmask examples you encounter in your everyday life.
A narcissist is always first in line to compliment himself.
Jon Feingersh Photography Inc/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Defining the dark personalities
Narcissists have the most familiar type of dark personality. They aren’t shy about letting you know exactly how highly they think of themselves. At work, you might find the narcissist bragging about their superior sales skills, even though their performance isn’t much better than the average salesperson. Conservative estimates of narcissism in the general population fall around 6.2%.
While narcissistic behavior can be annoying, it’s usually more tolerable than what the other two dark traits tend to serve up.
Functional – meaning noncriminal – psychopaths are particularly disturbing. Psychologists estimate they comprise up to 4% of the general population. Psychopaths have no qualms about exploiting others for their own benefit. Stubbornly antisocial, functional psychopaths generally have little empathy for others. They’re more concerned about “getting theirs” by any means necessary. Psychopaths are quick to deflect blame and throw others under the bus, even if it means telling lies.
With their impulsive tendencies, psychopaths are prone to telling lies for no particular reason at all. If you find yourself in a group water-cooler conversation and hear someone telling lies that don’t seem to serve any purpose, you might have stumbled on a functional psychopath.
In the workplace, at first a psychopath may seem charming. But eventually you’ll likely find yourself either questioning their motivations, or becoming a victim of their destructive behavior. Though they can be harder to identify than narcissists with their nonstop bragging, psychopaths’ egregious behavior tends to unmask them in the end.
Machiavellians are the most prevalent of the dark personalities, estimated to be about 16%…