Steven Bartlett interviews psychologist Chase Hughes on dark personality traits and psychopathy
Steven Bartlett speaks with Chase Hughes about psychopathy, the dark tetrad, and whether these traits can be changed.
Summary
Steven Bartlett interviews Chase Hughes, a behaviour expert, in a short-form clip from The Diary of a CEO. Hughes explains the four dark personality traits that make up the "dark tetrad" — psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism — and identifies the three characteristics all of them share: callousness, manipulativeness, and hostility. He notes that psychopaths are skilled at concealing these traits behind a "mask of sanity." Hughes also addresses whether psychopathy can be treated, citing research suggesting that while full change is unlikely, targeted behavioural interventions can reduce reoffending and, at lower trait levels, daily prosocial challenges can meaningfully reduce dark personality traits over time.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The dark tetrad: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism
Chase Hughes: Callous, manipulative, hostile — all of these dark personality traits, that's what they share.
Steven Bartlett: Can they be cured? There's this sort of dark personality. I guess it was a triad.
Chase Hughes: It was a triad. Now we get a tetrad.
Steven Bartlett: Is that what this is?
Chase Hughes: Yes. Psychopathy is a set of personality traits — a superficial charm, quite manipulative, and they tend to be pretty grandiose, so they've got a pretty inflated view of themselves. A lack of remorse and guilt for harming other people. They tend not to take responsibility for their own actions. In addition, they tend to be pretty impulsive — they're not really planning far out into the future. So they might mooch off of a family member or a romantic partner. Lastly, they tend to break a lot of rules — workplace rules or social norms — and this could also extend to laws.
Machiavellianism: they tend to be pretty cynical about other people, they tell a lot of lies, and they try to manipulate people. They might learn a little tidbit about you, Steven — they'll think, "I'm just going to put that in my back pocket for when I need to manipulate or blackmail you in the future."
Next is narcissism. These are people who tend to be very entitled and very willing to exploit other people in order to get what they think they deserve — a very relentless kind of self-focus.
Sadism: they take pleasure in other people's pain. You could express that in incredibly gruesome, horrifying ways, or you could simply be pushing people's buttons online trying to get people upset.
They all share three things. They are callous — they don't care about other people. They're manipulative — they're willing to lie and cheat to get what they want. And they're hostile toward other people. That's the core of all of these traits. That's what they share.
Whether psychopaths can hide their traits — and whether they can change
Steven Bartlett: Are they good at hiding it?
Chase Hughes: Yes. Some of the earliest descriptions of psychopathy characterised it as a "mask of sanity." They can seem quite normal on the surface, but underneath the hood you see that they're not running the same kind of operating system that you are.
Steven Bartlett: Can they be cured?
Chase Hughes: Some change is possible — "some" being an operative word there. Most of the research we have on psychopathy comes from criminal offenders. They're not particularly motivated, and they don't particularly care about other people. If they do consistently engage in cognitive behavioural therapies, you can reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend.
When it comes to lower levels of these traits, research by Nathan Hudson had people do what he called agreeableness challenges. He would ping them on their smartphone every day and say things like, "Give a compliment to a friend," or "Buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the café today" — these little things where people were encouraged to be kind and helpful to others. People who actually followed through on that did report having lower levels of these traits after four months than they had at the start.