Cesare Borgia knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it done. At the end of the 15th century, the first-born son of Pope Alexander VI renounced an ecclesiastical career for a career as a secular prince. With the help of murder, betrayal and corruption, he succeeded in his ascent: he ensnared potential allies with sweet words, and had political opponents drowned in the Tiber or stabbed them to death himself. As a nefarious lord, Borgia eventually subjugated half of Italy to his principality.
The writer Nicolò Machiavelli celebrated his contemporary Borgia for this in his political treatise “The Prince”. In it, he described in detail tactics that a ruler should use to gain and defend power. Leaders who (as Machiavelli demanded) pursue a ruthless power policy, act in a despotic and authoritarian manner, and throw moral concerns overboard in the process, have since been referred to as Machiavellians.
In psychology, the term Machiavellianism has been adopted to describe corresponding tactics and people. We encounter them not only in the form of ruthless despots, but also as cheats, liars and con artists from next door. These everyday predators are masters at deceiving others. They live freely according to the motto “the end justifies the means” and assert their interests with guile and calculation.
Psychologist Richard Christie and his colleague Florence Geis first recorded Machiavellianism as a personality trait in the 1960s. The two developed a questionnaire to measure how Machiavellian someone is. Based on the agreement with statements such as “It’s hard to achieve your goals without taking shortcuts,” “It’s best to tell others what they want to hear,” or “The biggest difference between criminals and other people is that criminals are stupid enough to get caught,” they determined the individual expression of the character trait. It turned out that a predator slumbers in almost all people. Only a very small number of people never think and act Machiavellian; most are in the middle of the pack in terms of their tendency to cool calculation. Some score so high in such tests that they can be called Machiavellians. According to current estimates, this applies to about 10 to 15 percent of the population. Men are more likely to be affected by this trait, as they tend to be more competitive. Women, on the other hand, are more talented rhetorically, which is also an important prerequisite for skilled hypocrisy.
They resorted to
The personality trait Machiavellianism consists of three main components:
- Willingness to manipulate – Machiavellians pull strings by telling lies to others, turning on the charm, or using coercion.
- Pronounced distrust – Machiavellians infer from themselves to others and are therefore constantly on guard. They attribute negative qualities to their fellow human beings and do not trust them. Thanks to this worldview, they are quick to strike pre-emptively and deceive others before they themselves are duped in the end.
- Lack of moral concern – people with very high Machiavellianism are unscrupulous, selfish, malicious, take advantage of others, and are willing to break ethical standards.
The latter was first demonstrated in an experiment at the University of Alberta in 1976. 84 male sociology students were asked to operate a simple machine. They had two options for obtaining a financial reward. They could earn it themselves or take some of another person’s money by pressing a button. It was clear that they were able to control whether or not they had been robbed. Half of the test subjects were assigned a distrustful partner who checked regularly, while the other half had trusting spouses. The researchers’ background idea was that we normally find it difficult to pull the wool over the eyes of someone who blindly relies on us. But not so the subjects, who turned out to be Machiavellian: While the rest of the subjects, as expected, tended to shy away from theft with bona fide partners, they didn’t care how scatterbrained their counterpart was. They grabbed in both cases.
Little interest in romance
But how do Machiavellians manage to act so conscienceless? One important prerequisite for this is their low emotional intelligence. Studies show that they have poor access to emotions, both their own and those of others. As a result, they are poor at empathizing with others and resonating emotionally when others are anxious, sad or happy. At first glance, these deficits should be disadvantageous because they prevent them from forming close relationships. However, Machiavellians benefit from these weaknesses in two ways:
- Those who feel little compassion for potential victims can successfully exploit them. Where others are plagued by remorse, the Machiavellian keeps his sights firmly set on his goals.
- Because Machiavellians show little or no emotion, it is difficult for others to discern their true intentions. Their callousness gives them a poker face. If emotions do arise in them, they are particularly good at keeping them in check thanks to their good impulse control.
People with pronounced Machiavellianism also think more rationally, proved the team led by Florence Geis, the co-developer of the first Machiavellianism test in the 1960s. Test subjects were asked to imagine they were newly elected members of the U.S. Congress. In their role, they were then asked to argue for or against a particular point of view. Some of the given topics were emotionally charged, such as the expansion of civil rights or conscription. Other topics were rather dry, such as administrative procedures. Each respondent was given a certain amount of time to support their opinion on one of the topics with arguments in front of the others. Participants were then asked to rate on a scale how convincing they were in each case. It turned out that on the less emotionally charged topics, people with both high and low levels of machivallism scored about the same. The situation was different for the emotionally charged topics: Machiavelists apparently produced the better arguments here. In the eyes of the other subjects, they argued more logically and stringently, while others sometimes allowed themselves to be distracted by their emotions.
Machiavellians are particularly good at suppressing senitmentalities. This also applies to their love life. They have little interest in romance, change partners frequently, prefer short affairs, and tend to commit sexual abuse. Partners of Machiavellians often lack commitment, loyalty, and emotional depth in the relationship.
Evidence of distinct emotional control is even found in the brain. With my team, I studied subjects while playing a tactics game in which people allocate amounts of money to each other. If the opponent behaved generously, Machiavellian participants profited from it. In the end, they earned more money than less Machiavellian participants. By not returning the other person’s generosity, they violated an important social principle, so-called reciprocity, true to the motto “one hand washes the other. This requires some cognitive control. While they were running down their teammates, their brains were particularly active. In particular, there was increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – a region that plays an important role in regulating emotions.
Another remarkable characteristic of Machiavellians is their flexibility. They are able to adapt efficiently to changing circumstances and react appropriately to different situations. While psychopaths, who along with narcissists and Machiavellians belong to the dark characters, tend to think in the short term, act impulsively, and risk quite a bit for the quick satisfaction of their needs, Machiavellians proceed in a prudent and planned manner. They remain flexible and change their strategy when necessary. Thus, they initially behave selfishly as long as they can get away with it and switch to a cooperative mode as soon as selfishness is punished. But not only the danger of punishment or failure, but also the desire to gain prestige and overcome social isolation can be behind such a change of strategy.
Many people never get caught
Thanks to their mutability, Machiavellians are usually discovered late in the game. When the going gets tough, they quickly put on another mask. Even acquaintances, friends, colleagues and their own family members recognize the deceitfulness of such manipulators only late, because they spin their intrigues inconspicuously and effectively. Although people with strong Machiavellian traits also end up in prison from time to time (for fraud, for example), presumably very many of those who engage in criminal machinations are never caught.
At least some of the Machiavellians seem to get through life very well. Some of them even manage to get into the boss’s chair because of their unscrupulousness. In individual studies, the position a person had attained in a company correlated highly with the degree of his Machiavellianism. People in the top echelons of management scored the highest in tests, while ordinary employees had the lowest level. People who have a high level of intelligence in addition to a good dose of Machiavellianism have a good chance of obtaining a management position or at least an above-average salary. Their high negotiating skills and excellent strategic thinking contribute to the rise of intelligent Machiavellians. But unscrupulousness can also be a success factor in some institutions. Machiavellian people lie in job interviews without batting an eye, use their charisma to win over superiors, and score points with their assertiveness.
Employees often see a completely different face. The tone toward subordinates is often extremely brusque and demanding. Just as Machiavellians box out personal adversaries, they do the same with business competitors. As soon as the interests of the company become those of the Machiavellians, they will pursue them just as consistently and nefariously. For companies, therefore, it sometimes pays to employ Machiavellians. This is especially true for less strictly organized companies, where employees can improvise because they are not too tightly controlled. This is where Machiavellian people sometimes develop their questionable strengths.
But for the most part, this only applies to particularly shrewd specimens. In contrast to the works just mentioned, which show Machiavellianism to be conducive to advancement, scientific findings show the exact opposite. On average, Machiavellians actually earn less than others. Their antisocial behavior not infrequently gets in their way. Thus, they are often absent from work without permission, and complaints are frequently filed against them. After all, Machiavellians will not be able to maintain their facade forever if their secrecy, lies and intrigues create tension within the company.
Evolutionary advantage?
As unpleasant as ruthless and manipulative people can be in direct contact, and despite the damage they sometimes cause in their environment – in evolutionary terms, Machiavellian traits of all things have driven human development. In the 1980s, Scottish primatologists Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten developed the exciting hypothesis of Machiavellian intelligence. According to them, we ultimately owe our uniquely powerful brains to social competition and thus to the first Machiavellians. According to this hypothesis, the ability to skillfully manipulate the brain represents a significant evolutionary leap. Those who could successfully steer others had a survival advantage.
The advent of deception and exploitation probably forced our ancestors to develop increasingly complex social skills to keep track of each other, see through clever dodges, and strike subtly when necessary. Early Machiavellians themselves also required a high degree of intelligence for their political maneuvering, and so Machiavellian tendencies and the ability to think may have promoted each other.
Whether special spiritual gifts are still to be found among Machiavellians living today, however, is not yet entirely clear. The research of the last decade delivered different results on this. Highly Machiavellian people are on average neither smarter nor less smart than others. As mentioned earlier, they tend to be poor at mentally and emotionally empathizing with their counterparts. At first glance, these findings contradict the hypothesis of Machiavellian intelligence. For some researchers who had believed in this thesis, this was naturally sobering. But in the meantime, thanks to the immense research in this field, we have a good picture of how Machiavellians tick on a social and cognitive level.
- They react very sensitively to social signals, observe their counterpart particularly attentively and adjust their behavior accordingly.
- They persistently focus on their goal. strive to make the best of the situation and do not get distracted by unimportant things.
- They are reward-oriented in a special way, i.e. they are not only constantly looking for ways to get money or power, but they can be prudent in doing so. In some cases they seek immediate reward, but when necessary they hold back and rely on indirect, long-term tactics to reap benefits.
Where exploitation is not effective, Machiavellians refrain from it. This is the case, for example, when everyone is fighting for the same amount of money. If, on the other hand, it is a matter of one person getting all the money, the Machiavellian is at it again. Team players are therefore the perfect victims of this dark personality. To do this, they carefully analyze their chosen victim and, based on this, choose tactics that have worked in the past when dealing with similar characters. In this way, especially those people who have the good of the community in mind are exploited.
By now it should be clear that Machiavellians can be a real fire hazard to others. Their flexible, strategic thinking and talent for changing tactics make them very difficult to expose. However, recent developments on the job market ensure that Machiavellians no longer have an easy game, at least on the job. For example, U.S. and Western European companies now rely heavily on teamwork. Strict organizational structures with steep power differentials are giving way to a flatter hierarchy. Managers often no longer make decisions on their own and thus have less opportunity to control and exploit employees. In addition, intrigues and dodges are uncovered more quickly as soon as employees have more direct access to information.
A final look inside
But how do Machiavellians fare in all this? In truth, do they suffer from their disposition? Are they even overcome by loneliness in quiet moments? Unlike narcissists, whose fluctuating self-worth can plunge them into deep crises, Machiavellians for the most part do not have psychological problems more often than others. If anything, they have thicker skin. Nevertheless, it makes sense to prevent Machiavellianism; after all, the entire environment suffers as a result.
The best way to keep Machiavellianism at bay in the long run is successful socialization. The genes we inherit from our parents do help determine how Machiavellian or good-natured we become. But the environment in which we grow up plays a greater role. On the one hand, a social culture in which inconsideration and violence are widespread promotes Machiavellian thinking and acting. On the other hand, our own parental home shapes us: adults with strong Machiavellian traits report more often than others a childhood with few clear rules and hardly any stable bonds. Their families lacked communication and warmth. A sheltered home and good role models, on the other hand, promote righteousness and prudence – and make fewer people grow up to be ruthless bullies.