Why Psychopaths Make Such Bad First Impressions

[Posty]

When you meet someone for the first time, your mind actively turns on the assessment machinery to help gauge whether this is a person you can trust or not. You try to evaluate whether this person will have your best interests at heart, or whether you’re at risk of having this person take advantage of you. If you’re good at this skill, you’ll easily be able to figure out what your approach should be and react accordingly. If not, you stand to lose anything from your hard-earned money to a chunk of your well-being.

In new research on the accuracy of interpersonal perception, University of Tennessee Chattanooga’s Katherine Rogers and colleagues (2018) investigated the role of personality in interpersonal perception. They were particularly interested in the ability of people high in the so-called “Dark Tetrad” traits to judge the personalities of others, but also to learn how they themselves are judged. The Dark Tetrad includes the qualities of psychopathy, Machiavellianism (tendency to exploit others), narcissism, and sadism. Each of these traits has its own unique qualities, but when combined into the Dark Tetrad, they become particularly malevolent. The question that Rogers et al. pursued was whether these unpleasant and, frankly mean, individuals would perceive others more negatively and whether they themselves would seem unsavory to those who interact with them.

Article by, Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.

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