Bad to the Bone

I spend a lot of times in prisons. So, you’d naturally think that I would know quite a few inmates who don’t seem to have a moral compass. But that’s not true.

Sure, it’s true that some of the inmates I know live according to a survival of the fittest mindset that is fueled by self-interest; if it comes down to either them or me, I’m the one who’s going to lose. But these inmates typically do bad things to get something they want or need. They have people they love and try to protect. They have no desire to hurt someone who isn’t standing in their way. They also tend to have their own moral code; the same inmate who killed a man in a gang fight might die before sexually abusing a child (and often would not hesitate to kill someone who did).

However, according to recent research, some people have a cluster of personality traits that is so toxic that they are, at times, even willing to give up an edge just to make someone else suffer. Specifically, researchers found nine personality traits that tend to coexist and form a common core that is characterized by ruthless self-interest that far exceeds an out-for-number-one mentality:

Egoism: valuing everything only in terms of one’s self-interest;

Machiavellianism: the belief that any means, no matter how unscrupulous or deceitful, is justified it if leads to the desired result;