Can Light & Dark be measured in the human psyche?
Humanity has been struggling to understand good and evil since the beginning of time. What are the light and dark attributes that exist within everyone?
The Light Triad
1. Faith in Humanityㅡ "Generally speaking, humans are good."
2. Humanismㅡ "Humans across all backgrounds are deserving of respect and appreciation."
3. Kantianismㅡ "Others should be treated as ends in and of themselves, and not as pawns in one’s own game."
Credit: Scott Barry Kaufman, David Yaden, Elizabeth Hyde and Eli Tsukayama
The Dark Triad
1. Machiavellianism - A tendency to exploit others for one’s own gain
2. Psychopathy - A disregard for other's feelings.
3. Narcissism - A heightened focus on oneself.
Main characteristics of the Dark Triad personality traits Source: D'Souza (2016).
What is the correlation between the two?
The average balance score for the entire sample of thousands of test participants was 1.3, indicating that the average person's daily patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions are skewed toward the light rather than the dark.
As this scatterplot illustrates, extreme malevolence is relatively uncommon in the general population:
"The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality: Contrasting Two Very Different Profiles of Human Nature," by Scott Barry Kaufman, David Yaden, Elizabeth Hyde and Eli Tsukayama, in Frontiers in Psychology, March 12, 2019
Where do you stand?
1. Studies show that everybody has attributes of both light and dark.
2. Take the test below to check in and see where you're at in the balance.
References
(2002). The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. . Journal of Research in Personality Volume 36, Issue 6, Pages 556-563.
(2019). The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality: Contrasting Two Very Different Profiles of Human Nature. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 467. .
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