Editor’s note:
As geopolitical tensions rise and the future of technology looms uncertainly over a dark horizon, detecting and stopping insider threats before they cause harm must be a growing priority. Recently, a highly publicised scandal involving Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and an alleged Chinese spy has come to light. This comes just as OpenAI warns its employees about so-called “honeypot” schemes that target confidential information.
What kind of person is susceptible to manipulation, and who is likely to be an insider threat? How do we detect and stop these threats before they end up causing harm to the entire organisation?
In this piece, Professor Dan Jones explores the personality types created by the two features that form a firewall of sorts between motivation to harm and actual malevolence; and their respective mirrors that form the core of “dark personalities”.
Wake Up Babe, New Matrix Just Dropped
There are two fundamental reasons people are decent in the absence of fear or punishment: integrity and benevolence. These two components form a “firewall” between motivation to harm and actual malevolence. Someone high in both positive traits, even in a situation where they are seemingly “justified” to lash out, may not out of benevolence. Someone who could sabotage an arrogant opponent when no one would know, may refuse out of a sense of moral integrity.
The Dark Personality Matrix
The absence of one of these introduces weaknesses. Someone who is benevolent with no integrity may fall to sympathy-induced manipulation. They may be willing to bend the rules if the perceived benefit is great enough, ignoring the issue of process or fairness. Conversely, someone who is high in integrity, but lacking benevolence, may become seduced by an ideological mission, worth inflicting great harm in the name of the greater good. Finally, those who lack both benevolence and integrity are defined as “dark personalities”. These people care neither for the harm they cause nor for any moral principle.
Fake Bible Stories
Let us start by examining the ideological threat: individuals with high integrity, but low benevolence. Such individuals have been referred to by psychologist Linda Skitka as “morally certain.” These are people who have become so entrenched in a way of thinking, such as an ideology, that they find even extreme acts in support of that ideology more important than benevolence. Some such individuals’ need for integrity is so great that they actually begin to hallucinate missions that validate their worldview .
In 2020, my team published a paper that illustrates this. We asked people to rate their familiarity with over 30 concepts or stories from the Christian Bible and then to rate their sympathy for religious violence. However, a subset of these concepts or stories were fake – we made them up. We figured those who claimed to know fake stories thought they knew more about “God’s will”.
What did we find? Those who knew the real Bible were strongly opposed to religious violence; those who claimed familiarity with fake stories were the most supportive of it. This was not limited to Western Christians. We found the exact pattern among Iranian Muslims using concepts from the Qur’an. The kicker is that all religious overconfident types rated themselves as more “religious” despite the great harm they were willing to inflict on others.
For the Children
Now, let us talk about benevolence without integrity. An unwillingness to do what is right because it may cause someone discomfort can also inflict great harm to an organization. These may fall for the personal plight of a secret agent while betraying their country.
To demonstrate this problematic pattern, my colleagues and I ran a study several years ago (yet to be published) examining prosocial cheating. First, we assessed the participants’ level of integrity and benevolence. Then, instead of cheating for their own benefit, we promised a small donation to children with cancer if they predicted a coin flip correctly. They were clearly instructed to flip the coin only once because our flip button was broken. Of course, our flip button was not “broken”, and it was rigged to give them the opposite result of what they guessed.
We found that those who scored high on integrity still flipped the coin only once, despite the benefit to children with cancer. Those with high benevolence and low integrity were the most likely to flip the coin dishonestly until they got the result they wanted.
Take the Quiz: Which Dark Personality Are You?
But the absence of both benevolence and integrity, or put another way, the presence of callousness and manipulation, opens the door to all forms of harm. In a paper published in 2013, I demonstrated along with Aurelio José Figueredo that these two features formed the core of all dark personalities.
But there are unique features across traits that create different dark personality types. The most common of these traits have come to be known as the “Dark Triad”, a term coined by Del Paulhus and Kevin Williams in 2002.
The three traits in this triad are Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. All three traits are willing to inflict harm on others or society to accomplish their goals. However, the psychopathic and narcissistic personalities are relatively easier to detect – at least to the eyes of a trained professional.
A psychopathic personality also comes with deficits in impulse control and a predilection for antisociality. So, when push comes to shove, the psychopathic person will try to talk their way into benefits and out of trouble. Furthermore, they are the most likely to become violent sooner under provocation. The narcissistic personality, on the other hand, comes with an egotistical obsession. Their image in the eyes of others is so paramount, they spend most of their energy serving their self-image, either by cultivating self-praise or admonishing those who dare to challenge their superiority.
They Could Be in This Very Room
Then there are those high in Machiavellianism. This trait is by far the most dangerous in terms of insider threat. Those high in Machiavellianism have a closely held worldview that deep down all people are malicious, requiring only the right circumstance to bring this malice to the surface. Thus, those high in Machiavellianism trust few, if any. Yet they encourage others to share their inner secrets and play the role of confidant.
They do not lie recklessly; they carefully plan their manipulation. In fact, they only resort to manipulation when legitimate channels will not get them what they want. They think ahead of what others will think and how they may react, and they have explanations at the ready to rationalize away their misbehavior, making it appear like an innocuous coincidence.
Although any dark personality poses an insider threat, psychopathic and narcissistic individuals carry more of their tactical approaches in plain sight. The fragile ego of the narcissistic character may blow their cover in a meeting where they are challenged or questioned. The immediate gratification sought by the psychopathic character will also give them away early, such as telling a lie that backfires on them, no matter how much explanation they may provide.
Those who know what to look for will likely see these red flags soon enough to shut down access and thwart attempts to undercut operations. Those high in Machiavellianism? You will not be so lucky. A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.
No One VS Verify
In sum, when no one will ever know, what stops a motivated person from inflicting harm? The only defense left is the firewall formed by benevolence and integrity. Although we cannot train benevolence or integrity to any meaningful degree, we can look for the cracks in this firewall and follow up in appropriate fashion with safeguards in place.
This is not to say that we should trust no one. Quite the contrary: trust is the foundation of a successful organization, especially in high-assurance environments like the armed forces. However, “trust but verify” needs to be a habit. Someone overly cynical and untrusting, someone who resists oversight, someone who has anomalies in their behavior with explanations that seem plausible, must be followed up on and double-checked.
Professor Dan Jones is a professor of management at the Univeristy of Nevada, Reno and the CSO for the HUMINT startup, DarkMind. He received his Ph.D. in personality/social psychology from the University of British Columbia in 2011. His research primarily focuses on how toxic personality traits predict unethical behavior across different environments. He also addresses strategies for dealing with dark personalities and preventing the harmful effects of deviant and counterproductive behaviors.
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References:
Jones, D. N., & Figueredo, A. J. (2013). The core of darkness: Uncovering the heart of the Dark Triad. European Journal of Personality, 27(6), 521-531.
Jones, D. N., Neria, A. L., Helm, F. A., Sahlan, R. N., & Carré, J. R. (2020). Religious overclaiming and support for religious aggression. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(7), 1011-1021.
Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The dark triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556-563.
