Psychopathy and Machiavellianism are often described as identical twins in the realm of personality psychology, but tracking how people act day by day reveals they operate in completely different ways. A new study shows that while these antagonistic personality styles look nearly indistinguishable on standard tests, they actually trigger highly distinct psychological states in everyday life. The findings were published in the Journal of Research in Personality.
These two personality styles belong to what psychologists call the “Dark Triad” of personality. The Dark Triad includes narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Each concept describes a set of antagonistic traits characterized by a tendency to manipulate, exploit, or cause interpersonal harm to others.
Narcissism is defined by an exaggerated sense of self-importance and extreme entitlement. Machiavellianism, named after the Renaissance political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, centers on strategic manipulation, a cynical worldview, and long-term deceptive planning.
Psychopathy is characterized by severe impulsivity, thrill-seeking, and a profound lack of remorse. Of the three, Machiavellianism and psychopathy share the most behavioral similarities. At their core, both traits involve a callous disregard for the feelings of other people.
For years, psychologists have debated whether these latter two traits are actually distinct concepts or just two different names for the same antisocial tendency. This naming problem is known in psychology as a “jangle fallacy,” which happens when researchers mistakenly treat two identical concepts as completely separate phenomena simply because they carry different labels.
Standard self-report surveys often provide evidence pointing to a jangle fallacy. When people sit down to fill out a traditional personality test, those who score highly on Machiavellianism almost always score highly on psychopathy.
Behavioral experiments in laboratory settings often tell a completely different story. In lab games, individuals with highly Machiavellian personalities show a strong ability to delay gratification. They are exceptionally good at cheating without getting caught.
People who score high in psychopathic tendencies act much more impulsively. They tend to break rules recklessly and lack the patience to execute long-term deceptive strategies. This contrast has left psychologists confused about how to appropriately measure and categorize these dark personalities.
Dawid Walczak, a psychological researcher at Vizja University in Poland, led a new investigation alongside Radosław Rogoza of Vizja University and Daniel N. Jones of the University of Nevada. The researchers wanted to see if observing people dynamically over a long period could finally settle the redundancy debate.
To bridge the gap between artificial laboratory experiments and static personality tests, the research team focused on the difference between personality traits and personality states. Traits describe an individual’s baseline personality across their entire life. States describe how a person acts or feels in a specific, fleeting moment.
The researchers used an experience sampling method to track people in their natural environments. They recruited 317 adult participants from Poland. After downloading a specialized smartphone application, the participants received a notification every evening for 30 consecutive days.
The daily surveys asked participants to rate how strongly they agreed with statements describing their actions over the past 24 hours. The questions were pulled directly from standard personality tests but adapted for a daily timescale.
To measure Machiavellian states, participants rated statements like “I kept a low profile to get my way” or “I avoided direct conflict with someone because that person may be useful in the future.” To measure psychopathic states, they assessed statements like “I got into a dangerous situation” or “I lost control of myself.”
The researchers then tested different mathematical models to see if the responses grouped together into a single category or split apart into two separate categories. When the team averaged all thirty days of responses to look at each person’s long-term baseline, the results mirrored traditional personality tests.
At this broad baseline level, Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlapped by more than seventy percent. They appeared nearly identical. However, when the researchers analyzed the daily fluctuations within individuals, a completely different pattern emerged.
In the day-to-day data, the overlap between the two states plummeted to roughly sixteen percent. The mathematical models confirmed that evaluating the daily data as two distinct categories provided a much better fit than lumping them into a single category. This finding indicates that a person can experience a highly Machiavellian day without necessarily experiencing a highly psychopathic day.
The research team also investigated how behavior on one day influenced behavior on the following day. They discovered a one-way relationship between the two personality states. An increase in strategic, manipulative behavior on a Monday predicted a rise in impulsive, antisocial behavior on a Tuesday.
The reverse was not true. An increase in psychopathic behavior on a given day did not predict an increase in Machiavellian behavior on the next day. This directional relationship points to the role that risk and self-control play in dark personality expressions.
Machiavellian individuals perceive environments in terms of situational risk. When the risk of getting caught or punished is high, Machiavellian logic dictates that a person should suppress their antisocial urges. They hold back until the environment changes.
Psychopathy involves poor impulse control and a general absence of fear. When a person is experiencing a highly psychopathic state, they are likely to act aggressively regardless of the consequences. Psychopathic behavior ignores environmental boundaries.
The one-way relationship suggests that Machiavellian restraint might eventually give way to psychopathic outbursts once an environment is deemed safe or a goal is achieved. A person plotting strategically for days might reach a point where they let their worst impulses loose.
The researchers noted several boundaries to their findings that could impact how they are interpreted. The sample primarily consisted of young, educated women from an Eastern European country with moderate levels of individualism. Because men generally score higher on antagonistic personality tests, the lack of male participants might have limited the variance in the data.
The daily surveys were also limited to a single evening check-in. This rigid schedule means the study could have missed rapid changes in personality states that occurred from hour to hour throughout the day. Future studies might use more frequent daily check-ins to capture the changing nature of antisocial tendencies.
Researchers might also attempt to measure exactly what types of environmental factors trigger shifts between these dark states. The current study provides early evidence that while Machiavellianism and psychopathy share antisocial roots, their daily expressions are entirely unique. Treating them as the exact same phenomenon ignores the strategic restraint that defines the Machiavellian mind.
The study, “The (in)distinguishability of Machiavellianism and psychopathy? Discovering the daily dynamics,” was authored by Dawid Walczak, Radosław Rogoza, and Daniel N. Jones.