applause. thx for this highly interesting (and important) article.
while reading i thought about a lot of commenting, but you already considered most of these things…
still some minor comments:
as to narcissism (maybe (?) the least important “dark tetrad trait”): as for narcistic personality disorder, there is a reason why (some) of these people are trying to gain power. a huge lack of self-esteem etc. and some narcistic people are trying to fill this lack with a successful career etc., still it does not gets filled this way, so (some of them) are trying to become even more successful… a vicious circle. but maybe even more important for narcissism usually has it´s origin in childhood/ growing up. i don´t believe, that genetic (epigenetic?) factors attribute a lot to this trait. (I only found that one here, and I don’t know, whether it is good or representative: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973692/ - still, it seems, that those twins grew up with the same parents …).
as for scanning for dark tetrad-traits: smart malevolent people might deceive tests/scanning procedures, once they are smart enough, once they know what they want. they usually don´t do so, when still in kindergarten, in elementary school. And it is sure (unprecise) to scan for example for those kids, who torture animals (or peers) etc. i am not saying: “let´s do this”, only saying: “looking at kids might makes sense”.
as for proposing to cut f. e. only the 1% with the highest polygenetic score for dark tetrad-traits: it be interesting, if this would include persons like hitler, stalin, mao, … they sure had some luck with timing, being at the right place, living in instable times, … maybe they would only be in the top 10th percentile? still, it sure be a bad idea, to make big cuts without more reasoning and knowledge.
and: actually, even though (or because) i just read some things about dictators and sadism… i am not convinced. most journalists argue, that being responsible for the deaths of millions makes one a sadist. or because one makes up some torture-routines. but from my understanding, sadism is to gain direct benefit through direct torturing, humuliating (and seeing/getting feedback on their reaction) of humans (or animals). if someone lets millions of people getting killed or tortured—i guess this is for other reasons (economic profit, consolidating power—even if through terror or because someone simply does not care). having a lack of empathy, it might easily sound like a reasonable idea to send millions to deaths, if there are other things to gain. actually my understanding of sadism is not important. but if those dictators haven´t been sadists, then it might be a good idea, to exclude sadism out of this topic.
still: up until now in this comment, there are 3 lines of praise for this article, and some other 20 lines… It should be the other way round. thx again.
I agree that early detection in children is an interesting idea. If certain childhood behaviours can be shown to reliably predict malevolence, then this could be part of a manipulation-proof test. However, as you say, there are many pitfalls to be avoided.
I am not well versed in the literature but my impression is that things like torturing animals, bullying, general violence, or callous-unemotional personality traits (as assessed by others) are somewhat predictive of malevolence. But the problem is that you’ll probably also get many false positives from those indicators.
Regarding environmental or developmental interventions, we write this in Appendix B:
Malevolent personality traits are plausibly exacerbated by adverse (childhood) environments—e.g. ones rife with abuse, bullying, violence or poverty (cf. Walsh & Wu, 2008). Thus, research to identify interventions to improve such environmental factors could be valuable. (However, the relevant areas appear to be very crowded. Also, the shared environment appears to have a rather small effect on personality, including personality disorders (Knopik et al., 2018, ch. 16; Johnson et al., 2008; Plomin, 2019; Torgersen, 2009).)
Perhaps improving parenting standards and childhood environments could actually be a fairly promising EA cause. For instance, early advocacy against hitting children may have been a pretty effective lever to make society more civilised and less violent in general.
applause. thx for this highly interesting (and important) article.
while reading i thought about a lot of commenting, but you already considered most of these things…
still some minor comments:
as to narcissism (maybe (?) the least important “dark tetrad trait”): as for narcistic personality disorder, there is a reason why (some) of these people are trying to gain power. a huge lack of self-esteem etc. and some narcistic people are trying to fill this lack with a successful career etc., still it does not gets filled this way, so (some of them) are trying to become even more successful… a vicious circle. but maybe even more important for narcissism usually has it´s origin in childhood/ growing up. i don´t believe, that genetic (epigenetic?) factors attribute a lot to this trait. (I only found that one here, and I don’t know, whether it is good or representative: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973692/ - still, it seems, that those twins grew up with the same parents …).
as for scanning for dark tetrad-traits: smart malevolent people might deceive tests/scanning procedures, once they are smart enough, once they know what they want. they usually don´t do so, when still in kindergarten, in elementary school. And it is sure (unprecise) to scan for example for those kids, who torture animals (or peers) etc. i am not saying: “let´s do this”, only saying: “looking at kids might makes sense”.
as for proposing to cut f. e. only the 1% with the highest polygenetic score for dark tetrad-traits: it be interesting, if this would include persons like hitler, stalin, mao, … they sure had some luck with timing, being at the right place, living in instable times, … maybe they would only be in the top 10th percentile? still, it sure be a bad idea, to make big cuts without more reasoning and knowledge.
and: actually, even though (or because) i just read some things about dictators and sadism… i am not convinced. most journalists argue, that being responsible for the deaths of millions makes one a sadist. or because one makes up some torture-routines. but from my understanding, sadism is to gain direct benefit through direct torturing, humuliating (and seeing/getting feedback on their reaction) of humans (or animals). if someone lets millions of people getting killed or tortured—i guess this is for other reasons (economic profit, consolidating power—even if through terror or because someone simply does not care). having a lack of empathy, it might easily sound like a reasonable idea to send millions to deaths, if there are other things to gain. actually my understanding of sadism is not important. but if those dictators haven´t been sadists, then it might be a good idea, to exclude sadism out of this topic.
still: up until now in this comment, there are 3 lines of praise for this article, and some other 20 lines… It should be the other way round. thx again.
Thanks for commenting!
I agree that early detection in children is an interesting idea. If certain childhood behaviours can be shown to reliably predict malevolence, then this could be part of a manipulation-proof test. However, as you say, there are many pitfalls to be avoided.
I am not well versed in the literature but my impression is that things like torturing animals, bullying, general violence, or callous-unemotional personality traits (as assessed by others) are somewhat predictive of malevolence. But the problem is that you’ll probably also get many false positives from those indicators.
Regarding environmental or developmental interventions, we write this in Appendix B:
Perhaps improving parenting standards and childhood environments could actually be a fairly promising EA cause. For instance, early advocacy against hitting children may have been a pretty effective lever to make society more civilised and less violent in general.