I think an implicit assumption of the article is that people with dark triad traits are more likely to gain power. If unstable politics can create a 99:1 selection effect toward the Hitlers and Maos in the top %ile of dark triad, then they come to power in half of the nations with unstable politics. I can imagine this being true if people with dark triad traits are way more power-seeking and this is what matters in unstable political climates.
So the model is more like, during the Russian revolution for instance it’s a 50⁄50 chance that whichever leader came out of that is very strongly selected to have dark traid traits, but this is not the case for the contemporary CCP.
Yeah seems plausible. 99:1 seems very very strong. If it were 9:1 means we’re in a 1/1000 world, 1:2 means an approx 1/10^5. Yeah, I don’t have a good enough knowledge of rulers before they gained close to absolute power to be able to evaluate that claim. Off the top of my head, Lenin, Prince Lvov (the latter led the provisional govt’ after Feb revolution) were not dark triady.
The definition of unstable also looks important here. If we count Stalin and Hitler, both of whom came to power during peacetime, then it seems like also should count Soviet leaders who succeeded Stalin, CCP leaders who succeeded Mao, Bashar al-Assad, Pinochet, Mussolini. Sanity check from that group makes it seem more much like a 1:5 than 1:99. Deng definitely not Dark Triad, nor Bashar, don’t know enough about the others but they don’t seem like it?
If we’re only counting Mao, then the selection effect looks a lot stronger off the top of my head, but should also probably be adjusted because the mean of sadism seems likely much higher after a period of sustained fighting given the effect of prison guards for instance becoming more sadistic over time, and gennerally violence being normalised.
Don’t know enough about psychopathy or machivallianism.
It’s also not completely clear to me that Stalin and Mao were in the top 10% for sadism at least. Both came from very poor peasant societies. I know at least Russian peasant life in 1910 was unbelievably violent and they reguarly did things which we sort of can’t imagine. My general knowledge of European peasant societies—e.g crowds at public executions—makes me think that it’s likely that the average Chinese peasant in 1910 would have scored very highly on sadism. If you look at the response of the Chinese police/army to the 1927 Communist insurgency it was unbelievably cruel.
Makes screening for malicious actors seem worse and genetic selection seem better.
I think an implicit assumption of the article is that people with dark triad traits are more likely to gain power. If unstable politics can create a 99:1 selection effect toward the Hitlers and Maos in the top %ile of dark triad, then they come to power in half of the nations with unstable politics. I can imagine this being true if people with dark triad traits are way more power-seeking and this is what matters in unstable political climates.
So the model is more like, during the Russian revolution for instance it’s a 50⁄50 chance that whichever leader came out of that is very strongly selected to have dark traid traits, but this is not the case for the contemporary CCP.
Yeah seems plausible. 99:1 seems very very strong. If it were 9:1 means we’re in a 1/1000 world, 1:2 means an approx 1/10^5. Yeah, I don’t have a good enough knowledge of rulers before they gained close to absolute power to be able to evaluate that claim. Off the top of my head, Lenin, Prince Lvov (the latter led the provisional govt’ after Feb revolution) were not dark triady.
The definition of unstable also looks important here. If we count Stalin and Hitler, both of whom came to power during peacetime, then it seems like also should count Soviet leaders who succeeded Stalin, CCP leaders who succeeded Mao, Bashar al-Assad, Pinochet, Mussolini. Sanity check from that group makes it seem more much like a 1:5 than 1:99. Deng definitely not Dark Triad, nor Bashar, don’t know enough about the others but they don’t seem like it?
If we’re only counting Mao, then the selection effect looks a lot stronger off the top of my head, but should also probably be adjusted because the mean of sadism seems likely much higher after a period of sustained fighting given the effect of prison guards for instance becoming more sadistic over time, and gennerally violence being normalised.
Don’t know enough about psychopathy or machivallianism.
It’s also not completely clear to me that Stalin and Mao were in the top 10% for sadism at least. Both came from very poor peasant societies. I know at least Russian peasant life in 1910 was unbelievably violent and they reguarly did things which we sort of can’t imagine. My general knowledge of European peasant societies—e.g crowds at public executions—makes me think that it’s likely that the average Chinese peasant in 1910 would have scored very highly on sadism. If you look at the response of the Chinese police/army to the 1927 Communist insurgency it was unbelievably cruel.
Makes screening for malicious actors seem worse and genetic selection seem better.
Apologies that this is so scattered.