In light of the conflicting research cited above, it would be overly simplistic to assume that those with high levels of malevolence are consistently aware of and endorse their traits, with an internal monologue[9] that goes something like this: “I’m so evil and just want to maximize my own power and gratify my own desires, no matter how much suffering this causes for everyone else, hahaha.”[10] Although some people may think like that, it would be wrong to assume that everyone with high levels of malevolence thinks in this way.
I think the reason that inner monologue feels implausible is that the statement is explicit. If someone really held that attitude/goal, I’d expect it to be implicit: where their inner monologue wouldn’t directly say, “I just want to gratify my own desires at the expense of others”, but it would contain object-level reasoning about how to do that, and judgements of others that strongly correlate with whether they advance or are barriers to the goal, where the goal is an implicit background factor.
And as you note, most people do have some non-negligible level of this:
Everyday experience suggests, for example, that most people care a lot more about their self-interest than is remotely justified by impartial benevolence
(Commenting as I read)
I think the reason that inner monologue feels implausible is that the statement is explicit. If someone really held that attitude/goal, I’d expect it to be implicit: where their inner monologue wouldn’t directly say, “I just want to gratify my own desires at the expense of others”, but it would contain object-level reasoning about how to do that, and judgements of others that strongly correlate with whether they advance or are barriers to the goal, where the goal is an implicit background factor.
And as you note, most people do have some non-negligible level of this: