While this is somewhat compelling, this may not be enough to warrant such a restriction of our search area. Many of the actors we should be concerned about, for our work here, might have very low levels of such traits. And features such as spite and unforgivingness might also deserve attention (see Clifton et al. 2022).
I wanted to note that the term ‘malevolence’ wasn’t meant to exclude traits such as spite or unforgivingness. See for example the introduction which explicitly mentions spite (emphasis mine):
This suggests the existence of a general factor of human malevolence[2]: the Dark Factor of Personality (Moshagen et al., 2018)—[...] characterized by egoism, lack of empathy[3] and guilt, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness.
So to be clear, I encourage others to explore other traits!
Though I’d keep in mind that there exist moderate to large correlations between most of these “bad” traits such that for most new traits we can come up with, there will exist substantial positive correlations with other dark traits we already considered. (In general, I found it helpful to view the various “bad” traits not as completely separate, orthogonal traits that have nothing to do with each other but also as “[...] specific manifestations of a general, basic dispositional behavioral tendency [...] to maximize one’s individual utility— disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others—, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications” (Moshagen et al., 2018).)
Given this, I’m probably more skeptical that there exist many actors who are, say, very spiteful but exhibit no other “dark” traits—but there are probably some!
That being said, I’m also wary of going too far in the direction of “whatever bad trait, it’s all the same, who cares” and losing conceptual clarity and rigor. :)
Thanks for writing this post!
You write:
I wanted to note that the term ‘malevolence’ wasn’t meant to exclude traits such as spite or unforgivingness. See for example the introduction which explicitly mentions spite (emphasis mine):
So to be clear, I encourage others to explore other traits!
Though I’d keep in mind that there exist moderate to large correlations between most of these “bad” traits such that for most new traits we can come up with, there will exist substantial positive correlations with other dark traits we already considered. (In general, I found it helpful to view the various “bad” traits not as completely separate, orthogonal traits that have nothing to do with each other but also as “[...] specific manifestations of a general, basic dispositional behavioral tendency [...] to maximize one’s individual utility— disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others—, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications” (Moshagen et al., 2018).)
Given this, I’m probably more skeptical that there exist many actors who are, say, very spiteful but exhibit no other “dark” traits—but there are probably some!
That being said, I’m also wary of going too far in the direction of “whatever bad trait, it’s all the same, who cares” and losing conceptual clarity and rigor. :)
Interesting, makes sense! Thanks for the clarification and for your thoughts on this! :)