Lies and narcissism

Dark personality traits (Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Sadism) have been associated with aversive, unethical, and criminal conduct. Concise measurement tools such as the Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) are popular, because they lend themselves as screening instruments. As such, the scores on these scales are used in various decision-making contexts, and they can have considerable effects on the lives of people who display an unfortunate scoring pattern. The present study explored to what extent high SD4 scores are actually predictive of deceptive behaviour in a matrix puzzle task, in a general community sample (N = 751)...

What if the author were to position herself as a liar? Not of conscious lying, but an ignorance of what is so close to our collective noses that as psychoanalysts we miss it. Drawing on Harari's (2011) description of liberal ideology, the author suggests that our contemporary psychoanalytic focus on feelings, countertransference, and intuition is more determined by our cultural era than generally recognized. It is suggested that prevailing ideology may at times serve a defensive function. The author discusses a 1970s clinical seminar in which Bion observes that the presenting analyst's attention to feelings is "excusing" the patient (and himself)...

Several studies have investigated a potential positive association between agentic narcissism and general dishonesty, revealing both supportive and contradicting evidence. Few have focused on dishonesty within romantic relationships, a phenomenon that occurs in almost all partnerships. With the present research, we first aimed to extend existing literature on narcissism by including its two complementary facets (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism). Second, we aimed to improve the understanding of narcissists' lying behavior in the context of partnerships by distinguishing between two different types of lies (i...

People deceive for different reasons, from avoiding interpersonal conflicts to preserving, protecting, and nurturing interpersonal relationships, and to obtaining social status and power. A growing body of research highlights the role of personality in both deception detection and production, with a particular focus on high Dark Triad (DT) traits (Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy), for their shared tendency to engage in unethical self-benefitting behaviors, despite negative consequences for others...

Numerous studies have shown that pride comprises two distinct facets: authentic pride, which is associated with achievement, high self-esteem, and prosocial personality traits; and hubristic pride, associated with arrogance, low self-esteem, and antisocial personality traits. Functionalist accounts suggest that both pride facets facilitate the attainment of social rank, raising the question of how the more antisocial and dysfunctional hubristic facet could increase one's social status. We propose that hubristically proud individuals use the antisocial behavior of dishonesty in a strategic and ultimately adaptive way, to gain status in response to experienced status threats...

Spine posture during repetitive lifting is one of the main risk factors for low-back injuries in the occupational sector. It is thus critical to design appropriate intervention strategies for training workers to improve their posture, reducing load on the spine during lifting. The main approach to train safe lifting to workers has been educational; however, systematic reviews and meta-analyses have shown that this approach does not improve lifting movement nor reduces the risk of low back injury. One of the main limitations of this approach lies in the amount, quality and context of practice of the lifting movement...

Through reexamination of Freud's thinking on the "compulsion to repeat", including detailed study of his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), this paper brings to the fore a central tension in Freud's thinking on the roles narcissism and love in his foundational view of the person. While Freud conceptualizes the person as self-serving, aiming primarily to maximize personal satisfaction in accordance with the "pleasure principle," he develops an alternative view of the person as primarily loving, desiring to truly encounter the other and reality, even if painful, and guilty when he fails to do so (largely because of conflicting narcissistic/destructive aims)...

Truth-Default Theory (TDT) predicts that across countries and cultures, a few people tell most of the lies, while a majority of people lie less frequently than average. This prediction, referred to as "a few prolific liars," is tested in Japan. The study further investigated the extent to which the Dark Triad personality traits predict the frequency of lying. University students (N = 305) reported how many times they lied in the past 24 hours and answered personality questions. Results indicate that the few prolific liars pattern is evident in Japan thereby advancing TDT...

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits-Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy-more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies...

The Dark Triad traits-narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy-have been found to be associated with intra- or interpersonal deception production frequency. This cross-sectional study ( N = 207) investigated if the Dark Triad traits are also associated with deception detection accuracy, as implicated by the recent conception of a deception-general ability. To investigate associations between maladaptive personality space and deception, the PID-5 maladaptive personality traits were included to investigate if besides Machiavellianism, Detachment is negatively associated with response bias...

Although all 3 of the Dark Triad members are predisposed to engage in exploitative interpersonal behavior, their motivations and tactics vary. Here we explore their distinctive dynamics with 5 behavioral studies of dishonesty (total N = 1,750). All 3 traits predicted cheating on a coin-flipping task when there was little risk of being caught (Study 1). Only psychopathy predicted cheating when punishment was a serious risk (Study 2). Machiavellian individuals also cheated under high risk-but only if they were ego-depleted (Study 3)...

The end of the Cold War brought with it many protracted internal conflicts and wars that have lasted for decades and whose persistent instability lies at the heart of both chronic nation-state and regional instability. Responsibility for these chronically failed states has been attributed to multiple unresolved root causes. With previous governance and parties to power no longer trusted or acceptable, the vacuum of leadership in many cases has been filled with "bad leadership." This Concept piece argues that in a number of cases opportunistic leaders, suffering from severe antisocial character disorders, have emerged first as saviors and then as despots, or as common criminals claiming to be patriots, sharing a psychological framework that differs little from those responsible for World War II and the Cold War that followed...

Given that psychopathy is associated with narcissism, lack of insight, and pathological lying, the assumption that the validity of self-report psychopathy measures is compromised by response distortion has been widespread. We examined the statistical effects (moderation, suppression) of response distortion on the validity of self-report psychopathy measures in the statistical prediction of theoretically relevant external criteria (i.e., interview measures, laboratory tasks) in a large sample of offenders (N = 1,661)...

Deception is a central component of the personality 'Dark Triad' (Machiavellianism, Psychopathy and Narcissism). However, whether individuals exhibiting high scores on Dark Triad measures have a heightened deceptive ability has received little experimental attention. The present study tested whether the ability to lie effectively, and to detect lies told by others, was related to Dark Triad, Lie Acceptability, or Self-Deceptive measures of personality using an interactive group-based deception task. At a group level, lie detection accuracy was correlated with the ability to deceive others-replicating previous work...

This is both a clinical and an epistemological inquiry into the concept of countertransference. A distinction is made between the ordinary countertransference, a transitory disruption residing within the analyst's consciousness, and the extraordinary countertransference, an impasse intolerable to the analyst to such an extent that it remains outside awareness. This distinction, rooted in the history of psychoanalytic thought, is here traced in a recorded psychoanalysis. The clinical material is examined from three perspectives, including empirical evaluation by computer-assisted monitoring of spoken language and two modes of psychoanalytic interpretive listening...

The paper argues that the story of Oedipus, however understood, conveys psychic truth of no greater or more central importance to human development than do the stories of many other myths. A distinction is made between sophisticated theories developed out of Freud's original concept of the Oedipus complex, and the adherence by some clinicians to his original sexual theory. The meaning of Sophocles' play Oedipus the King is found to lie in the clash between Oedipus' omnipotent narcissism (hubris) and the power of the unconscious psyche, rather than in cross-generational sex...

The aim of this study was twofold: (a)to measure the alternate form reliability of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, and (b)to determine its construct validity by correlating it with the four scales of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). The alternate form reliability was .72. The Extraversion and Psychoticism scales of the EPQ were positively and significantly correlated with the narcissism measure, and the Lie scale showed a significant negative correlation. The Neuroticism scale showed a nonsignificant relationship with narcissism...

This paper describes the course of an analysis which demonstrates how borderline and narcissistic functioning can be understood in terms of a struggle with issues of identity. It shows how such functioning can come to exert a profound hold on the individual and why it seems, at times, a matter of life and death to the patient to avoid states of separation from the analyst. The paper suggests that these complex phenomena can be understood, perhaps surprisingly, in the simple terms of the nature of affect itself...

Supervision takes place in a framework of time, place, and duration agreed upon by teacher and student. But beyond the formal arrangements of supervision lie a host of behaviors that express conscious and unconscious fears and wishes that are aroused in student and teacher by their meetings. This paper focuses on supervisors' motivations for teaching, and the ways in which their narcissistic vulnerabilities and their feelings for their students may influence the frame of supervision and its outcome.

In Münchhausen syndrome by proxy, a subject, usually a mother, pretends her child has a serious medical disorder. After simulating ficticious symptoms, or even producing clinical signs such as convulsions, fever, bleeding, vomiting, diarrhea or skin eruptions, the mother repeatedly takes her child to different hospitals for care. During hospitalization, the mother shows great concern for the child and is highly cooperative with the health care team. The consequences may be unwarrented, often invasive, investigations and therapy with a very high risk of morbidity and mortality...