When we talk about dark personalities, various characteristics come to mind such as narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism (which make up the so-called “dark triad”), which have always been treated as categories in their own right.
According to Karen Mitchell, a business consultant who, as she explains to the Guardian, over the course of her thirty years of work experience has often had to deal with people with predatory traits, these profiles are not isolated categories, but subsets of a single personality type, baptized persistent predatory personality (persistent predatory personality).
His research, detailed in his doctoral thesis published in 2024, starts from a series of interviews with people who have dealt with subjects with dark personalities in different fields – not only work-related, but also personal. The model that emerges aims to show that, behind different labels, individuals with similar characteristics hide: 20 attributes, divided into four thematic categories, alongside 25 tactics typical of these individuals.
Four categories
The first category concerns control, and includes those who have a strong need to exercise control over everything, feel superior, react pathologically to any challenge, are vengeful and refuse compromise.
In the second group there are those who have predatory behavior, are sadistic and cruel, have no respect for laws, agreements and social and moral norms, have no limits in sexual relationships and have unreasonable expectations towards others.
The third category concerns the relationship with the truth: individuals with this personality cultivate a facade of normality, are chameleon-like, dishonest, devious and manipulative, and refuse to take responsibility for the damage they cause.
The fourth group, finally, concerns the interior life: emotions are acted out, coldness and lack of empathy, lack of remorse, egocentrism and shamelessness prevail.
The importance of recognizing warning signs
According to Mitchell, these individuals are people who are “completely limitless, dangerous and have very different brains.” The problematic thing is that often, being very good at lying, they give a totally opposite image of themselves, and people cannot conceive that a dark personality is really dark. “Millions of people were hurt because we didn’t know the warning signs. We must therefore make them known and teach people to recognize them”, concludes Mitchell.
