When Dangerous People Don't Look Scary: How to Spot the Dark Triad Personality Type

Can a psychopath be a good person? And how do we spot dangerous people when they seem so charming? 

This holiday special brings you an in-depth answer to one of your most-asked questions with highlights from Dr. Kerry's interview with Tara Blair Ball about the Dark Triad Personality.  

We explore why dangerous people don't look scary, how we underestimate predatory behavior through "positive projection," and the critical difference between niceness and kindness—especially important to remember during the holiday season. 

CHAPTERS

0:38 Can Psychopaths Live Morally?

7:09 Narcissism, Psychopathy & Machiavellianism Explained

10:09 Why We're Attracted to Arrogance & Confidence

13:04 The Stages of Moral Development

17:45 The Mask of Sanity: Nice Doesn't Mean Good

22:48 The Light Triad: The Opposite of Dark Personalities

PODCAST EXTRA 

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More About Dr. Kerry

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. Her blogs have been featured in Mamami, YourTango, Scary Mommy, and The Good Men Project. 

In Love You More, Dr. McAvoy gives an uncensored glimpse into her survival of narcissistic abuse, and her workbook, First Steps to Leaving a Narcissist, helps victims break free from the confusion common in abusive relationships. She hosts the Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse podcast and offers trauma-related advice on social media.

Chapters

• 0:38 Can Psychopaths Live Morally?
• 7:09 Narcissism, Psychopathy & Machiavellianism Explained
• 10:09 Why We're Attracted to Arrogance & Confidence
• 13:04 The Stages of Moral Development
• 17:45 The Mask of Sanity: Nice Doesn't Mean Good
• 22:48 The Light Triad: The Opposite of Dark Personalities

Transcript

When Dangerous People Don't Look Scary_ How to Spot the Dark Triad Personality Type

Dr. Kerry: [00:00:00] I recently learned that Ted Bundy used to walk his coworkers to the car because they had a fear of a local serial killer. Little did they know that they were actually walking with a very man. They were afraid of. We assume that kind or nice people are good people. We confuse those two things. There are a lot of really nice people that actually extremely evil people.

One of the big reasons why we have such difficulty spotting predatory behavior is because we often assume people are like ourselves.

What's the difference between somebody who's done something bad and somebody who's actually evil? I know this is a very dark topic to address this Christmas season, but I wanna take a closer look at a fan mail listeners' question about can a bad person become good? What is really the difference between doing something bad [00:01:00] and being a bad person?

So today I'm gonna go back to an old episode I did with Tara Blair, ball Around Dark Personality types. Thank you so much for this listener who wrote me an email, and here's your question. Hello, Dr. Care. Do you think that there are some narcissists and psychopaths who work against their inclinations to deceive, exploit, and control others in order to live a relatively moral life?

My husband seems to be a malignant narcissist. We're no longer together and pretends pretty convincingly to be a religious, righteous person in front of other people, but it's basically a sham. I'm wondering if that's true of virtually all personality disordered people who claim to be religious, or if there are any that do earnestly try to live accordingly to moral standards of some kind, such as biblical principles.

Thank you so much for. Taking the question. Thank you so much for sending in the question. I really deeply appreciate this. So now you have the introduction to the fan mail question. [00:02:00] Can a psychopath ever become a good person? Well, Tara and I got into this question a couple years ago about predatory people and the difficulties spotting predatory people because we often assume that other people are like ourselves.

If we're a basically good person, we assume that they're likely to be basically good as well. And this can lead us into having difficulty in spotting predatory people. Have you heard of the Dark Triad Personality Disorder? Have you heard of that before? Oh yeah. Yeah. But you know what? It would, it is. I, lately I've starting to see a lot of it.

I wonder if you've, if, if you've been familiar with it or know much about it. It's fascinating. It's really scary actually. 

Tara Blair Ball: I know a little bit. I don't know as much as you do. Absolutely 

Dr. Kerry: not. 

Tara Blair Ball: Okay. So I would love to hear you 

Dr. Kerry: share more. Yeah. So let's dive into that. I know in fact, in fact it's interesting 'cause, um.

My old videos from, oh, a year and a half, two years ago, are being recycled out right now on some platforms just because they've never been shown before. And one of them is about predator, predatory [00:03:00] behavior and about evil people. And I would say the dark triad personality is truly an evil person. But the the ironic part is, is that when you meet them, you probably have never met a more attractive person in your life.

They're, they're, they're so. Charming and so magnetic that they're, they would be what I would call the siren, you know, in, in the, ah, the odyssey of the siren. Yeah. So what is it, what it, it is a, it is three types of personalities that are, that are kind of housed in one person. So you have the narcissist traits, the narcissism.

There's also the psychopathy or the antisocial personality disorder traits, and then you have the Machiavellian traits, which I know we don't talk much about because it's actually a reference to a book and, and it's, I think that comes out of the days if we were to go back into Royal Courts. And we would see the way that, that they would handle the intrigue.

And the Joshua, I'm sorry, I'm saying that that jostling for power. Mm-hmm. We would see this sort of undercutting and, and [00:04:00] because of, you know, if you think about it, if he had a king who would literally could strip you of everything you owned, but also put you to death just on a whim, and yet you also knew they could ritually.

Improve your life. Mm-hmm. There would be a lot of not good things happening in order to advance your cause and to undermine your enemies. So it's that type of a personality. It's very charming. Charismatic. They're very deceitful. I think one of the best movies that, uh, showed it was. Dangers liaison. Now I know I'm dating myself.

It's with Michelle Fier and Glenn Close, but that you can see all the intrigue that's happening between these women and around them and, and what's happening at the court. So do you think you've met somebody like that? Do you think you've met a dark triad personality before? 

Tara Blair Ball: Okay. First off, I wanted to give a newer reference.

Uh, the, the show succession would absolutely be an example of that. Um, so just for, so which one do you, you wanna watch? I, 

Dr. Kerry: yeah. I've been watching it. [00:05:00] So which character do you think is it, would fit it? Do you know? Which character? 

Tara Blair Ball: I couldn't tell you names. Um, 'cause it's been, I think I've only seen a couple of episodes, but my husband talks to me about it all the time.

But all of them, all of the court, all of the court intrigue that you talked about. Just like that's what jumped out to me. But absolutely. When you started describing. The, the jostling for favor and the deception. Okay. I dated someone who would do this behavior that he called sun shining, and this is how he described it.

He described it as going to people that could benefit you in some way, so going to your boss and letting them know how they did a good job. He was so calculated in how he would do this, that every morning when he got to work, he would go on a sunshine tour where he would go and tell all these people who could benefit in some way that.

They were doing a great job, even if he absolutely didn't believe it, even though, even if he didn't [00:06:00] like the person, even that, and he tried to get me to do it with him as well, which to me, it just felt really false and uncomfortable. And, and why? Why would my intention be to go tell someone else that they're doing a great job?

Why would I, yeah, why would I do that? But that level. It would've never jumped out at me if you had not described that sort of court intrigue that way. And this is actually the same partner who was, when we talked about in a previous episode, who told a friend of ours that he did yoga every night, uh, when he absolutely didn't do yoga.

So I, I would, I would guess that this guy was definitely in the dark triad and, uh. I hope, I hope you rot in hell if you're listening and goodbye. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're very, very dangerous. They're very dangerous. And, and so let me kind of describe a little bit more about their personality, the narcissism.

That piece is the entitled arrogance. The, the, the confidence [00:07:00] that they sort of like, yeah. They fill up the space and think they're all, that the psychopathy or the antisocial personality disorder brings in ruthless. Callousness, the cold-blooded, um, persistence and determination and, and calculating, and they're rather there, there's no empathy, no remorse.

There's no. No moral code or guilt about what they're doing. And then the Machiavellian section is the charm, the schmoozing, the, the knowing how to, um, really turn on please people to, to entice them, to call them into the relationship. And, and when I started to look into this, this, I always into this personality stat.

I always thought that my ex, that I got into a relationship with. Was I say that he's a narcissistic sociopath. Uh, some could argue that's a malignant narcissist. I actually think malignant narcissists are a little more destructive, more negative. They, they hurt people. They're just a cruel people. This type of personality is terribly [00:08:00] hurtful, but it's all in the back backend.

It's all subtle. You don't know that it's happening. It's what they're doing to bring you down. So they make you think that you, you are the best, their best friend. I watched my ex. Um, make relationships with people who would've thought that he, they were tight. That they, they, that they knew him and knew each other, but they didn't know on the back end that the way he talked about them behind their back mm-hmm.

The way he thought they were better than them, the lies I heard him lying to them, um, and that he was using them for advancements. I also watched him. Hunt. He literally was a predator. He would hunt for sexual conquests and, and set women up. We, we had hired a young nurse who's pregnant and married to help take care of his mother, and we were living in another country.

And I watched her, him begin to groom her for a relationship with him and I, yeah, and I would even try to like go whenever he would take her home because she didn't have a car, I would go on the rides half an hour each way just to try to keep her safe. And years [00:09:00] later when I happened to stumble across the text messages, I found, I found what happened to that relationship and he just ended it because he kind of moved on and things didn't work out.

And she would write to him and ask him where was he and why did he disappear from her life? And didn't he care about what was happening in her? I mean, I saw that he was successfully grooming her for this predatory relationship. Yeah, they're very, very toxic people. Very toxic. But here's the part that, this is the big error I made.

I thought evil was scary and, you know, monstrous and, and dark and threatening. I didn't know evil could be seductive and. Charming and make me feel super special. I mean, yes, we have this story of the, the odyssey of the siren, but I never like, thought, I always thought that was like, had to do with more, with sex and seduction.

I didn't realize it really was a, a cautionary tale of a, of all lure of [00:10:00] charm. That there are people who have incredibly ulterior motives, but they can appear very appealing to us. 

Tara Blair Ball: Absolutely. I like that you talked about the entitled arrogance. I was thinking a lot just about the, the swagger. We might mistake arrogance for confidence.

Like it, we might look up to it and think it's attractive when in reality it comes from this. Yeah. This gross sense of superiority. That's one of the 

Dr. Kerry: studies keeps showing is that we get to, we're, this is the thing that all of us need to be careful about is that. I don't know why we feel this way. It'd be interesting to think about why we feel this way, but we're attracted to confidence.

Tara Blair Ball: Hmm.

Dr. Kerry: We, we will pick leaders, we will pick people, put people in position of power because they act like they have it. They know it, they have the answer. I mean, think of the, the phenomenon around Andrew Tate. Tate. Seriously. This is somebody who's really done nothing special with his life. No, it's, it's [00:11:00] because of that swagger that, that, that ability to project confidence even when there's no proof of proof of competence.

That's not, he's not a competent guy. He, he exudes confidence. I've even watched it in groups where the people who have the most power in the group, and it's kind of fascinating to watch social dynamics. People, the most power in the group, everyone around them will start to sort of fawn and try to like get attention and approval, and yet the people at the top.

No, probably don't even have as much going for them as those who are trying to fawn and get into them and get in right with them. And what is it about, it's back to this piece of confidence. It's because of their, their ability to kind of have this charisma, this magnetism, and, and yet we don't do the critical piece of stand back and ask ourselves, what is this person really about?

What is their agenda and are they people who are able to see others in a a reciprocal way? Do they, do they authentically engage and respect other people? Are they [00:12:00] kind, not nice, but are they kind? And we end up then missing the fact that these people are. Maybe not who they seem to be. One of the big reasons why we have such difficulty spotting predatory behavior is because we often assume people are like ourselves.

It's called positive projection. So whatever you don't know about someone, you fill in the blanks with what you know about yourself, and you assume those good qualities that you see in yourself are also in the other person. But this can put you at a grave disadvantage when you meet somebody who's not.

At all like you who doesn't see the world or move and act like you. And we also forget that there are different types of moral development, that people are at different stages. Some people do things just to avoid harm, you know, punishment and other people do things for the ethics of it. And that also confuses us because we tend to assume that people behave the way we behave for the same reasons that we're behaving.

[00:13:00] Kohlberg suggested that there are. Six different stages to moral development and to break them down into roughly big categories. Let's talk about pre-conventional morality. Conventional morality, and post-conventional morality. So sage is one or two, which is pre-conventional. Morality is the focus, is trying to avoid punishment or to gain some type of reward.

So somebody who's acting from this. Uh, level of development, moral development would seem to act moral, but it's really in order to avoid being. Punished in some big way, like maybe going to prison or if it's religion, maybe not going to hell, or maybe they're also operating from some angle of not wanting to appear bad, not wanting to damage their reputation.

So the only followed the rules in order to avoid. Some kind of fallout or, um, consequence that they seem as undesirable. The stages, uh, big stages of three and four, which [00:14:00] fits the conventional morality. Those individuals, their, their focus is on approval, maintaining order, and upholding law. So they often will appear dutiful, law abiding, and religious.

Because it gains them admiration and belonging. So this type of, uh, code of ethics you might see, for example, in the mafia or gangs, when there's enforced loyalty within the group, they look principled. They're following the, the code. But it's only conditional because it applies to the insiders, not to outsiders.

And then there's the post-Conventional Morality, which is a stages five and six. This is a focus on ethical principles, on justice in human rights. This is a stage that re requires empathy and conscience and the ability to take another person's perspective. This. Psychopath and, and narcissists would not fall into this category because their core deficits of low empathy or no [00:15:00] empathy, and their difficulty with self-reflection or self focus would make this type of reasoning extremely difficult.

So back to the questioners. Bigger question is, does all religious people who have some type of personality disorder, is it just really for looks or is there something, could something more sincere be happening below it? I think it's too easy to say. It's. It's this or that, you know, in a yes or no? I think this is not a black and white question.

I think it's on a continuum. I think there are some individuals with personality disorder who have a modicum of conscience and maybe low levels of empathy, and they have enough desire, maybe 'cause of fear, of consequences or belief in a a, something higher than themselves that they would adhere to Principles.

It's more for self-serving reasons than it is for altruistic ones. It's maybe not for the universal ethics of I wanna be a good person, but more of it's the right thing to do [00:16:00] and I don't wanna be punished. But I also think that there are people who are doing it just for. Looks that they see this as, uh, gaining them something that they like, the access that it gives them.

They also like the moral superiority, which is also another form of arrogance and entitlement. You know, so actually that's a form of narcissism. They enjoy that, the look of it. And they also really like the, the cultural acceptance and the power that it would give them. So then they, they adhere to it for the appearance of it.

You know, I'm thinking, for example, there was a. I don't know how many of you guys may know of him, but Ravi Zacharias was a huge kind of, not so much evangelist, but he was definitely sort of a online presence who, who, um, talked about sort of the gospel truths and then when he passed away, it was found out that he had this terrible.

Racket, this horrible abuse ring that was going on around him and, and at his, at his beckoning, you know, so yeah. [00:17:00] Here is somebody who seemed to be so good, have incredible answers, a powerful voice for religion, and yet. That whole thing was basically a scam. The person didn't have that kind of ethics personally at all.

So it can be on a range. You can have individuals who really try and they follow rules, but probably is not for the quite the same reasons that you would hope for. It's not really for, um, looking for the goodness of all, but more of out of their o self-motivation and for themselves. But then there are other people who actually are doing it simply for control and power and because it gives them the kind of access they're looking for.

But there's another thing that often confuses us in these relationships, and that's the mask of sanity. We assume that kind or nice people are good people. We confuse those two things. Niceness with goodness when they actually aren't related at [00:18:00] all. There are a lot of really nice people that actually extremely evil people.

I recently learned that Ted Bundy used to walk his coworkers to the car because they had a fear of a local serial killer. Little did they know that they were actually walking with a very man they were afraid of. Kindness or niceness doesn't mean goodness. Are they kind? Not nice, but are they kind? And we end up then missing the fact that these people are maybe not who they seem to be.

And that's the other part that kind of bothered me about my ex, is that the person that I met, yeah, there was little bleed through of warnings a little bit, but everybody who met him, nearly everybody liked him. He was, he had the ability to project. Incredible likability. I mean, great charm. So that's what makes it hard is these, these, this group of people, it's hard to see through.

They're really hard to see through. 

Tara Blair Ball: Yes, this particular person that I dated very [00:19:00] similarly, very, um, large friend group, lots of people who loved and valued, and I. Talked, talked him up. Um, but when that mask started slipping as our relationship progressed and he felt, I guess, more comfortable dropping it, there was, there was just a lot of nastiness and cruelty underneath this.

I've talked, I've talked previously in other episodes about some of the comments that he would make about other women's bodies. Um, I remember him talking about an ex of his, and he would just say, with a lot of disdain and contempt that she was fat. She was fat and she was gross, and he didn't wanna leave the lights on when they were in bed kind of thing.

Um, yet he still had a, he, he still had a friendship with that ex would see her very frequently, was nice as pie to her face. Um, yeah, and mind you, this is the whole time while this man, this man is exceptionally overweight. Like you were gonna, [00:20:00] you were gonna that part before. Yeah. Like you were gonna talk so badly about other people's bodies while not ha I mean, you better have an, i I mean, still you should never talk badly about other people's bodies.

Yeah. But if you're going to attack other people's bodies, you better not be in that same place. Right. I mean, why would you do that? Um, right, 

Dr. Kerry: right, 

Tara Blair Ball: right. But I, but I also think too, you know, with that. With that swagger or confidence or leadership or et cetera. Um, it made me think of work from Adam Grant, who he did a TED talk as well as he has a book.

Um, and I found this really fascinating in terms of. What we perceive as leadership or success and how you actually might get it. So he says that people are in workplaces are often divided between being matchers givers or takers. So the people you're talking about, you know, these Machiavellian kind of figures, those are more takers.

They're trying to see what they can get or manipulate out of people. Well, those are [00:21:00]considered the least successful individuals in the workplace, the most successful individuals. Our givers are matchers. So a matcher is someone, for example, of like, yeah, I'll do that report for you if you'll do this for me.

Or there's, you know, the givers of who just step in and, um, step in do for others, which, you know, for some of us that can be at our own expense, that can get to be really codependent. But really the matchers and givers are way more successful than those takers because that behavior starts to catch up to them.

Dr. Kerry: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. In fact, I saw a similar study, but it was in a different angle, uh, that said that narcissists actually do quite, can do well at work. They can actually, because their confidence, they sort of can leave with this bravado and then have the visionaries and sort of take, take risks that maybe people who are a little more.

Cautious might be afraid of. Now they struggle with relationships. They struggle following through on commitments. They burn out really quickly and get [00:22:00] bored really quickly. So they would need help with that. Psychopathic people also, they have a piece that they can get, bring to the play, or not bring to the work, and that is the ability to sort of, again, take risks and do new things, but they also likely get bored and they're not as successful as the narcissist can be.

But the group that. Had the worst history with the dark triad personality because they're just about what they can get and they will undermine. That the, the integrity of the company. So they may, they may often will make great first impressions, but that, that's really the only thing that they do that's good for the good, for the group of the company.

I had an, i, it was a reference to what you were saying. They, they are so self-absorbed. One of the things that my ex would do is that we would, we would go to the beach because we were living in a Mexico, on the water and he would walk away from a day of the beach and said there was a lot of meat there.

He was talking about the other women. All they were were meat. That's all. That's all people were. They weren't. So he, so here's the other thing that was kind of interesting and I didn't know, I [00:23:00] just stumbled onto this when I was looking into more dark triad personality, is there is a light triad personality too.

So there's the opposite sort of the yang to the yang to them, which I, I had no idea. They think this person actually really exists. And they even mention a few people they think kind of embody this and just like they're the three traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellian. There's also three traits and this person has what's called humanism.

Faith in humanity and cant. So what those three are, they define them as, um, the ability to sort of see that all humans have integrity and worth. That would be defined as the humanism. The cante treats people, they see people as ends to themselves, like, in other words, they fully respect each person's rights and dignity of selfhood.

Then the other thing is they tend to see the best in people and believe in the goodness of humanity. And so some of the people they think that [00:24:00] embodies this would be, um, Gandhi would be an example. Um, um, mandala, I'm sorry, Nelson Mandala would be another example of that. People who sort of. Promote the piece for or the goodness of the whole?

I would say, I would also say probably JFK. Would it be another great example of that? So I thought that was intriguing that there may be this really dark side, but there's also this really light side too and And how cool is that? It makes sense though, balance. But 

Tara Blair Ball: So a perfect example of the dark triad and the light triad meeting would be when Andrew Tate.

Try to, uh, throw stuff at Greta Berg. Do you remember when that happened? Yes, I do. Greta Berg is a perfect example of light triad, and then there you've got Andrew Tate. And then guess what? You know, he ended up, he ended up getting caught by the authorities because he decided to do that stupid bravado and letting him know, letting the authorities know his location because of a pizza box.

But that's a perfect example. [00:25:00] Right. That's a perfect example. And I would wonder how, if there is a higher likelihood of a light triad being taken advantage of a dark triad because of those, those soft-hearted believing the best in others, uh, response. Yeah. 

Dr. Kerry: You know, my, my ex at his favorite quality of me was, and he, his, his command of English was kind of limited, but, so he used a word that we don't typically use.

He said, you're without malice. 

Tara Blair Ball: Hmm.

Dr. Kerry: When you think about that, what would be a dark triads personality? Everything is laced with malice. They don't do anything for ulterior motives. Every, I'm sorry. They don't do anything for altruistic motives. They do everything for ulterior motives. So that's, that's malicious.

And he said that he loved that I was without malice. Now I'm not saying I'm a light triad personality disorder, but I certainly know that he saw the opposite that himself and that he found that now. Did he, he didn't find it attractive in the [00:26:00] sense that he thought, oh, I love that about her. No, no. He thought, oh, goodie, she's gonna be easy for the picking.

You know my, I said it. In fact, that was the other thing. That was the other thing that came out about this, is that the end result, they said when these relationships, when you discover this, you need to always run. You need to run. So as we wrap up today's episode and you're heading into the Christmas this week, I just really wanna first wish you a wonderful holiday season, but I also want you to remember to not mistaken people's good cheer, charming behavior over the top, confidence with.

Goodness doesn't mean they're people that are safe. It just means that for the moment, they may be nice. So be alert to possible predatory or manipulative behavior. Trust your gut. Don't assume just because somebody appears nice that they are nice. Really listen to how this person makes you feel. Do you feel safe?

Can you be yourself? And [00:27:00] I'm really wishing you a wonderful holiday, and I'll see you back here next week with another special episode. Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? You can find me at Kerry McAvoy PhD or you can learn more about me and my resources such as a toxic free relationship club@kerrymcavoyphd.com, and I'll see you back here next week.