Dark triad traits and virtuous victimhood
Christianity and masculinity
I saw this series of studies recently, — PDF copy — with the name of the study being Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. Some choice quotes:
Notwithstanding these benefits, we propose that claiming victim status, an act we refer to as victim signaling, also allows victims to pursue an environmental resource extraction strategy that helps them survive, flourish, and achieve their goals in situations that are responsive to their claims. By resource extraction we mean that resources are transferred from either individuals or larger institutions (e.g., the state, organization) to the person who signals victimhood. There are many resources that can be transferred to someone claiming victim status (Foa & Foa, 1980), and so we use the term resource broadly to refer to any material (e.g., money,jobs, access to education) and/or symbolic (e.g., respect, tolerance,compassion) assets that one party possesses and that another partywants to acquire.
We argue that contemporary Western democracies have become particularly hospitable environments for victim signalers to execute a strategy of nonreciprocal resource extraction because several features of these societies make victimhood potentially advantageous. First, the spreading of egalitarian values in the West leads many people to perceive any differential outcomes as evidence of overstratification; hence, they conclude that status differences be-tween individuals and groups in society that are associated with these outcomes are illegitimate (Black, 2011). People who signal victimhood because they perceive themselves as being deprived of what others possess, or are treated in a way that others are not, can therefore find a receptive audience among many who detect their signal. Second, the alleviation of human suffering is treated as a paramount value in Western societies. This heightened sensitivity to suffering, coupled with the ease of bidirectional mass communication, such as on social media platforms, has increased the reach and effectiveness of recruiting third-party support for people signaling victimhood (Clark, 2016; Mackey, 2014). Examples can be seen in cases where an individual or a group who claims to be a victim elicits statements of concern and sympathy from politicians, celebrities, media pundits, social activists, and other influential people. Sometimes the victim signalers also receive material or economic support from these parties.
Based on these observations, we propose that victim signaling can be a mechanism through which a pattern of resource transference can be initiated by the signaler. We define victim signaling as a public and intentional expression of one’s disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations. We further suggest that victim signaling is maximally effective at initiating resource transfers when it is coupled with virtue signaling, defined as symbolic demonstrations that can lead observers to make favorable inferences about the signaler’s moral character. We hypothesize that the presentation of a dual signal of virtuous victimhood can induce those who perceive the signal to offer more social and economic resources to the signaler than the presentation of only one of the signals. Moreover, we hypothesize that people willing and able to use deception and manipulation for attaining personal goals—people possessing “Dark Triad” traits (Paulhus & Williams,2002)—will more frequently emit virtuous victim signals com-pared with people lacking Dark Triad traits.
Absolutely true. It’s a common divorce tactic to claim abuse by wives in order to get more favor in court. Same with claiming “rape” if a woman was caught cheating or don’t want to be known as slutting it up. Men can do the same thing, but it’s much more easy to do if you’re a so called minority or part of a victim class. In these cases, the left’s definition of victims (women, black, LGBT, etc.) have a much easier time signalling victimhood to reach beneficial situations.
The Duke Lacrosse team case is a good example of people just running with it without fact checking and Rolling Stone had to pay out over a million in a lawsuit after the truth came out.
Generally, most of the time victimhood is an excuse to absolve someone of the consequences of their own actions (e.g. not taking any responsibility for what happened / blame shifting) and/or gaining resources or social capital.
But even if those who possess Dark Triad traits are shown to emit victim signals more frequently, this signal alone is not a foolproof method for extracting resources from others. In environments where many people claim victim status, observers who want to alleviate human suffering or rectify an injustice have to be selective about where to allocate their limited resources. It is also conceivable that many people who portray themselves as victims will appear undeserving of assistance or attention. A person who is paralyzed in a car accident after having robbed a bank is unlikely to receive much public support. We therefore hypothesize that the most effective means for pursuing a strategy of nonreciprocal resource extraction by signaling victimhood is to present the additional signal of being virtuous.
Virtuous Victimhood
Virtue signaling is defined as “the conspicuous expression of moral values, done primarily with the intent of enhancing one’s standing within a social group” (Oxford English Dictionary). We theorize that three benefits will be accrued from signaling virtue that amplify the effectiveness of a victim signal. First, by communicating one’s superior moral character to the outside world, it can project an image of trustworthiness and allude to the signaler’s benevolent intentions of reciprocity. Reciprocal altruism is the foundation for many cooperative forms of social exchange in large groups (Trivers, 1971), and it starts when one party willingly transfers resources to another with the expectation that their generosity will be matched in the future by the recipient, to the mutual benefit of all. A person who can convincingly present him or herself as virtuous should, on average, be able to induce more people to initiate the voluntary transfer of material or symbolic resources to him or her than someone who sends no signal or who signals that they lack virtue.
This makes sense as well. In general, men seem to be easily duped by this type of thing as well. When we see a woman in trouble we like to help. Call it chivalry or whatever else, it’s common for men to want to step in to help those who are victims or oppressed at least in certain circumstances. Therefore, if someone can exploit this by not only coming off as a victim but a morally upright victim then they’ll likely garner help of many.
The Church is not immune from this. There are many stories of Churches siding with the wife, even if it was the wife divorcing the husband and there was no cheating or anything like that. The Church has implicitly bought into the Duluth model and assumes that the wives are victims since the husband has authority while asserting the wife has hypoagency in that she pretty much has little to no moral responsibility for her actions.
The findings of this study support our hypothesis that virtuous victim signaling is more frequently displayed by Dark Triad personalities, even when controlling for factors that may make people vulnerable to being mistreated or disadvantaged in society (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics) as well as the importance they place on being a virtuous individual as part of their self-concept (as measured by the internalization dimension of moral identity). An examination of the three Dark Triad traits as separate constructs showed that Machiavellianism was the only one among them that predicted both victim and virtuous victim signaling. Psychopathy was marginally associated with victim signaling, but not with virtue signaling, whereas this pattern was reversed for narcissism.
Narcissists only care about themselves and their image, so it’s not surprised they wouldn’t necessarily try to exploit gaining extra resources. However, pure dark triads will probably have both. Psychopathy has a marginal association which seems to be right… if you don’t care about others feelings then you could go either way. If you’re manipulative like a Machiavellian then you want to get as much as possible.
This may explain why some women want an amicable divorce versus taking their husband to the cleaners. Some are higher on Machiavellianism than others. Some are just narcissists and want out if you’re not validating them and their decisions all the time.
The study is 28 pages and 6 different parts of it I believe so I’m not going to go into the rest, but it’s a pretty good read. Basically, the gist of it is that if someone is claiming to be a victim and stands to benefit from it either financially, socially, or otherwise it’s possible that the so-called victim may have some degree of dark triad traits. It’s not always the case that they’re not a victim and claiming it, but those who are trying to do that likely score higher on dark triad traits.
I’m sure many of men who got divorced and taken the cleaners can tell you that their wife was probably BPD or similar which correlates strongly with dark triad traits as well.
