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Social adroitness is a personality trait measured in the Jackson Personality Inventory [1] and the Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised. [2] Adroitness is not explicitly measured by these tests, but rather the characteristics are measured through different scales.
Adroitness assesses the ability to regulate your own behavior in order to get what you want from others. It differs from psychopathy in that the adroitness is not intrinsically narcissistic or manipulative, but refers rather to the set of social skills that allow one to work with others productively. In that sense it is closely related to conceptions of emotional intelligence.
Tools of adroit behavior include flattery, indirection, listening, circumspection, reciprocal altruism, politeness and strategic reasoning.
The Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised (JPI-R) is widely considered to be one of the most psychometrically sound measures of personality. In one convenient form, the JPI-R provides a measure of personality that reflects a variety of social, cognitive, and value orientations, which affect an individual's functioning. [3]
The JPI-R was originally based on Murray's theory of needs. [4]
Adroitness is defined by its characteristics and behaviors. Example behaviors include:
Diderot's Encyclopedie offers an early modern perception of adroitness, which in the following quotation is referred to as social finesse. In the quote below it describes the difference between finesse and delicacy.
"Finesse is not entirely the same thing as subtlety. You lay out a trap with finesse, you escape from it with subtlety; your conduct is fine or neatly turned out, you play a subtle trick; if you always act with finesse, you inspire distrust. It's always a mistake to find finesse in everything. Finesse in works of the mind, as in conversation, consists in the art of not expressing your thought directly, while letting it be easily understood: it's an enigma that witty people immediately solve. Once, when the Chancellor offered his protection to a high court, the chief justice said, turning towards his colleagues, "Gentlemen, let us give thanks to the Lord Chancellor, he's giving us more than we ask him for;" [4] that répartie is a very fine one. Finesse in conversation or in writing is not the same thing as delicacy; the former can be applied equally to witty and pleasant things, to blame and even to praise, even to indecent things that are covered by a veil through which you can see them without blushing. You can say bold things with finesse . Delicacy is used to express pleasant and gentle feelings, fine bits of praise; finesse is therefore used rather in an epigram, delicacy in a madrigal. Delicacy is contained in lovers' jealousies; finesse is not. The praises that Despréaux [5] sang to Louis XIV are not always equally delicate; [6] his satires are not always fine enough. When Iphigenia in Racine's tragedy receives the order from her father not to see Achilles any more, she cries out: Sweeter gods, you had asked only for my life. [7] The true character of this line is rather delicacy than finesse ." [5]
In general, people exhibiting this trait understand how to get the most out of people, often through indirect means. [6]
As stated above, the adroitness trait is indirectly measured by the second and third clusters on the Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised, or JPI-R. [2] The second cluster is the extroverted cluster, which contains the sociability, social confidence, and energy level scales. The third cluster is the emotional cluster, which contains the empathy, anxiety, and cooperativeness scales. Specifically, the sociability, empathy, and cooperativeness scales of the JPI-R measure adroitness. The Five Factor Model, or FFM, measures adroitness through the extroversion and agreeableness clusters. [2]
Adroitness is often compared to both psychopathy and Machiavellianism, as all three can be measured by similar scales on personality inventories. [6]
Psychopathy is a series of behaviors that loosely correspond with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, or ASPD. [7] Psychopathy is made up of two parts, aggressive narcissism and a parasitic lifestyle, while ASPD only accounts for the narcissistic personality. Psychopathy is similar to adroitness in that the manipulation of others is an important factor. Psychopathy is considered a negative trait, while adroitness is considered a neutral trait. The difference lies in the intent of the manipulation. Psychopaths manipulate others for their own benefit or amusement, or to harm another person. People exhibiting the adroitness trait manipulate others in order to help other people and almost never intend to harm anyone. [7]
Machiavellianism resembles psychopathy in the intent of the manipulation. It does not include the impulsive and dangerous behaviors associated with psychopathy. [6]
As previously stated, adroitness is not clearly measured as a specific personality trait, but is instead measured by different scales and clusters. [2] Most personality inventories have some measure of honesty built in. [2] Traits like psychopathy and Machiavellianism are usually measured as negative honesty traits. [6] While adroitness is considered a positive trait compared to these two, the inherent manipulation makes it almost impossible to accurately place it on an honesty scale, which may account for why it is not more specifically measured on personality inventories.
Because many of the behaviors associated with adroitness are similar to some of the behaviors associated with psychopathy, experiments that delve into the mind of the psychopath can shed light onto some of the brain function involved with the adroitness trait. In 2008, fMRI testing showed that psychopaths are impaired in basic emotional and cognitive functions. [8] Because these functions are controlled by the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobes of the brain, there must be some problem in these areas. Due to the aforementioned similarities, it follows that people expressing the adroitness trait may also have some kind of problem or damage in these parts of the brain. The cognitive functions of psychopaths and controls in this study were tested through the use of the Simon paradigm. This test measures reaction time based on stimulus and response locations. In the Müller et al. study, the stimuli were an X and an O, both of which appeared at different locations on a screen. The participant was required to respond by tapping the right side of a separate screen with their middle finger for X and on the left side with their index finger for O. In the control group, as the task became more difficult, negative emotion interfered with cognition. Essentially, as people became angrier, it became more difficult to accurately complete the task. However, as the psychopaths became angrier, their performance did not change, suggesting that there is a disconnect between the emotional process and cognitive abilities in the psychopathic brain. [8] If psychopaths have trouble connecting emotion to the thinking process, the perhaps those with the adroitness trait do as well. Certainly the ability to manipulate others requires a substantial amount of effort, regardless of emotion. The resource allocation model suggests that negative emotions worsen cognitive performance on difficult tasks because they drain resources that are required for cognitive processes. [8] Manipulation and persuasion are cognitive processes that require a lot of effort due to the number of things that require focus. The art of manipulation requires some element of dishonesty as well as a significant knowledge of both the target as well as the purpose of manipulation, or the ability to fabricate important details. These elements are also required for persuasion. It follows that these processes must require a significant amount of effort, and therefore emotions, especially negative ones, would take resources away from those processes. Manipulation and persuasion can also be very stressful tasks. Stress is known to cause negative emotions, which are shown to interfere in complex cognitive processes. Therefore, people who express the adroitness trait may have similar damage to the prefrontal cortex and/or temporal lobe as psychopaths.[ citation needed ]
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments. Although the term first appeared in 1964, it gained popularity in the 1995 best-selling book Emotional Intelligence, written by science journalist Daniel Goleman. Goleman defined EI as the array of skills and characteristics that drive leadership performance.
Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a person regrets an earlier action or failure to act, it may be because of remorse or in response to various other consequences, including being punished for the act or omission. People may express remorse through apologies, trying to repair the damage they've caused, or self-imposed punishments.
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Types of empathy include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.
Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in cooperation and social harmony.
Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have been used throughout history that are only partly overlapping and may sometimes be contradictory.
The Psychopathy Checklist or Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, now the Psychopathy Checklist—revised (PCL-R), is a psychological assessment tool that is commonly used to assess the presence of psychopathy in individuals—most often those institutionalized in the criminal justice system—and to differentiate them from those with antisocial personality disorder, a similar but distinct illness. It is a 22-item inventory of perceived personality traits and recorded behaviors, intended to be completed on the basis of a semi-structured interview along with a review of "collateral information" such as official records.
The dark triad is a psychological theory of personality, first published by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy. Each of these personality types are called dark because each is considered to contain malevolent qualities.
Affect measures are used in the study of human affect, and refer to measures obtained from self-report studies asking participants to quantify their current feelings or average feelings over a longer period of time. Even though some affect measures contain variations that allow assessment of basic predispositions to experience a certain emotion, tests for such stable traits are usually considered to be personality tests.
The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was developed in 1979 by Raskin and Hall, and since then, has become one of the most widely utilized personality measures for non-clinical levels of the trait narcissism. Since its initial development, the NPI has evolved from 220 items to the more commonly employed NPI-40 (1984) and NPI-16 (2006), as well as the novel NPI-1 inventory (2014). Derived from the DSM-III criteria for Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the NPI has been employed heavily by personality and social psychology researchers.
Manipulation in psychology is a behavior designed to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to one’s advantage. Definitions for the term vary in which behavior is specifically included, influenced by both culture and whether referring to the general population or used in clinical contexts. Manipulation is generally considered a dishonest form of social influence as it is used at the expense of the others.
The HEXACO model of personality structure is a six-dimensional model of human personality that was created by Ashton and Lee and explained in their book, The H Factor of Personality, based on findings from a series of lexical studies involving several European and Asian languages. The six factors, or dimensions, include Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Each factor is composed of traits with characteristics indicating high and low levels of the factor. The HEXACO model was developed through similar methods as other trait taxonomies and builds on the work of Costa and McCrae and Goldberg. The model, therefore, shares several common elements with other trait models. However, the HEXACO model is unique mainly due to the addition of the Honesty-Humility dimension.
Neurocriminology is an emerging sub-discipline of biocriminology and criminology that applies brain imaging techniques and principles from neuroscience to understand, predict, and prevent crime.
The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI-Revised) is a personality test for traits associated with psychopathy in adults. The PPI was developed by Scott Lilienfeld and Brian Andrews to assess these traits in non-criminal populations, though it is still used in clinical populations as well. In contrast to other psychopathy measures, such as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), the PPI is a self-report scale, rather than interview-based, assessment. It is intended to comprehensively index psychopathic personality traits without assuming particular links to anti-social or criminal behaviors. It also includes measures to detect impression management or careless responding.
The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale (LSRP) is a 26-item, 4-point Likert scale, self-report inventory to measure primary and secondary psychopathy in non-institutionalised populations. It was developed in 1995 by Michael R. Levenson, Kent A. Kiehl and Cory M. Fitzpatrick. The scale was created for the purpose of conducting a psychological study examining antisocial disposition among a sample of 487 undergraduate students attending psychology classes at the University of California, Davis.
The Honesty-Humility factor of the HEXACO model of personality is one of the six basic personality traits. Honesty-Humility is a basic personality trait representing the tendency to be fair and genuine when dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others, even when someone might utilize them without suffering retaliation. People with very high levels of the Honesty-Humility avoid manipulating for personal gain, feel little desire to break rules, are uninterested in wealth and luxuries, and feel no special right to elevated social status. Conversely, persons with very low levels on this scale will compliment others to get whatever they want, are inclined to break the rules for personal gains, are motivated by material gain, and feel a strong sense of self-importance.
Callous-unemotional traits (CU) are distinguished by a persistent pattern of behavior that reflects a disregard for others, and also a lack of empathy and generally deficient affect. The interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors may play a role in the expression of these traits as a conduct disorder (CD). While originally conceived as a means of measuring the affective features of psychopathy in children, measures of CU have been validated in university samples and adults.
The presence of psychopathy in the workplace—although psychopaths typically represent a relatively small fraction of workplace staff—can do enormous damage when in senior management roles. Psychopaths are usually most common at higher levels of corporate organizations, and their actions often cause a ripple effect throughout an organization, setting the tone for an entire corporate culture. Examples of detrimental effects are increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover and absenteeism; reduction in productivity and in social responsibility. Ethical standards of entire organisations can be badly damaged if a corporate psychopath is in charge. A 2017 UK study found that companies with leaders who show "psychopathic characteristics" destroy shareholder value, tending to have poor future returns on equity.
Neuromorality is an emerging field of neuroscience that studies the connection between morality and neuronal function. Scientists use fMRI and psychological assessment together to investigate the neural basis of moral cognition and behavior. Evidence shows that the central hub of morality is the prefrontal cortex guiding activity to other nodes of the neuromoral network. A spectrum of functional characteristics within this network to give rise to both altruistic and psychopathological behavior. Evidence from the investigation of neuromorality has applications in both clinical neuropsychiatry and forensic neuropsychiatry.
The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (DTDD) is a brief 12-question personality inventory test to assesses the possible presence of three co-morbid socially maladaptive, dark triad traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The DTDD was developed to identify the dark triad traits among subclinical adult populations. It is a screening test. High scores on the DTDD do not necessary correlate with clinical diagnoses.
In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is a personality trait centered on manipulativeness, callousness, and indifference to morality. Though it has nothing to do with the historical figure or his political thought, the trait is named after the political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, as psychologists Richard Christie and Florence Geis used edited and truncated statements inspired by his works to study variations in human behaviors. Their Mach IV test, a 20-question, Likert-scale personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool and scale of the Machiavellianism construct. Those who score high on the scale are more likely to have a high level of deceitfulness and a cynical, unempathetic temperament.