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The Machiavellians Among Us

December 5, 2011, 2:10 pm

Machiavelli advocated deceit. In The Prince, he wrote that “no enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.” So it would be a problem for a would-be Machiavellian if there existed some method for identifying amoral backstabbers before they plunged the knife.

A new paper hints that there might be such a method. Researchers gave 43 salespeople the Mach-IV test, which is a commonly used exam to determine whether someone has Machiavellian tendencies. They then used a 3-D MRI machine to analyze the subjects’ brain structures. Researchers hypothesized that that there would be differences in volume in certain regions — basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, insula, and hippocampus — between so-called high Machs and low Machs.

And that’s what they found. There were, they write, “[s]ignificant positive differences for high versus low Machiavellianism” in gray matter volume in those particular areas of the brain. They speculate that this is because of neuroplasticity, that is, the fact that the brain physically changes in response to environmental factors. Just as teaching people to juggle alters the structure of their brains, perhaps being deceitful bulks up one’s left prefrontal cortex, which is “used in planning to outsmart people and regulation of negative feelings.”

There are an abundance of caveats here. Because of the small sample size and the fact that only people from one profession were studied, the results may not apply to the rest of us humans. And it’s not as if they isolated a Machiavellian part of the brain; the left prefrontal cortex isn’t employed just for nefarious purposes.

Besides, the results don’t do you much good if you’re trying to figure out whether the guy two cubicles over is plotting against you. Bob is unlikely to provide you with MRI scans of his brain.

But maybe the answer is in his face. A 2009 paper tried to determine whether we know someone has Machiavellian tendencies just by looking at him. Researchers showed participants pictures of the faces of people who had taken the Mach-IV. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they found that participants’ amygdalas, which process emotion, were activated more when they viewed the faces of high Machs. They also lit up when they viewed people who scored high on psychopathy measures, though not on faces of people who scored high on narcissism (incidentally, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism make up what psychologists ominously call “the dark triad”). From the paper:

This indicates facial geometry contains accurate and reliable signals that reflect an individual’s trustworthiness and the neurology associated with threat detection is sensitive to these features.

Again, there are reasons to be skeptical. I haven’t come across follow-ups to this study (let me know if I’ve missed them) and there are scientists who think this kind of light-it-up brain-scan research is hooey.

Both of these studies depend on the widely used Mach-IV measure, which asks participants to agree or disagree with 20 statements like “All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than to be important and dishonest” and “Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives” and “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.” You have to wonder whether a true high Mach would really answer those questions honestly.

(The first paper mentioned is titled “The Making of the Machiavellian Brain: A Structural MRI Analysis” was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics. You can find the abstract here. The second paper, “Trustworthy? The Brain Knows: Implicit Neural Responses to Faces that Vary in Dark Triad Personality Characteristics and Trustworthiness” was published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology. The full paper is here.)

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goddess60

Great resource for students it is unfortunate that so many institutions of higher education are in a budget crisis and have to cut back on services. I am an Academic Advisor/Student Personal Counselor at a Community College and I see how lost students can be in-regards to the services available to them and how to take advantage of them. I have begun to do a workshop at the beginning of each semester on Executive Skills because, as the article states, it is assumed that students know how to to implement time management, decision making, organizing course work and stay on task. I believe that coaching for first time students and especially those that find themselves on Academic Warning should have a coach to assist them on whatever level they need. After all it is about student success and some need a little more support than others. I also include a exercise in my workshop to promote self reflection so they can see how they approach a project and explore why are they procrastinating to complete course work. This article really supports my beliefs on assisting students to be successful.
bobshireman

The full Bettinger study is available at:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16881
DPhilabaum

Great news and congrats to InsideTrack for helping to introduce coaching to campus. Campuses would be wise to develop a culture of coaching on their campus. One way we try to help this process for colleges that are on a limited budget is to connect alumni and students the day they arrive on campus using social media. Career Lift is designed to help students meet dozens of working alumni during their college years so they have a better understanding of career paths, jobs, responsibilities and work ethics required to success. http://www.talentmarks.com/Who_Are_You/Alumni_Association/CAREER_LIFT.aspx
Don Philabaum
lgabele

I can’t say enough good things about this program based on the four years it has been in effect at Florida State University. For the first two years we set up randomized control trials to test the effects of success coaching. The results exceeded all expectations and we were then able to focus success coaching on students with a higher risk of dropping out.
No one should be concerned about the costs as we recovered costs and much more as students stayed in school and paid tuition.
The focus on quality and measurements by the success coaches program had a positive effect on all advisors and improved advising in general. Larry Abele
lucidobizcoach

The Stanford University study narrowly, and erroneously, defines student coaching as “a form of counseling that helps struggling students.” While the much-needed mass-market services like the one sited here focus on retention and graduation by serving those who are in danger of dropping or failing out, readers should know that there is also a category of student coaching that targets students at the opposite end of the spectrum. This type of student coaching provides nurturing and grooming for ambitious, high-potential students at competitive institutions much the same way that executive business coaching works in the professional world.

WIthin the corporate sector, coaching is typically provided for high-potential executives, grooming them on their climb to the top. But too often, we expect our best and brightest university students to transition to the high-stakes complexities of campus life without the same kind of support and without much real world experience. Many become overwhelmed, stressed and unwittingly make costly decisions.

My business partner and expert in student coaching, Dr. RC Glen, points out that the rising cost of tuition, combined with students taking longer to graduate, means that the price of a college education represents one of the largest investments most people will make in their lifetime. Managing that investment in today’s economy, where there is more competition for fewer jobs and graduate school slots, is more important than ever. Early access to executive-style coaching ensures these talented students hit the professional ground running.

–Tony Lucido
http://www.iGoalzCoaching.com
22067030

Even assuming that the experiment is actually measuring (a) people as they work out how other people feel and think and (b) have highly developed neural structures for working such things out, that does not necessarily mean that deception is the motive. Perception may also be the motive; ideally, detectives, journalists, and psychologists would be used to working such things out.

Second, if reading faces was that straightforward, the adaptive pressure for accurate face reading would be enormous. Moving from neurology to genetics, a Machiavellian gene would try to introduce noise if not dissembling into facial expressions. It would probably work by having the individual learn which facial expressions work and which ones don’t, with the result that there would be little uniformity between facial expressions of Machiavellians.

—–GLMcColm
eacowan

It helps to be a Machiavellian to know one, and I advocate counter-Machiavellianism among academic faculty. I have lived according to the Machiavellian principle for the many years during which I was a professor. I found that the Machiavellian mind-set was very helpful in dealing with relatively weak or nebbishy administrators. I concluded that the way to remove, say, an obnoxius department chair is to go the indirect route and manage to eliminate the administrator (dean, provost, et al.) that is protecting such a chair. Another neat way of dealing with an obnixious chair is to contrive to have such a person elevated to some higher administrative post, where the principle of “out of sight, out of mind” will obtain. As for Machiavelli’s _The Prince_, my favorite chapter is no. 19, “That We Must Avoid Being Despised and Hated”. To this end, Machiavelli advocated that the Prince should instill fear among his subjects, but avoid being hated. By this token you will recognize a Machiavellian administrator. (As an aside, I’m not certaiin whether the Machiavellian principle should apply to the current crop of corporate-style administrators. Further study of this breed is advised.) –E.A.C.
jranelli

machiavel’ is far too complex for this assignment…the prototype these days should be mackers (from the scottish play).
http://whytheology.wordpress.com/ Trey Medley

I thought it had become increasingly accepted that far from representative of his political thought, Machiavelli’s *The Prince* is at the very least a short piece incongruous with most of Machiavelli’s writing, if not outright satire of the Medici family (recall he wrote it in exile for some of the things he said prior to it, things he would go back to saying after he wrote the Prince that advocated republics rather than monarchies). Granted, we are unlikely to change the meaning of the term Machiavellian any time soon, but we should try to avoid declarations that are probably untrue such as ‘Machiavelli advocated deceit.’
electronicmuse

Actually, those who know how to look carefully can tell when someone is lying immediately: their lips move when they speak.
raymond_j_ritchie

Phrenology was judging character and intelligence of people from bumps on their skulls. It was classic 19th century pseudoscience. Today we laugh at the phrenology diagrams of skulls because we are now so much more sophisticated. You have got to be joking.
Judging character and intelligence from a MRI scan is just high tech phrenology and is no more likely to work.
However, even today some people are said to “not look intelligent.” That is quite irrational. I am one of those unfortunates that look like the village idiot even though I am not. Upset me terribly when I was young. I have now learnt to sometimes take advantage of it.
I am one of those few people who has actually read Macheavelli. I found very little in The Prince that surprised me except how little things have changed in 500 years. I have also read the Discourses on Livy. His unacknowledged effects (from both books) on the US constitution are obvious. He would have instantly recognised the Office of the US Presidency as an elective monarchy. He also well understood not only that republics tended to decay but why they tended to do so: something americans prefer not to read about and rarely quote the weaknesses of republics he recognised.
Some of his ideas have served well over the centuries, for example his low opinion of mercenaries and the consequences of being propped up by foreign troops are as valid now as in 1500. He also noted that some cultures can be easily defeated in the field but the countries cannot be occupied militarily because of the feral nature of the population. He understood the perils of imperialism by suction. His comments on populism were not new but were spot on, as were his insights into why political reform is so rarely successful and so unpredictable in its consequences. He understood the venal nature of mankind “A man is more likely to forgive the execution of his father than a rise in taxes”. The hip-pocket nerve is the most sensitive organ of the body and is not very amenable to reason.
Some of his ideas have not served well. Pacification of unruly provinces by setting up colonies has not worked in most cases. He recognised the problem but his suggested solution has not usually worked and actually made it worse and made the problem permanent.
renellin

Additionally, I will never understand those interrogatories that contain statements like those outlined above. Many have the obvious answer that many people won’t give a second thought to, but doesn’t actually address the issue it seems to be confronting.
renellin

Didn’t you forget to include the name of the subgroup you wished to disparage with that statement? Or did you mean to say everyone is constantly lying?
jamesebryan

Regarding this Mach-IV test – Wouldn’t answering the first question depend upon one’s definition of “better,” (do we mean morally, emotionally, financially?) and wouldn’t answering the second question in the negative be as likely to indicate a pessimistic outlook instead of a manipulative personality? And what if it turns out the answer to the third is that it is objectively true, depending again on what is meant by “best?” Somewhere there has to be a scientific study establishing that people are reassured by having their preconceived notions confirmed and upset by having them challenged. If the best way to handle people is to keep them happy, and you can do that by telling them what they want to hear, you could be an entirely considerate, well-meaning teller of little white lies, which would make you an enabler, not a Machiavellian.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=563803812 Eileen Sullivan

I’ve known so many of them!
katisumas

On behalf of Machiavelli’s memory, I thank you.

It pretty much appears that what he was writing was a way to express his objections to the way power was seized and held in the city states of his time. (which used to be republics before these princes took over….)
12080243

Ken Wallace [an administrator at State University] had never read Machiavelli, but he was
in tune with—and quite naturally applied the principles of—The Prince. Professor Rufus [McCoy] had rigorously studied Machiavelli, but wasn’t in tune with—nor did he apply the principles of—The Prince. Too bad for Rufus, because Machiavelli would have advised him that

“[T]here is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the [administration] in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it.”

Why didn’t Rufus consider Machiavelli’s admonition? It wasn’t, as noted, because he was unfamiliar with Machiavelli’s keen observations. No, instead, he was a true believer, an academic, a denizen of a rational community: “State University is a world class institution dedicated to truth, evidence, and sound reasoning; we apply the highest ethical principles in all of our activities.” So says the Faculty Guidebook.

The Faculty Guidebook describes an altogether different community for Rufus than Machiavelli advised for the Prince. Or so Rufus would have argued, if he’d thought to. So, he would have scoffed at the notion that he was pushing “to initiate a new order of things.” Or so he would have argued, if he’d thought to.

Soon to be released, see, “Rufus McCoy and Profiteers in the Ivory Tower,” by Marc DePree, http://www.usmnews.net