Introducing the Persistent Predatory Personality

Delving into Dr. Karen Mitchell's recent PhD thesis

Two sides of the same dark personality. Still from A Clockwork Orange (1971).

In my recent interview with Unbekoming, I mentioned that a reader had recommended the work of Dr. Karen Mitchell. Since then I have been continuing to read her 2024 PhD thesis, Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching ‘Dark’ Personality Type? In addition to giving an introduction to her work during my paid subscriber Zoom meetups, I also interviewed her recently for MindMatters, which will be published soon.

Dr. Mitchell’s work is groundbreaking and highly relevant to political ponerology, so I plan on writing a series of posts summarizing and commenting on the points that stand out to me. This post will cover chapter 1 (Overview) and the first pages of chapter 2 (Literature Review, Critical Analysis, and Fact-Finding Discussions With International Thought Leaders).

What Are We Studying?

Mitchell originally intended to focus on psychopathy, but the size of her target quickly expanded to include a range of distinct but overlapping topics: narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism, the Dark Triad/Tetrad, and various fields dealing with predatory individuals outside of a forensic or academic setting, e.g., domestic violence, child abuse, cults, medicine, business, and politics.

What all these approaches have in common is the attempt to describe and understand “people who actively violate social norms and harm and disadvantage others by conscious choice” (what Mitchell calls “people of DP” [dark personality]). What they don’t have in common is any kind of shared understanding or description of such people. In fact, it is a mess of contradictory models and tests with very little sharing of data across diverse fields.

Depending on which approach we take, the picture of such predatory individuals varies widely. We have a handful of overlapping labels or constructs (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, toxic leadership, etc.), and many dozens of psychological assessment tools for those constructs, none of which agree with each other on precisely what the attributes are of the predators we’re looking for. There are even multiple assessment tools for ostensibly the same construct, like psychopathy, but even these do not contain a consistent set of attributes.

All these tools are a bit like religions—they can’t all be correct. But there’s a tendency among their creators and advocates to assume that one of them must be (i.e., their own). All the competitors must be flawed by comparison, poorly capturing the intended phenomenon. But with so many competing models, it’s more likely that none of them are 100% accurate, especially given the problems highlighted below.

This is a case of confusing the model for the reality being modeled. Historically, we have a phenomenon to be studied and understood: “people who actively violate social norms and harm and disadvantage others by conscious choice.” Over the decades, we have produced various competing models that attempt to describe that phenomenon, including various conflicting descriptions of “psychopathy.” But, by taking one model or test as the standard (like Hare’s PCL-R), we risk mistaking the construct for the reality we’re trying to capture with the construct. If our construct is off, we will miss a perhaps significant portion of the “signal.”

It’s important to be as accurate as possible on this matter, because, as Mitchell writes, “identification of human predators is key to survival.” “The cost to society of people of DP is substantial and negatively impacts all aspects of human existence.” And there are serious questions about the ability of existing models to help identify them outside of the certain specific populations, which probably aren’t fully representative.

For example, depending on the model in question, the populations studied include primarily three groups: incarcerated criminals, college students, and general population samples. None of these populations are representative. Prison populations will primarily sample overt predators; college populations are overrepresented with women and not heterogeneous; and trying to find predators in the general population is like shooting blind and hoping to get lucky. With college students especially, lab studies can’t capture all the nuance of real life and therefore won’t necessarily capture the “depth of malevolence” of actual dark personalities. All three approaches lack a targeted search for higher-functioning dark personalities.

The fact is, not all human predators are overtly criminal, and they don’t all get caught. Mitchell’s goal is a model that will capture not only the obvious criminals, but also “those in significant positions of power” and “those who are neither incarcerated nor high achieving” but who still have dark attributes. The “more covert forms of harm” engaged in by the higher-functioning types “are equally as dangerous and sadistic” as their more overt counterparts, but the tests were never designed for them.

Those of DP who remain outside the prison system may not only outnumber the institutionalised populations but also be more broadly dangerous and harmful to society. … People of DP in political leadership roles have an extreme and far-reaching impact on humanity.

People of DP who are higher functioning are, however, more difficult to identify as their actions intended to cause harm are generally covert and less likely to leave evidence. … In addition, they powerfully and convincingly undermine those who try to expose them.

Good luck rounding up enough of them to step into a lab and study them.

Additionally:

…the nature of the harm caused is difficult to accept by those who have not been personally targeted, particularly where people of DP present in ‘caring’ professions such as religion, charity, and medicine…

As a result, the victim “often struggles to be believed in the face of the powerful manipulative and grooming abilities.” (Lobaczewski highlights this problem as one of the results of a “common psychological worldview.” It isn’t prepared to understand the type of malevolence typical of such personalities.)

An Untapped Source of Insight

Mitchell’s solution to this problem is to tap previously ignored sources for information: those with decades of professional experience dealing directly with such types (overt and covert) and working with their victims. Such “highly knowledgeable research populations [have] not [been] previously canvassed for data.”

Franklin and Hart (2007) found in their research with practitioners that ‘The perspective of those dealing with the topic on a daily basis provided us with an authenticity that simply was not available through researcher experience or by reviewing the literature’ …

Mitchell interviewed 57 “senior expert practitioners” each with an average of 22 years in their respective fields. These included “religious leaders, medical specialists, executives, profilers including FBI and law enforcement, and forensic and nonforensic mental health professionals working with cults, Death Row prisoners, coercive control, and intimate partner violence perpetrators and victims.”

It’s rare to find experts in those fields doing academic research on dark personalities, and almost as rare to find academics who have their hands-on experience. (Several do, though it is often limited to their work in prisons.) But what emerges from Mitchell’s interviews with these people are several shared attributes, some of which are not captured using the existing assessment tools—including perhaps the most important one of all.

The result is what Mitchell calls the “persistent predatory personality” model, “potentially the most comprehensive and nuanced representation yet developed.” It comprises 4 groups of attributes (20 in total), 25 tactics they use, and 12 differentiating factors (different capabilities and values). Those 20 attributes seem to be shared by all such personalities, and they seem to have an innate knowledge of tactics that the rest of us lack (e.g., the specific steps taken to isolate a victim). Lobaczewski calls that the “special psychological knowledge” of the psychopath.

The model also “explores the behavioural manifestations of people of DP across a wide range of contexts, communities, and personal circumstances.” For example, it “highlight how factors such as socioeconomic status, intelligence, and impulse control capability determine how successful a person of DP is at hiding their nefarious intent and actions.” In other words, the model accounts for both successful and unsuccessful psychopaths, overt and covert violators of basic social norms, and demonstrates that the same underlying personality can manifest as both a dumb street-level thug and a smooth boardroom executive.

As we proceed with Mitchell’s thesis we will go into all the above points in detail, as well as answers to these secondary questions covered in her work:

1. What is the key, fundamental attribute of people of dark personality, that which drives the most behavioural manifestations?

2. What are the different types of harm that are inflicted by people of dark personality?

3. Do people of dark personality generally break laws?

4. What are the features that influence whether a person of dark personality is incarcerated?

5. How effective and useful is a continuum model of normal personality in identifying people of dark personality?