Authenticity isn't all strawberries and cream. It can get dark, say psychologist Laura Visu-Petra of Babes-Bolyai University in Romania and Ph.D. student Alexandra-Andreea Bulbuc. In the following interview, we take a close lood at the moral dimension of dark authenticity and get granular: How does authenticity vary according the the dark triad factors of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy?

GHB: What is dark authenticity, and what moral conflict does it reveal?

LVP: The concept of dark authenticity brings to light a part of human experience typically concealed from awareness, akin to Jung's understanding of the shadow within: “The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow. Evil is—psychologically speaking—terribly real, he warned in one of his letters. And while we might reluctantly embrace some parts of our dark(er) spectrum, such as anger, jealousy, or even schadenfreude, the egoistic parts of our innermost experience are harder to reconcile. For instance, our research (Buta et al., 2022) shows that for children, adolescents, and grown-ups alike, lies told for self-interest are far less acceptable than the little white lies told to spare hurting someone’s feelings.

The inner conflict between socially enforced, communal values and inner agentic drives has only sparingly been studied in people higher in dark traits, such as the dark triad: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. An individual with psychopathic or Machiavellian tendencies may intimidate others and resort to overt manipulation to accomplish their objectives when placed in a context of power. However, they may also appear likable and communal, intending to make friends with their targets to exploit them in the future. Such dark empaths can adeptly navigate social situations, leveraging their understanding of others' motivations and societal expectations to achieve personal goals.

Besides the agentic narcissists, marked by overt grandiosity, high self-esteem, and self-enhancement (seeing themselves as superheroes—the alpha bias), there is also a type of communal narcissist, displaying an exaggerated self-perception of communal qualities (self-proclaimed........

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