Please stop helping me!: Well-intentioned “dark” actors present others as less socially desirable to audiences

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Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism are dark-personality constructs that relate to propensities to harm others. Accounts of these propensities tend to highlight malevolence or pathological deficits, but innocent cognitive mechanisms may also be relevant. In that regard, we tested the novel idea that well-intentioned people higher in dark-personality constructs are prone to present others' identities in a less socially desirable way. Participants imagined various scenarios that entailed helping someone shape his/her public identity and then rated the extent they would cultivate socially (un)desirable characteristics in the target, how beneficial these characteristics would be to the target, and how much they attempted to help the target. Generally, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism predicted enhanced cultivation of socially undesirable characteristics in targets. These effects corresponded with rating socially undesirable characteristics as more beneficial and could not be attributed to trying to be unhelpful. Hence, what can appear as a propensity amongst dark actors to harm others' good character can arise during well-intentioned behavior to help others make a “good” impression.