Lawrence Kohlbergs Theory of Child Development

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) described three stages of moral

development which described the process through which people learn to
discriminate right from wrong and to develop increasingly sophisticated
appreciations of morality. He believed that his stages were cumulative; each
built off understanding and abilities gained in prior stages. According to
Kohlberg, moral development is a lifelong task, and many people fail to
develop the more advanced stages of moral understanding. Kohlberg's first
'preconventional' level describes children whose understanding of morality
is essentially only driven by consequences. Essentially, "might makes right"
to a preconventional mind, and they worry about what is right in wrong so
they don't get in trouble. Second stage 'conventional' morality describes
people who act in moral ways because they believe that following the rules
is the best way to promote good personal relationships and a healthy
community. A conventional morality person believes it is wrong to steal not
just because he doesn't want to get punished but also because he doesn't
want his friends or family to be harmed. The final 'postconventional' level
describes people whose view of morality transcend what the rules or laws
say. Instead of just following rules without questioning them, 'postconventional' stage people determine what is moral based on a set of values
or beliefs they think are right all the time. For example, during the Vietnam
War, many Americans who were drafted to be soldiers opposed the war on
moral grounds and fled to Canada rather than fight. Even though this
behavior was against the law, these people decided that these particular
laws did not follow the higher rules they believed in, and they chose to
follow their higher rules instead of the law.

Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is "the employment of cunning and duplicity in

statecraft or in general conduct".The word comes from the Italian
Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccol Machiavelli, born in 1469, who
wrote Il Principe (The Prince), among other works.
In modern psychology, Machiavellianism is one of the dark
triad personalities, characterized by a duplicitous interpersonal style, a
cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and personal
gain.

Political Thought
In the 16th century, immediately following the publication of The
Prince, Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague infecting northern
European politics, originating in Italy, and having first infected France. It
was in this context that the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in
Paris came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism, a view greatly
influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his Discours
contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three
languages over the next four years.[3] Gentillet held, quite wrongly
according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear
and precious by our Italian and Italionized [sic] courtiers" in France (in the
words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at
the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in
the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers".[4] In
fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the
massacre, not that politicians telegraph their intentions in writing, until
Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many
contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting
popular concept of Machiavellianism.[5]

The English playwrights William Shakespeare and Christopher

Marlowe were enthusiastic proponents of this view. Shakespeare's
Gloucester, later Richard III, refers to Machiavelli in Henry VI, Part III, for
instance:
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
In The Jew of Malta (158990) "Machievel" in person speaks the Prologue,
claiming not to be dead, but to have possessed the soul of (the Duke of)
Guise, "And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/ To view this land,
and frolic with his friends" (Prologue, lines 34 Marlowe's last play, The
Massacre at Paris (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its
subject, with the Duke of Guise and Catherine de' Medici both depicted as
Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from the start.
The Anti-Machiavel is an 18th-century essay by Frederick the Great,
King of Prussia and patron of Voltaire, rebutting The Prince, and
Machiavellianism. It was first published in September 1740, a few months
after Frederick became king, and is one of many such works.
Denis Diderot, the French philosopher, viewed Machiavellianism as "an
abhorrent type of politics" and the "art of tyranny".

Psychology
Machiavellianism is also a term that some social, forensic
and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to be
unemotional, and therefore able to detach him or herself from conventional
morality and hence to deceive and manipulate others. In the 1960s, Richard
Christie and Florence L. Geis developed a test for measuring a person's
level of Machiavellianism (sometimes referred to as the Machiavelli test).
[8]
Their Mach - IV test, a twenty-statement personality survey, became the
standard self-assessment tool of Machiavellianism. People scoring high on

the scale (high Machs) tend to endorse statements such as, "Never tell
anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so," (No.
1) but not ones like, "Most people are basically good and kind" (No. 4),
"There is no excuse for lying to someone else," (No. 7) or "Most people who
get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives" (No. 11). Using their scale,
Christie and Geis conducted multiple experimental tests that showed that
the interpersonal strategies and behavior of "High Machs" and "Low
Machs" differ.[9] Their basic results have been widely replicated.
[10]
Measured on the Mach - IV scale, males are, on average, slightly more
Machiavellian than females.[9][11]

Motivation

A 1992 review described Machiavellian motivation as related to

cold selfishness and pure instrumentality, and those high on the trait were
assumed to pursue their motives (e.g. sex, achievement, sociality) in
duplicitous ways. More recent research on the motivations of high Machs
compared to low Machs found that they gave high priority to money, power,
and competition and relatively low priority to community building, selflove, and family concerns. High Machs admitted to focusing on unmitigated
achievement and winning at any cost.[2]

Abilities
Due to their skill at interpersonal manipulation, there has often been
an assumption that high Machs possess superior intelligence, or ability to
understand other people in social situations. However, research has firmly
established that Machiavellianism is unrelated to IQ. Furthermore, studies
on emotional intelligence have found that high Machiavellianism actually
tends to be associated with low emotional intelligence as assessed by both
performance and questionnaire measures. Both empathy and emotion
recognition have been shown to have negative correlations with

Machiavellianism. Additionally, research has shown that Machiavellianism

is unrelated to a more advanced theory of mind, that is, the ability to
anticipate what others are thinking in social situations. If high Machs
actually are skilled at manipulating others this appears to be unrelated to
any special cognitive abilities as such.

Relations with other personality traits

Machiavellianism is one of the three personality traits referred to as
the dark triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy. Some psychologists
consider Machiavellianism to be essentially a subclinical form of
psychopathy,[12] although recent research suggests that while
Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlap, they are distinct personality
constructs.[2][13] Machiavellianism has been found to be negatively
correlated with Agreeableness (r = -0.47) and Conscientiousness (r =
-0.34), two dimensions of the Big Five personality model (NEO-PI-R).
[13]
However, Machiavellianism correlates more highly with the Honestyhumility dimension of the six-factor HEXACO model than with any of the
Big Five dimensions.[2] Machiavellianism has also been located within
the interpersonal circumplex, which consists of the two independent
dimensions of agency and communion. Agency refers to motivation to
succeed and to individuate the self, whereas communion refers to
motivation to merge with others and to support group interests.
Machiavellianism lies in the quadrant of the circumplex defined by high
agency and low communion.[2] Machiavellianism has been found to lie
diagonally opposite from a circumplex construct called self-construal, a
tendency to prefer communion over agency. This suggests that people high
in Machiavellianism do not simply wish to achieve, they wish to do so at the
expense of (or at least without regard to) others.[2]
Game theory

In 2002, the Machiavellianism scale of Christie and Geis was applied

by behavioral game theorists Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Kevin
McCabe and Vernon L. Smith[11] in their search for explanations for the
spread of observed behavior in experimental games, in particular individual
choices which do not correspond to assumptions of material self-interest
captured by the standard Nash equilibrium prediction. It was found that in
a trust game, those with high MACH-IV scores tended to follow homo
economicus' equilibrium strategies while those with low MACH-IV scores
tended to deviate from the equilibrium, and instead made choices that
reflected widely accepted moral standards and social preferences.

In the workplace

Machiavellianism in the workplace is the employment of cunning and

duplicity in a business setting. It is an increasingly studied phenomenon.
The root of the concept of Machiavellianism is the book The Prince by
Machiavelli which lays out advice to rulers how to govern their subjects.
Machiavellianism has been studied extensively over the past 40 years as a
personality characteristic that shares features with manipulativeleadership,
and morally bankrupt tactics. It has in recent times been adapted and
applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers
and academics. The Machiavellian typically only manipulates on occasions
where it is necessary to achieve the required objectives.[14]
Oliver James identifies Machiavellianism as one of the dark triadic
personality traits in the workplace, the others being narcissism and
psychopathy.[15]
A new model of Machiavellianism based in organizational settings consists
of three factors:[14]

maintaining power

harsh management tactics

manipulative behaviors

The presence of Machiavellianism in an organisation has been positively

correlated with counterproductive workplace behaviour and workplace
deviance.[14]