Can We Hack Our Personality? Using Dark Traits Without Becoming a Jerk
Tuesday, June 17, 2025.
Harness your inner Machiavellian. Without losing your soul.
We’ve made personality traits into moral absolutes: empathy = good, detachment = bad. But real life isn’t a Pixar movie.
Sometimes the most functional person in the room is the one who knows how to strategically detach, say no without apologizing, and set goals like a tactical submarine commander.
The research keeps nudging us toward an uncomfortable truth: some traits we’ve labeled “dark” can be adaptive—if used consciously, ethically, and with a well-tuned internal compass.
So the question isn’t just “Are you Machiavellian?” It’s: Can you be occasionally Machiavellian on purpose, for your own good?
Can Adaptive Aspects Be Learned or Practiced?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, but only if you’re willing to deprogram your own internalized morality around strength.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that empathy is always noble, that softness is inherently good, and that any movement toward strategic self-preservation is selfish. But science doesn’t care about your grandmother’s advice.
Traits like Machiavellian agency, narcissistic extraversion, and primary psychopathy all contain cognitive competencies that can be cultivated:
Delayed gratification and impulse control
Confidence under pressure
Detachment without cruelty
You’re not hacking your personality to become a predator. You’re learning how to stop being prey.
Three Dark Tools Worth Stealing (and How to Practice Them)
Strategic detachment is not the absence of emotion. It’s the ability to hold emotion in reserve when acting on it would cause more damage. Start small:
Don’t text during the argument. Wait.
Don’t post when you’re sad. Reflect.
Learn how to store your emotion without suppressing it.
Assertive Confidence (from narcissistic extraversion)
The world does not reward timidity. It just exploits it. Practice:
Saying no without elaborate explanation.
Stating your needs in direct declarative sentences.
Holding presence without shrinking.
Assertive confidence is not domination. It’s internal permission to matter.
Long-Range Thinking (from Machiavellian agency)
Machiavellian agency is misunderstood because it’s usually reactive. Try using it proactively:
Set strategic emotional goals. How do you want to feel three months from now?
Audit your current habits. What’s actually serving you?
Visualize and plan for multiple scenarios—but only execute one.
High-functioning people don’t just have resilience. They design it.
Emotional Regulation for the Overwhelmed
You cannot flood, vent, spiral, and scream your way into coherence. Sometimes you need to build a container for the parts of you that want to panic.
“Dark traits” offer a path to this:
Detachment gives you time to think.
Confidence gives you permission to choose.
Strategy gives you a map through the mess.
This is not about denying emotion. It’s about creating stability around emotion so you can actually work with it.
When to Seek Therapy—and How to Screen for the Right Fit
Many therapists are trained to amplify emotional expression rather than respect strategic cognition. If you’re a client who leans rational, restrained, or strategic, you may feel misunderstood in therapy.
Ask your potential therapist:
“How do you help clients build emotional regulation who don’t express emotion easily?”
“Do you work with high-functioning clients who struggle with internalized chaos more than external drama?”
“Can you help me refine traits like assertiveness and detachment without treating them as pathology?”
You deserve a therapist who sees your strengths in context, not as red flags.
Closing Thoughts
If you’ve spent your life being told you’re too cold, too calculating, too ambitious—this is your permission slip to unshame your shadow. These traits can protect, guide, and even heal—when used wisely.
You don’t always have to become softer to become better.
Sometimes you just have to get sharper about where your traits point you—and what they cost.
The goal isn’t to become emotionally numb.
The goal is to be able to feel without unraveling. And for some of us, that starts with learning how to harness the very parts of ourselves we were told to hide.
Drop me a line, and I’ll send you my companion worksheet: Shadow Skills for Everyday Sanity
Identify which “dark” traits show up in your personality
Practice reframing them as strategic tools
Use scenario prompts to train adaptive responses
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
RESOURCES:
McIlvenna, M., Fino, E., & Papageorgiou, K. A. (2025). More than just aversive: The bridge between the dark triad and depression and coping flexibility, the role of Machiavellianism. Personality and Individual Differences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2025.112345