And when we're under too little pressure too relaxed we may display some of the dark traits we successfully hide when we are more focused.
Old Nixon hands notice familiar, dark traits in Hillary that The Times, in its endorsement of her candidacy yesterday, called "a fondness for stonewalling" and "a lamentable tendency to treat political opponents as enemies".
Accordingly, the authors suggest, this means that most people possess a mix of light and dark traits.
"It didn't take long to see I would stand above average on these dark traits," he says.
The authors also report that, after controlling for such factors as agreeableness and humility, dark traits are actually positively associated with those qualities of empathy and quiet ego.
He's also excited about new work on "moral Machiavellianism" and "communal narcissists" – people who perhaps have dark traits but use them for good (as they see it).
'For example, in a given person, the D-factor can mostly manifest itself as narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark traits, or a combination of these," said study author Ingo Zettler in a statement.
And according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen, Ulm University, and University of Koblenz-Landau, there are nine "dark traits" that may all be related, stemming from a common root.
Drizzt fights the dark traits that are inherent in the drow.
When people with these types of dark traits signed up for a prison study and became prison guards, they were surrounded by others who shared their tendencies, and they expressed them.
