The “g factor,” or general intelligence factor, is a psychometric construct representing one’s general intelligence—the cognitive ability believed to affect intellectual performance across a range of mental tasks. IQ tests aim to measure this general intelligence factor. But what about measuring one’s “dark factor”?
The “D-Factor,” or dark factor, is colloquially expressed as a score representing how sociopathic an individual might be. Knowing someone’s score could be quite useful. In the “Terrible Communities” series, I wrote about the “sociopath question”:
How do we deal with people with innate power literacy, who are bent toward self-serving motives and are extremely skilled at manipulating social fields?
It only takes one terrible person to terrorize a community. However, the term “sociopath” can be confusing, as mentioned in the series:
Sociopath is an amorphous word with no consensus definition. It is often associated with “antisocial personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), characterized by limited empathy, disregard of social norms, and seeing relationships instrumentally. While sociopathy is often used synonymously with psychopathy, psychologist Robert D. Hare considers the former caused by early upbringing and social environment and the latter by genetic factors.
I’ve defined a sociopath in the series as a “person whose primary relational approach is to use others for personal gain,” a catch-all characterization that can encompass both environmental and genetic origins. The researchers who introduced the D-factor have a darker definition:
The general tendency to maximize one's individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others —, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications. Put simply, D describes the tendency to ruthlessly pursue one's own interests, even when this harms others (or even for the sake of harming others), while having beliefs that justify these behaviors.
I took the 70-question test, and here are my results:
Wonderful. I’m not a sociopath, and you’re probably not one either. Still, it might be worth taking the test—if only to see the questions that those high on D would answer affirmatively.
“I think about harassing others for enjoyment.”
“When I get annoyed, tormenting people makes me feel better.”
“I would like to make some people suffer, even if it meant that I would go to hell with them.”
Yikes. The questions above will likely invoke a visceral sense of disgust and horror. Yet, some people do answer these questions favorably. It might be hard to believe, especially for those with “idiot compassion,” who conflate evil with mere trauma or think it can always be redeemed with enough naïve love and understanding. But some people genuinely get a kick out of seeing others suffer and can become sophisticated in making it happen.
In
’s excellent Substack on “pathocracy” (rule by those with personality disorders), he recently wrote a series on Dr. Karen Mitchell’s 2024 PhD thesis, Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching ‘Dark’ Personality Type? The “people of DP”—or “dark personality,” as Dr. Karen Mitchell calls them—are a kind of “interspecies predator,” some of who would say “yes” without hesitation to the questions above.Character taxonomies can be helpful, but whatever term is used—sociopath, psychopath, or interspecies predator—the point is that there are people who are radically self-serving, enjoy seeing others suffer, and are oriented toward power. They are also skilled at hiding their nature, acting as wolves among the sheep, and tend to be spotted only when it’s too late.
In my opinion, the best way to spot them is not by having them take psychometric tests but by “sensing” them. Here is the main rule I follow:
If you consistently feel out of integrity or “dysregulated” around a person, you’re likely relating to a sociopath or someone who has adopted sociopathic traits in certain social contexts.
Sociopaths want you out of integrity. They do not want you to feel internally coherent. They want you permanently off balance and, broadly speaking, will only want you in two modes around them: high from their validation or fearful of their aggression.
All of this can be very subtle at first and easy to miss, as sophisticated predators know what to target: how you really want to be “seen” (often neglected by those close to you) or what you don’t want to be seen as—namely, what you are most insecure about. Sociopaths know how to watch you (stalk you) closely and verbally poke at you to tease these things out.
Once they do, they aim to hook you through either “love bombing” or “instrumental aggression.” The former involves showering you with compliments that create a high, while the latter entails displaying unexpected aggression that spikes fear, all aimed at achieving something from you. This results in “trauma bonding”—a relationship that addicts you to the person and makes you emotionally reliant on them.
How do you avoid this? It’s difficult, especially if you’re around a sophisticated sociopath embedded in an environment that’s hard to escape. The easier-said-than-done answer is “know yourself” or “embody yourself,” meaning develop a deep understanding of when you’re off balance and recognize when you feel whole and grounded in your body. Unfortunately, most people have been so jacked up their entire lives—an emotionally repressed bottle of nerves—that they have no felt-sense memory of such a bodily state.
In my opinion, it’s the only way to spot these predators before “you invite them in” (like one would a vampire) and before they get their hooks in. While I am critical of therapeutic culture in general, as it often leads to the "idiot compassion" mentioned earlier, doing “the work” to become a whole, individuated, and emotionally integrated person is central to recognizing when you are emotionally dysregulated.
If you can manage this state, you can sense a sociopath’s pokes and avoid their hooks, protecting your own integrity and the community you live for—or the one you long for.
If you have any questions, insights, feedback, or criticism on this entry or more generally, message me below (I read and respond on Saturdays) …