Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic
Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One
Overarching ‘Dark’ Personality Type?

Karen Mitchell
2024
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/15436c0d-4d4f-4506-b649-eb1129ab0390/1/karen_mitchell_thesis.pdf

Abstract
People who actively violate social norms and harm and disadvantage others by conscious choice have been the focus of research for centuries. Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, collectively the dark triad or dark personality (DP), are conceptualisations intended to give meaning to the characteristics common to socially aversive personalities. Behavioural researchers in fields such as toxic leadership, coercive control in domestic violence, cults, and child sex abuse in religion also explore the characteristics of those who are socially aversive.
There is, however, substantial dissention regarding shared attributes of those who are socially aversive, resulting in considerable ongoing friction and fragmentation in the field.

This is neither in the interests of humankind, as identification of human predators is key to survival, nor in the interests of researchers who are committing time and resources to
vastly conflicting ideas.
A model is presented in this thesis which appears to represent the nature of socially aversive personalities, people of DP, more comprehensively than any existing model or collection of behaviours. This three-dimensional model, the Persistent Predatory Personality (PPP) model, includes attributes, an arsenal of weaponry (tactics), and differentiating features (capabilities and values), which emerged from the data.
The thesis aims to identify common threads of research, resolve longstanding issues of dispute, and further clarify shared attributes of people of DP. New and unique approaches
to research in the area and highly knowledgeable research populations not previously canvassed for data were engaged to achieve this aim. The data, which are extensive and
highly nuanced, clarify longstanding points of contention in the DP literature.
An important and unique finding from the data is that people of DP who are higher functioning and engage in more covert forms of harm are equally as dangerous and sadistic, and share the same attributes, as those who commit overt acts of harm such as murder. iii
The data were collected internationally from 57 senior expert practitioners cumulatively representing more than a thousand years, and individually an average of 22 years, of direct,
continuous experience with multiple people of DP and their targets/victims. Research participants were drawn from both forensic and nonforensic contexts and include religious leaders, medical specialists, executives, profilers including FBI and law
enforcement, and forensic and nonforensic mental health professionals working with cults, Death Row prisoners, coercive control, and intimate partner violence perpetrators and victims,
and others, including world-leading academics. Data were collected via multiple interviews and the Delphi survey technique.