The Dark Tetrad of narcissists, Machiavellians, psychopaths, and everyday Sadists are tricky to identify.

Research reveals the Dark Tetrad wear a mask of sanity which makes it challenging to identify them.

Learning how the Dark Tetrad are able to infiltrate workplaces provides strategies to recognize them.

Dr. Hervey Cleckley, a professor of psychiatry and neurology, wrote a seminal book The Mask of Sanity, which was published in 1941. It provided the first in-depth depiction of psychopathology, which is now integrated into the broader category of the Dark Tetrad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday Sadism.

Cleckley’s insights are supported by advancements in psychology and neuroscience, but many are not trained to identify individuals who suffer from these traits. The key takeaway is the mask and learning to see past it can keep individuals and organizations safer. The Dark Tetrad wear a mask of healthy and positive mental traits, while beneath it resides a harmful self.

Our tendency is to think goodness and evil, kindness and cruelty, cannot subsist in the same individual. However, the Dark Tetrad are exemplars of this blend. Our tendency is to think that medicine effectively diagnoses Dark Tetrad disorders and enables the law to protects us from them. In fact, the Dark Tetrad are adept at sliding beneath the radar.

Cleckley tackles the significant problem facing medicine and law in that those who suffer from psychopathology appear sane, competent, and rational, even though they suffer from what he diagnoses as a “severe mental disorder” making them “more dangerous to themselves and to others” than mental patients who are institutionalized.

The Dark Tetrad wears a mask of positive psychological traits

In 2012, researchers Sun, Zhao, Yang and Fan show that positive psychological resources such as hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism are not removed from those in the........

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