Researchers have replicated and expanded a prior study to investigate the role of dark tetrad traits in “virtuous victim signaling.” Across three studies,, the findings confirmed that narcissism and Machiavellianism are linked to this signaling strategy. They also revealed that sadism, while unrelated to signaling itself, plays a role in exploiting accusations against others for personal satisfaction. The results were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
The dark tetrad refers to a group of personality traits that are socially aversive and often associated with manipulation, exploitation, and harm to others. These traits include narcissism (an inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement), Machiavellianism (a manipulative and cynical approach to relationships and social influence), psychopathy (a lack of empathy and impulsive antisocial behavior), and sadism (a tendency to derive pleasure from causing harm to others). Together, these traits can drive behaviors that exploit social and moral norms for personal gain, often at the expense of others.
Virtuous victim signaling combines the display of two types of signals—victimhood and virtue—to elicit sympathy, aid, or social advantages. A person engaging in this behavior publicly communicates their suffering, disadvantage, or oppression while also projecting an image of high moral character. This dual signaling has been shown to influence others, encouraging resource transfers or leniency while shielding the individual from moral scrutiny.
Virtuous victim signaling also describes one of the most common techniques used by parasitic groups. My somewhat frequent use of the word parasite on this site denotes destructive extractors of resources, control, opportunity, often coupled with sadism. A true human parasite deliberately causes harm, is abusive, sadistic, cruel while also extorting advantages from their hosts, who are decidedly victims of the parasite. I am not talking about interdependence, normal or justified dependence, being lazy, low ambition, eccentric, and so on. A parasite, and much more a parasitic group, is very seriously harmful. We see them proliferating all across the West. In nature broadly, we don’t think of parasites as having a psychology. In humans, parasitic strategies do entail conscious human psychological and physical abuse. ABN
American Buddhist Net 