The Greater The Player, The Harder The Game.

This is part of the PerPost Project and is a summarization of the following research paper: Machiavellianism and Intimacy Attitudes in the Interpersonal Relationships by Chi-Fai Lo and Eva Chor-Bing Ng; published on 3/6/19 by the Scientific Research Open Access platform.

Sometimes we use science to prove things that we inherently already know. This is definitely the case for the paper I am reviewing in this post. While it seems obvious to state that people who emotionally manipulate others have intimacy issues, this paper does a great job at analyzing the impact that these intimacy issues have on the person’s ability to empathize with and love others.

The thesis statement of the original paper is as follows:

The regression analysis has revealed that Machiavellianism is a reliable predictor of the intimacy attitude of an individual, and the hypothesis that Machiavellianism is negatively correlated with positive intimacy and positively correlated with negative intimacy has been confirmed.

I think this is a good summary of the thesis statement:

A person who has a significant degree of Machiavellianism is a player. The original paper describes these traits as “lacking conventional morals, being emotionally manipulative, and exploiting others for their own self-interest.”