Why Are Narcissitic, Machiavellian Psychopaths So Attractive?

“Next Holtzman and Strube assessed the students’ personalities and their tendencies towards narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. They asked the students to rate themselves and to provide email addresses for a few of their friends so that the researchers could ask them to provide ratings as well. This combination of self and peer ratings was used to calculate a final set personality scores for each student. Furthermore, the students’ ratings on narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were combined into create a composite ‘dark triad’ score. The dark triad score was positively correlated with their ‘dressed-up’ attractiveness — a finding that mirrors previous findings. However, the dark triad score was not related to ratings of physical attractiveness in the dressed-down photos. In other words, people with dark personality traits are not seen as more physically attractive than others when you take away their freedom to wear their own clothes and makeup. People with dark personalities seem to be better at making themselves physically appealing.”
 — Some might say that I am a shallow, self-centered, scheming womanizer with a heart as icey-cold as my piercing blue eyes. Science says that I simply care about my appearance.