The Dark Psychology Behind Digital Abusers

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]I recently became aware of a fascinating study from Serbia which found the personality type can predict the exact type of online abuse that a person may commit. What's sometimes called intimate partner cyber violence. Typically, when studies look at things like this, they don't dig deep enough. They're kind of too broad. Like dark tetred personalities are more likely to be aggressive. What I really liked about this study was that it gets into the nitty-gritty details. Not only does it look at all four types of the dark tetrd personalities and different types of digital abuse, it even breaks down the dark tetrd personalities into more specific subtypes. To me, the findings were pretty fascinating.

[00:00:46]So, the study in question, they gave self-reported questionnaires to 293 straight adults in Serbia. They assess their personality type to see if they fell into the dark tetrd. The dark tetrd includes mchavelianism which is kind of cynical and manipulative. Imagine like Peter Beish from Game of Thrones.

[00:01:03]Narcissistic which they broke down into two further dimensions. One was the desire to be praised. Think like Michael Scott from the office. And the second one was desire for others to fail. Here you can imagine maybe like Cersei Lannister. The third personality type is psychopathic, which they split into primary, which is kind of cold and calculating, maybe like Tywin Lannister, and secondary, which is more impulsive and erratic. Think like Joffrey Lannister. And the fourth type of personality is sadistic, where you literally derive pleasure from the suffering of others, like Ramsay Bolton.

[00:01:34]The types of digital abuse that they looked at was tracking or surveilling, bombarding with messages, digital threats, and checking your partner's digital devices. So, the findings were that secondary psychopathy, which is the more impulsive, erratic, reactive type, predicted excessive communication and constantly checking their partner's online accounts. This makes sense because people with that personality kind of struggle with emotion regulation and make these like desperate attempts to reel the other person back in.

[00:01:59]Primary psychopathy, which is more cold and calculated, predicted tracking your partner's devices and posting embarrassing photos of their partner.

[00:02:07]This also makes sense to me. This type of abuse requires planning and a severe lack of respect for the other person's privacy. So, it makes sense that it's kind of along with that callous type of psychopathy. Narcissistic rivalry, which remember is that dimension where they want others to fail, predicted secretly monitoring their partner's phone. And these individuals tended to see life as a competition. So, it's theorized that maybe they see their partner as property and they try to control them to sort of prevent them from being stolen, as it were. Narcissistic admiration, which is that dimension where they want excessive admiration, predicted direct digital threats. This one was a little surprising to me, but basically it's thought that it might be a way of like exerting power or dominance over the other person. And Mavelianism didn't predict digital abuse. And it's thought that these individuals are like highly calculated, but without the sort of like lack of empathy of psychopaths. So, they might not want to do something that could backfire on them, especially, you know, something that there will likely be tangible proof of. There were also some gender differences. Men were more likely to monitor their partner with a hidden camera or tracking software, while women were more likely to be covert, like checking their partner's phone history. For men specifically, sadism was linked to tracking devices and threatening a partner with private photos. For women, sadism was linked to secretly checking their partner's digital account. For women only, narcissistic rivalry was linked to direct threats. For men only, mchavelianism was linked to threats. So, it's thought that a lot of these gender differences are explained by gender roles. Women are like the relationship keepers typically. So they might be more like vigilant for possible threats.

[00:03:34]Whereas men who are seen as more like the head of the family, like the boss in the relationship, they might be more controlling. Men also know how society loves to sexually shame women, hence the threatening to leak their private photos. So what are the real life implications of the study? On the topic of digital abusers, obviously it's super important to protect yourself as much as humanly possible. And while there are certain things that we're simply not able to control, like what another person chooses to do, there are also some things that we can do to protect ourselves. This is where the sponsor of today's video comes in. Incogn.

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[00:05:25]In my opinion, you can absolutely deduce a person's personality based on the type of digital harassment that they take part in, even if it's not a romantic context. And I also think that you can deduce a person's personality based on the type of abuse that they do in general, not necessarily digital. The main takeaway for me is that you can kind of work backwards to figure out the type of person that you're dealing with based on their abusive behavior. So, if a partner is like always blowing up your phone when you're without them, that is someone who's likely not in control of their emotions, who's impulsive, who doesn't think through the long-term consequences of their actions, possibly what's called secondary psychopathy, versus someone who doesn't warn you, but just slowly gathers intel on you and launches a smear campaign on Facebook.

[00:06:07]Possibly that could be more like primary psychopathy where they're cold, they're calculated, they take their time, they plan their schemes for maximum impact versus someone who digitally threatens you. Maybe you're dealing with someone with narcissism or sadism who feeds off your fear. Funny story about that actually. A few years ago, someone started sending me threatening messages on this very channel, and it was clearly someone from my real life. I figured out within a week who it was. It was like a friend of a friend. And this person is now a licensed therapist who markets herself as specializing in can you guess what it is? Narcissistic abuse. You can't make that up. Later, friends would ask me, "How did you find out it was her?" People are really not as slick as they think they are. It's a blessing when they give you something as concrete as digital abuse because they're handing you a blueprint of their personality.

[00:06:52]So, what's the benefit of knowing what type of person you're dealing with?

[00:06:55]Well, you can better predict a person's behavior once you understand their personality. Why is this important? Life is like a game of chess. You need to be able to predict what your opponent is going to do next in order to protect yourself from them. Like if you know that you're dealing with an abuser who has secondary psychopathy, then you know they might become very volatile if you try to break up with them. So you know, okay, in order to protect myself, I should break up with them in public or over message or I should try to escape secretly in a way that they don't know about it. versus someone with primary psychopathy. You know that they're probably going to seem to let you go without a fight, but you'll need to brace yourself for whatever calculated revenge plan they have next. So, for example, you might know that, okay, everything that they have on me, maybe like I talk about my friend to them, they're going to try to use it.

[00:07:39]So, then, you know, to try to get ahead of it, you know, to contact your friend and be like, listen, when I was with George, I sometimes vented to him about things that have been bothering me about like our relationship. I have a feeling he's going to try to use this against me now that we're no longer together. So, I just wanted to be the one to tell you, can we talk about it? Like, can you forgive me? If you know what the other person is going to do, you know how to protect yourself preemptively. But let's zoom out a bit. Beyond digital abuse, beyond dark tetrd personalities, the point is that you can work both backwards and forward to deal with people's behavior. You can work backward when someone shows you a pattern, behaviors A, B, and C to deduce what is behind that behavior. What type of personality? like someone at work who's consistently saying passive aggressive things to you, complains to other people about you, but denies having a problem with you to your face. You're likely dealing with someone who is conflict averse. You work backwards to look at their behavior to ascribe a route to it.

[00:08:29]Then you work forward to predict what they'll do next given the personality driving their behaviors. So, if they're afraid of conflict, they'll probably back down if you confront them in front of everyone the next time they say something passive aggressive. But you can also predict that they're probably going to retaliate by talking poorly about you to other people. So then when you're confronting them in front of everyone, you can bring it at the end.

[00:08:49]And also Joan, if you have an issue with me, I would appreciate it if you bring it directly to me rather than bringing other people into this. So now if Joan tries to go talk about you behind your back, everyone will see right through what she's doing. They will see that she's doing exactly what you predicted of her. See how you're just like playing chess. You saw that she was gunning for your queen. So, you fortified your queen and then you forced her to focus her attention elsewhere on the chessboard.

[00:09:10]It's not at all surprising to me that we can learn the type of personality a person has based on the types of behaviors and specifically the types of abuse that they engage in. What do you think about the study? Do you relate to it?

[00:09:27]Tell me what you want, what you need.

[00:09:29]Tell me, tell me, tell me. Tell me what you want, what you need.