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  • machiavelli_poker

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Personality and Individual Differences. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.089

    Accepted author manuscript, 302 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Personality and Individual Differences. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.089

    Accepted author manuscript, 949 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Machiavelli as a poker mate: a naturalistic behavioural study on strategic deception

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review

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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>08/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Personality and Individual Differences
Volume98
Number of pages6
Pages (from-to)266-271
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date22/04/16
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Machiavellianism has been considered in the literature as the symbol for manipulative strategies in social conduct. However, it has been rarely studied via behavioural experiments outside the laboratory, in more naturalistic settings. We report the first behavioural study (N = 490) evaluating whether Machiavellian individuals, high Machs, deceive more than low Machs in online poker, where deception is ethically acceptable and strategically beneficial. Specifically, we evaluated Machiavellianism, bluffing patterns, and emotional sensitivity to getting “slow-played” (“stepping into a trap”). Bluffing was assessed by realistic poker tasks wherein participants made decisions to bluff or not, and sensitivity to slow-play by a self-report measure. We found that high Machs had higher average bluffsizes than low Machs (but not higher bluffing frequency) and were more distraught by getting slow-played. The Machiavellian sub-trait “desire for control” also positively predicted bluffing frequency. We show that online poker can be utilized to investigate the psychology of deception and Machiavellianism. The results also illustrate a conceptual link between unethical and ethical types of deception, as Machiavellianism is implicated in both.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Personality and Individual Differences. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.089