The making of the Machiavellian brain: A structural MRI analysis.

Abstract

University of MichiganMachiavellianism is a personality style marked by the use of such tactics as deceptionand manipulation so as to perform well and achieve power, status, or material wealth.Based on the assumption that Machiavellians are very sensitive to status seeking insocial contexts, which leads over time to changes in neuroplasticity, we hypothesizeand Þnd that salespeople who score high versus low on the Mach IV Machiavellianismscale exhibit changes in gray matter volume in the following brain regions: basalganglia, prefrontal cortex, insula, and hippocampus. A Voxel-Based Morphometry(VBM) advanced MRI technique is used to test the hypothesis on a sample of 43healthy salespeople. Conjectures are made on the linkage between social psychologicalresearch on Machiavellianism and neuroscience research on the brain regions inquestion as they relate to social behavior.Keywords: