David Bennis [Bennis - Dark Psychology Emotional Manipulation

Dark psychology is both the study of criminal and deviant behavior as well as a conceptual framework for understanding the potential for evil within human beings. In the past, deviant behaviors among humans were assumed to be part of undermined psychiatric illness. However, as time went by and more and more researches were done, and theories emerged, trying to explain why humans maintain a capacity of preying upon other humans.

Dark psychology studies the human condition in relation to the psychological nature of people to prey on others, and they can be motivated by either deviant or criminal drives or both; with or without a purpose and general assumptions of a typically fixed pattern of behaviors based on instincts and social sciences theory. Given the fact that humans consider themselves a benevolent species, many would like to believe that they possess these thoughts and feelings. Every human has this potential to prey on other humans as well as other living creatures. However, many keep this tendency under control or sublimate it, some act upon these tendencies, whether in premeditated or impulsive ways.

Dark psychology seeks to understand these feelings, thoughts, subjective processing systems, and perceptions that lead people to have predatory behavior that is opposed to the contemporary understanding of human behavior. Dark psychology presumes that 99% of the time, deviant, criminal, and also abusive behaviors are purposive, and they also have some goal-oriented, rational motivation.

Dark psychology assumes that every human has a reserve for malicious intentions towards others that range from barely noticeable and brief thoughts to pure psychopathic deviant behaviors that lack any cohesive rationality. Dark psychology surrounds all that makes humans what they are in relation to their dark side. All humanity, all faiths, and all cultures have this proverbial disease. From the moment one is born to the time of their death, there is that hidden side within them that have been defined as evil while others refer to it as deviant, criminal, and pathological.

Dark psychology also assumes that in the remaining 1% of the time, people who have a tendency to commit this predatory behavior do so not for money, power, retribution, sex or any other known purpose. They just do it without a goal

. Some prey on others just for the sake of doing it. Everyone has the potential to prey on others with no apparent reason, purpose, explanation, or cause. Some characteristics of these behavioral tendencies are usually a lack of obvious rational motivation, lack of predictability as well as its universality. The lack of predictability comes in the sense of who acts on these dangerous impulses and for what lengths are they willingly or unwillingly able to go with their sense of mercy totally negated.