[RESEARCH] BRIEF CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH

CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH 

WHAT IS…

D

= The general tendency to maximize one's individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others —, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.

D factor 

= D represents the one basic general dispositional tendency of which specific dark traits arise as manifestations

= represents the common core of all dark traits. 

D core 

• Egoism 
• Machiavellianism 
• Moral disengagement 
• Narcissism 
• Psychological entitlement 
• Psychopathy 
• Sadism 
• Self- interest 
• Spitefulness

Dark traits

= aggression, selfish, or cheating

THE PERSONALITY TEST

“individuals high in D will pursue behaviors that unilaterally benefit themselves at the cost of others and, in the extreme, will even derive immediate utility for themselves (e.g., pleasure) from disutility inflicted on other people (e.g., pain). Vice versa, individuals high in D will generally not be motivated to promote other’s utility (e.g., helping someone) and will not derive utility from other’s utility as such (e.g., being happy for someone).”

“There are a variety of beliefs that may serve as justification, including that high-D individuals consider themselves (or their group) as superior, see others (or other groups) as inferior, endorse ideologies favoring dominance, adopt a cynical world view, consider the world as a competitive jungle, and so on.”

“over the life span or over some period of time, so you could actually intervene in this kind of trait.” — Prof. Benjamin E. Hilbig form the University of Koblenz-Landau

• The most predominant of these tendencies are known as the “dark triad”, which includes psychopathy (a lack of empathy), narcissism (excessive self-absorption), and Machiavellianism (the belief that the ends justify the means).
• There is a total of 75 questions in the test for doers to answer. Most questions are inclined to bring out the dark side of oneself.
• Mostly scenarios that force people to make choice, whether to put their own interests first, or to take care of others first. 
• All of them are themed under the dark side of humanity which is categorised into the D factors 
• Egoism 
• Machiavellianism 
• Moral disengagement 
• Narcissism 
• Psychological entitlement 
• Psychopathy 
• Sadism 
• Self- interest 
• Spitefulness 
• People with a higher score seem to take pleasure in causing others pain. 
• The ‘D-factor,’ which links all of these tendencies, addresses that person’s propensity to disregard or provoke others’ hardship to meet their own goals or interests.
• individuals maximize their own utility, go to what is their own best self-interest [and] to some extent taking into account or not taking into account it may hurt others, and another very important aspect is that many of these people can hold beliefs that serve for them as justification for their behavior.
• gives you a very good prediction of how this person might behave

MY THOUGHTS 

After researching on the D core and D factors, I realised that it might be too narrow as a theme, therefore, I created a mind map and tried to further develop the idea. I came up with a few more potential themes that is related to the dark side of personality/ humanity. 

1. satan 
2. The devil tarot card 

• satan could be the main visual theme of the outcome 
• RESEARCH ON SATAN ART 
• I can play around with the concept of rainbow colours being joyful and BNW being dark 
• The dark traits of personality correlates to devils 
• THE DEVIL (tarot card)
• could maybe create a set of play cards under the theme of tarot, but only with “the devil” cards? 

THE DEVIL- TAROT

UPRIGHT

Shadow self, attachment, addiction, restriction, sexuality

REVERSED

Releasing limiting beliefs, exploring dark thoughts, detachment

• shows Baphomet, or the Horned Goat of Mendes, a creature that is half man, half goat.
• represents good and evil, male and female, and human and animal

MY THOUGHTS 

I found the idea of balance white interesting. My initial idea aim of the brief is to make people admit and accept their dark personality traits and to know more about themselves and others. After knowing about the balance idea from the THE DEVIL card, I found out that striking a balance between your dark personality traits and your good ones is crucial when it comes to humanity. Being too good might bring harm to yourself, but at the same time being too evil might do the same. This idea of striking a balance could be applied to the visual elements of the outcome. Taking play cards as example, instead of only using dark traits, I could make use of colours to balance the dark theme off? 

VISUAL ELEMENTS 

1. Balance between the good and the bad 

• make use of visual elements to make the outcome less dark? 
• The use of colours to lessen the discomfort ness? 

2. Satan, the evil spirit 

• middle age art 
• As background images? With bold words in the foreground? 

3. The devil card (tarot) 

• the interesting texture of images in tarot cards 
• Play cards with only THE DEVIL cards? 

CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH METHODS

1. INTERVIEW
2. NEWS ARTICLES 
3. SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS (PERSONALITY TESTS)
4. OBSERVATION 
5. DISCUSSION 

CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH METHODS

1. GRAPHIC DESIGN ELEMENTS 

• rainbow vs BNW
• Satan
• Triangle (dark train diagram) 
• Flower graph (d core diagram)

2. EXISTING PLAY CARDS