>"There have been times when I was willing to suffer some small harm so that I could punish someone else who deserved it"
Is this really a dark trait? I admit to thinking this in the past but now I've learned to let things go and let someone else deal with it. I have sometimes thought about this and wonder if this is the darker version. I guess "correcting" someone is better but often these can be such obvious things that you'd think people would know anyway.
Think of the common experiment when people are offered an unfair but still beneficial exchange (they get $10 while the other side gets $1000), and still refuse. Is refusing that (which nearly everyone does) a dark trait?
The typical behavioural article would have linked this to sociability, and considered not doing it leading to a worse result in the long run.
People accept the $10/$1000 situation all the time: it's often called "working on commission". Maybe I need to refresh my game theory, but I wouldn't call that a negative sum game, but a positive sum (+$1010) one, and refusing still leaves everyone in the status quo (+$0/+$0).
My recollection of a negative sum game is that the overall outcome is negative. For instance, paying $10 (to get access to the car park) to cause $1000 worth of damage (slashing tyres).
(I'm having difficulty imagining someone spending $1000 to make someone else worse off by $10, but can easily imagine a vindictive someone spending $1000 to make a much poorer someone else worse off by only $500.)
Is this really a dark trait? I admit to thinking this in the past but now I've learned to let things go and let someone else deal with it. I have sometimes thought about this and wonder if this is the darker version. I guess "correcting" someone is better but often these can be such obvious things that you'd think people would know anyway.