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Although many processes might contribute to the self-perpetuating nature of antagonistic personality, we proposed and tested the "antagonism-confirmation" perspective on this phenomenon. This perspective states that antagonistic personality is based in tendencies to confirm (vs. disconfirm) the self's beliefs about its personality. Importantly, this explanation uniquely predicts that antagonism-related personality constructs should relate to strategically adopting behaviors that vary on only their signification of higher or lower antagonism levels (and nothing more). In apparent privacy, nonclinical participants completed a color-gazing task, wherein antagonistic people ostensibly see colors become more (more-intense condition) or less intense (less-intense condition) while gazing at them. Consistent with the antagonism-confirmation perspective, antagonism-related personality constructs related to perceiving colors as turning more intense in the moreintense (vs. less-intense) condition. These effects could not be attributed to demand and occurred among a subsample of participants that indicated providing completely authentic responses. Furthermore, participants higher in antagonism-related personality constructs reported a greater likelihood of possessing antagonistic characteristics and that these characteristics were more beneficial; mediation evidence suggested that these reports were influenced by their confirmatory responding on the color-gazing task. Antagonism-confirmation tendencies might partly account for why antagonistic personality persists; broadly, the findings highlight the critical nature of identity management as a feature of antagonistic personality.

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Abstract. Machiavellianism is presumed to encompass advanced social-cognitive skill, but research has generally suggested that Machiavellian individuals are rather deficient in social-cognitive skill. However, previous research on the matter has been limited to measures of (a) Machiavellianism that are unidimensional and saturated with both antagonism and disinhibition and measures (b) only one type of social-cognitive skill. Using a large college sample ( N = 461), we examined how various dimensions of Machiavellianism relate to two types of social-cognitive skill: person-perception skill and general social prediction skill. Consistent with some prior theorizing, the planful dimension of Machiavellianism was positively related to both person-perception and general social prediction skills; antagonistic dimensions of Machiavellianism were negatively related to both skills; either agentic or cynical dimensions of Machiavellianism were generally unrelated to both skills. Overall, the current evidence suggests a complicated relationship between Machiavellianism and social-cognitive skill because Machiavellianism encompasses features that blend deficiency, proficiency, and average levels of social-cognitive skills.