Machiavellianism And Justice Sensitivity

Machiavellianism originated from the Prince, which was written by Nicolo Machiavelli who was Italy historian, thinker and politician. In the Prince, Machiavelli insisted that the monarch should be associated with sensitivity to reward and risk, non-egocentric perspective and justice. Psychological studies showed that machiavellianism is associated with reward processing, egocentric perspective and injustice. Therefore, the conclusions of psychological studies and the Prince are contradictory. Justice sensitivity, including victim sensitivity, observer sensitivity, beneficiary sensitivity and perpetrator sensitivity, are personality traits which reflect individual sensitivity to justice and injustice. At present, psychologists have researched the connotation, influence factors and influence effect of machiavellianism and justice sensitivity. The neural mechanism of machiavellianism was also studied. However, the relationship of machiavellianism and justice sensitivity, the same as machiavellianism and non-egocentric perspective, have not be studied with cognitive neural science. In the present study, we used a amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) approach as an index in resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (resting-state fMRI) to explore the relationship between machiavellianism and the neural mechanism of it, the effects of justice sensitivity on the above relationship, as well as the relationship between machiavellianism and non-egocentric perspective. Statistics analysis showed that:1) machiavellianism was significantly positively correlated to victim sensitivity;2) machiavellianism was significantly negatively correlated to beneficiary sensitivity;3) machiavellianism was significantly negatively correlated with perpetrator sensitivity. The fMRI-behavior correlation analysis showed that the ALFF of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and frontal pole were significantly positively correlated with machiavellianism. Regression analysis showed that the ALFF of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and frontal pole positively predicted machiavellianism, justice sensitivity contributed to this relationship. Our study revealed Machiavellianism might be associated with reward processing and non-egocentric perspective.