ABSTRACT
Machiavellians possess unique mental and neural equipment that distinguishes them from others. Their way of thinking is based on specific decision-making and problem solving mechanisms that help them process stimuli they receive in a changing social environment. Machiavellians are highly skilled at monitoring their partner’s behaviour and to adjusting their responses accordingly, which may be due to an activity of a brain area that is linked to processing subtle cues providing information about the partners (inferior frontal gyrus). They can also focus on the goal and do not let their attention be distracted by circumstances irrelevant to this goal, which may be associated with the activity of the middle part of frontal gyrus. Machiavellians are reward-oriented and the anticipation of reward under unpredictable circumstances is controlled by thalamus. For gaining benefits, they use cognitive control over emotions in accordance with their goals, which control is accomplished by a specific part of prefrontal cortex. Their high ability to make general inferences and judgments about people is related to working memory capacity. Machiavellians successfully choose their victims: they primarily consider their cooperative partner as a potential target who could be easily exploited.
