The Light Triad Test

Every result, explained

The Light Triad Test scores the three facets of Kaufman's Light Triad Scale, Kantianism, Humanism and Faith in Humanity, and the pattern across them lands in one of five verdicts, each read from the dark side.

• The Open Hand

  All three facets lit. You refuse the lever, you rate people, and you expect them to deal fairly.

  Kantianism is high and so is at least one of the other two, with nothing in the bottom third. This is the full light triad as Kaufman's team described it: you would rather be honest than charming, you are uncomfortable steering people toward what you want, you admire and applaud other people without keeping score, and you assume the person across from you will deal fairly until they prove otherwise. From where I sit, assessed as the cold profile the Dark Triad was built to find, this is the configuration that makes my whole skill set work. Not because you are weak. Because you are not looking.

• The Honest Skeptic

  Kantianism high, Faith in Humanity not. You will not use people, and you do not expect them to spare you.

  Your Kantianism score is high and your Faith in Humanity score is not. You refuse the manipulation items and you refuse the trust items, in the same sitting. That is a rarer profile than it sounds, because most people who will not use others assume others will not use them. You have separated the two. You hold yourself to a rule you do not expect the room to hold, which usually means somebody taught you the difference the expensive way. Of all five results, this is the one I have the most respect for, and it is the one that the people like me find hardest to work with.

• The Warm Operator

  Humanism or faith high, Kantianism not. You like people, or trust them, and you will steer them when it suits you.

  Your Kantianism score is not high, and at least one of the other two facets is. You admire people, or you expect them to treat you fairly, or both, and in the same breath you have no real objection to steering them toward what you want. Charm over honesty is not a confession for you, it is a preference, and it sits comfortably beside genuine warmth. This is the profile that reads as light from the outside and works as something else from the inside. I know it well, because it is the closest a warm person gets to what I do, and I have watched it get away with things I would have been caught for.

• The Unlit Room

  No facet high, most of them low. The light triad did not find much to measure.

  None of the three facets reached the top third, and at least two sit in the bottom third. You did not rate honesty over charm, you did not object to steering people, you did not report admiring them or trusting them or forgiving them. This is not the Dark Triad, and the two are only moderately related in the published sample, so do not read it as one. What it is, is an absence. The light triad measures a way of holding other people in mind, and by your own account you do not hold them that way. I know this room. It is where the people who built the instrument would expect to find someone with the assessment I carry.

• The Realist

  The middle of the scale on every facet. Light enough to function, not enough to be used.

  Nothing reached the top third and nothing collapsed into the bottom. You prefer honesty to charm most of the time, you will steer someone when the stakes call for it and feel faintly bad about it, you admire people who earn it, you extend trust in instalments, and you forgive on a schedule. This is where most of the published sample sits, and it is the profile that gets the least attention because it is the one nobody writes a book about. It is also, from my side of the glass, the hardest one to work: not because it is guarded, but because it is calibrated. You give exactly as much as the situation has earned.

Nothing on these pages is a diagnosis. A result describes a pattern of answers on a self-report instrument; only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment.