Malfeasance is a word used in legal social circles, forensic psychology analysis, and academic discussion to describe the commission of any act the general public is likely to consider to be unequivocally illegal or completely wrong. It’s a noun that refers to bad or unlawful conduct by course.
Those who choose to willfully engage in acts of malfeasance (as a pervasive course of conduct) tend to be described as deplorable people — a term making reference to them having socially competitive and arguably violent, egocentric personality types.
The Legal Dictionary, an online website featuring legal definitions commonly used in the United States in courtroom settings, defines the term as follows.
The website shares that the term malfeasance is typically used to describe intentional behavior — meaning a person of sound mind chooses to self-promote by doing something they know is not only immoral or illegal, but it is also likely to harm or neglect other people’s human rights if and when they engage in the toxic social behavior.
If a person chooses to do something morally wrong in order to win or sate a lust for power, the course of conduct pursuing the goal can be referred to as malfeasance — meaning, in the most simplistic of terms that one person uses free will choice to actively and deliberately harm, socially to invalidate, or to do direct harm to another or a group of others.
Malfeasance — compared with the term MISFEASANCE — implies that the abusive actor chose to abuse with purposeful as well as deliberate intent. A person who makes a mistake and accidentally abuses or neglects the needs of others might be guilty of poor judgment, but they cannot be accused of having malicious intent.
The more extreme a person’s Cluster B nature, the more likely they are to behave in what most people would call criminal ways. The more abuse is tolerated and enabled, the more likely vertical thinkers are to engage in rapidly devolving, socially aggressive behaviors — noting that their propensity to abuse the goodwill and hospitality of their own narcissistic supply sources as well as their targeted rivals and preferred scapegoats is likely to increase rather than lessen with age.
A negligent person — such as a romantic partner who accidentally forgets to close a door or yard gate — is not morally culpable in the same way as an abusive social predator who intentionally lets a pet out the door to cause harm to the animal or to spite their mate.
A social predator, on the other hand, is likely to not only leave the gate open in secret (situationally abusing the pet and their partner), and then will lie about it, blame the victim (the loving pet owner), and will verbally assault the victimized party while denying their own accountability.
When a person goes through such gross social gyrations to provoke duress in others while attention-demanding and choosing to behave in ways that are deliberate, calculated, and abusive, they are guilty of engaging in social malfeasance. If it happens in a home, the net result produced is domestic abuse; in a workplace, you end up with workplace bullying.
But there is entirely another way to use the term when describing social and political behavior.
Corporate Malfeasance, Political Malfeasance, and Fiscal Malfeasance are all forms of white-collar crime. Cluster B people and vertical thinkers who set out to gain and then to abuse public trust are a macro version of the micro Love Fraud predator.
Keep your eyes open for the cycle of Narcissistic Abuse politicians and corrupt public officials like bad bosses and dirty politicians go through while love bombing, controlling, abusing hospitality, and devaluing those who enable them to rise to positions of power and social status like they do.
One in 25 people have a Cluster B personality type, meaning that from a diagnostic standpoint, they are socially aggressive vertical thinkers who are the most likely sort of people to be prone to violence (including the situational verbal, emotional, sexual, verbal, financial, religious, spiritual, physical, or social abuse of others).
What does that mean in layman’s terms?
It means that if you are in a room with 100 people…
1 is likely to be violent by nature.
1 is likely to use toddler style temper tantrums and attention-demanding behavior to control romantic interests, friends, and family members.
1 is likely to be flat-lined emotionally after exposure to trauma, causing them to prefer strict adherence to socially defined hierarchical order in order to help them control their own fear.
1 is likely to be an incredibly demanding, grandiose, and virtually unpleasable person — typically believing themselves to be better than everyone else or entitled to behave in ways that reflect a callous disregard for the rights and healthy, emotional needs of other people.
If you end up in a room with someone who is Histrionic by nature, you are likely to find their behavior draining but not calculated to be menacing.
Understanding that a Narcissist is rude on purpose to show disdain for others but that a Sociopath is likely to behave boorishly to control while a Psychopath likes the act of causing a pain or provoked duress response in others can help any victim or prospective abuse target avoid individuals who display malfeasant natures.
« Back to Glossary Index