Dr M Scott Peck a psychiatrist who is in the self-help genre wrote the famous book People of the Lie. It is about evil people and what he learned from his patients regarding what evil is and what it does.
According to M Scott Peck, evil is a form of self-righteousness. You feel morally superior to others and enjoy hurting them for not being "moral" like you are. Peck explained that the evil person imputes evil motives to innocent people to victimise them.
I would add that we live in a world of virtue-signalling performers who use their acting skills for some social advantage over others. They are a good example of the person Peck has in mind.
There are people who do terrible things for they feel numb inside and feel no love for themselves. Are they really self-righteous? In a way yes. They feel that others are only there to be used for them to try and feel special.
The evil person will prefer to pick a target that will be unable to fight back. Children make easy targets.
Peck stated that to be adept at evil you have to engage in self-deception so that your conscience ends up twisted and in denial about how bad you are. Peck said that evil people are not the same as sociopaths - sociopaths seem to have no conscience.
Peck outlined the traits in an evil person.
They include the ability to fool oneself and keep it up. One will be consistent with the self-deception. One feels the reward is having little or no guilt feelings and appearing to be an upright person in ones own reckoning and that in others. These rewards help one stay consistent.
The inevitable result of self-deception is that one's life becomes a lie to others. That is inevitable and to deceive yourself is to risk deceiving others and leads to many being fooled.
The person will treat many people normally but will choose some targets for abuse.
He projects the malice and evil in himself on to them.
She hides her hate for them as love or tough love.
The person will abuse any power he has over others and this abuse might be covert.
The person tells and lives lies continually to look respectable.
She will not consider how her victim feels and is not interested in seeing things from the victim's perspective.
He hates criticism even if it is constructive and will pretend to welcome it but will think of ways to diffuse the criticism.
An evil person is often skilled at spotting when institutions are evil.
COMMENT: This is a good analysis. If true then moral relativists, those who say morality is not real but just opinion, are disguising their evil as a moral theory. An evil person likes to observe what evil institutions and customs are out there and will find something to participate in so that their evil can be practiced and supported and maybe look good. Many evil persons do good works so that people will say, "At least she helped x and y and z". It gets people to stop focusing correctly on the wrong they have done. If religion is evil or a political party it will attract evil people like that. If self-deception, targeting children for indoctrination/abuse, accusing others of being sinners, being dogmatic and refusing to see your religion from the perspective of the person who says it is man-made and untrue make you evil then why does religion exhibit all the traits?
Virtually all believers in deities or God worship what has a bad side. Are they projecting the malice in them unto the higher power? It would seem obvious if your god hates who you hate. But the malicious are too crafty for that. They try to convince themselves that they mean no harm and that what they wish is justified or a necessary evil. So malice can be disguised in pink paint and projected unto God. The point? We need evidence and cannot just assume believers in God mean well. A God standing by as the innocent suffer and terrible things happen is exactly what you would expect from hearts concealing the darkness within.
Why would an evil person be so accurate when and interested in deciding that an organisation or even a social tradition is harmful and evil? Well it would make them feel they are not alone. And it takes a bad one to know a bad thing. And evil may be absorbed from something in your environment that is evil. It is passed on to you and you are the willing victim. I would insist that we should not be inventing organisations or institutions that are evil such as the armies of Satan or legions of demons. Doing that shows a subconscious yearning for evil to be strong and to be part of you and you of it. Jesus' talk of people in Gehenna and the place of punishment for the Devil and his angels is a sign of a bad character for he could do nothing to prove.