Personality Flashcards
The dark triad
Paulhus & Williams (2002)
Wanted ot explore 3 socially undesirable personality traits (that are maladaptive but within the normal range of functioning) :
- Narcissism
- Machiavellianism
- Psychopathy
The Narcissistic personality
Defined as a grandiose yet fragile sense of self as well as a preoccupation with success and demands for admiration (Ames et al, 2006)
- Strong sense of entitlement
- Preoccupation with success
- Requires excessive admiration and believe that they are special
- Only associating with high status people
At the root of their inflated ego are often held with deeply held feeling of inferiority and are envious of others so will diminish others successes
Measuring (questionnaire) :
- Narcissism personality inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1979)
- 40 forced choice items
Problem : Overreliance on the measure (used in 77% of studies) ; measure focuses on the grandiose aspect (Rose, 2002)
The Machiavellian Personality
A personality trait that refers to a strategy of social conduct that involves manipulating others for personal gain, often against the others self interest (Wilson et al, 1996)
- Master manipulators who use a range of techniques (flattery) for personal gain
- Engage in unethical and counterproductive behaviours (lying, theft, sabotage)***
- Possess a cynical view of human nature and demonstrate very little concern for the welfare of others above their own
Measuring (questionnaire) :
- Match IV (Christie & Geis, 1970)
- 20 items (“the best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to do”)
- 7 point Likert scale
Problem : Psychometric problem with the scale (lack of agreement on the number of subscales ; Poor internal consistency and its been suggested to remove half of items (Miller et al, 2016)
Psychopathy
A drive to engage in impulsive or antisocial behaviour without empathy, anxiety or remorse (Ames et al, 2006)
- Impulsivity and thrill seeking without consideration for consequences
- Callousness and consistent lack of empathy
- Lack of emotional binds and do not experience feelings of guilt or remorse for their behaviour
Measuring (questionnaire) :
- Self report psychopathy scale
- 64 items (“I purposely tied to hit someone with my vehicle”)
- 5 point scale
Problem : Lack of consensus concerning what subclinical psychopathy refers to and how it differs from clinical psych (Glenn & Raine, 2014)
Measuring the dark triad traits (and problems)
1) The dirty dozen Jonason & Webster, 2010)
12 items
SRP-III correlated stronger with M at 0.44 than the DD psychopathy subscale > Not drawing the distinctions between the traits
Problems:
- 4 items are not enough to capture nuances in the constructs (Miller et al, 2012)
*Convergent validity was assessed using the DD subscales with established measures of each subscale
2) The short dark triad Jones & Paulhus, 2014)
27 items (more items in each subscale to better represent each dimension
Problems :
- Factor analysis studies ve failed to reproduce a 3 factor structure
- M and P into a single factor
An increase in narcissism
Twenge et al (2008)
N score changed over time in college students from 1979 to 2006
Score 30% higher in most recent cohort
Increase found particularly among women
Social media
Reed et al (2018) tracked 74 ps over 4 months and their social media
Higher amounts of visual social media was associated with higher levels of narcissism
Relationship was only found for visual forms of social media
Parents
***Brummelman et al (2015) monitored 565 children and their parents over 2 years
Parental over evaluation predicted child narcissism but not child self esteem
Correlations with OCEAN
All dark triad traits were negatively associated with agreeableness
Largest correlation was negatively associated with conscientiousness and M
Predicative validity of dark triad
- Health
- Performance in school or work
- Pro environmental behaviours
- Sexual behaviours
- Criminal behaviours
Criticisms of dark triad
debate about whether the DTTs are independent traits or represent a single construct
- Unification hypothesis : traits show strong positive intercorrelations and have been found to load onto the same factor in factor analysis
- Uniqueness hypothesis : 3 traits have different patterns of association with other triads which should be separate
3 Traits are not enough to capture the dark side of human nature
-Subclinical sadism (proneness to feel pleasant emotions while hurting others or watching others in pain) should be added
The light triad Kaufman et al, 2019)
Qualities that embody a loving and beneficial orientation towards others
3 Traits :
- Kantianism (Treating people as ends unto themselves rather than means)
- Humanism (Valuing the dignity and worth of each individual)
- Faith in humanity (Believing in the fundamental goodness of humans)
Scale
12 items
Scale was developed by thinking about opposites of the dark triad but also other items (forgiveness, etc)
Issues with scale
- Would you agree with most of the statements (social desirability bias)
- New scale so not much evidence to support cross cultural validity (Western cultures)
Nomological network of the dark and light triad
The networks of traits, qualities and outcomes that you would expect to be associated with a trait to demonstrate that it is a valid constructs
It helps to establish that a measure has construct validity
To assess this you can :
- Correlate the measure with measures that you expect to be highly correlated (convergent validity)
- Correlate the measure with measures that you expect would not be correlated (discriminate validity)
- Explore whether the traits correlate or predict outcomes in line with expected hypotheses.
Examples of dark triad and light triad
Dark
- Younger male
- Motivated by power, sex, achievement
- Higher selfishness, self enhancement values
- Lower life satisfaction, compassion, empathy, belief that others or self are good
- Greater number of sexual partners
- Higher creativity
light
- Older female
- Spirituality
- Higher childhood stability, acceptance, life satisfaction, positive enthusiasm, belief that others and self are good
- Weaker motivation for achievement and self enhancement
- Proclivity for interpersonal guilt
- Excessive trust which can lead to exploitation
Heritability of personality
Percentage of variability in a trait across individuals that is due to genes
Percentage across individuals doesn’t tell us how much is die to genetic but helps us understand to what extent gens contribute
Heritability estimate of intelligence has been estimated to be 45% so around 55% is due to environment
Behavioural genetics
Identifies genetic and nongenetic determinate of individual differences in personality and behaviour
Genetic effects
Genes that are inherited
Environmental effects
- Shared : environment effects that are shared by family members
- Non-shared : effects that are unique to individual (illness, friends)
Research :
- Family studies
- Adoption studies
- Twin studies
High concordance rate between people who are genetically similar may imply that a particular trait is determined by genes or environmentally similar = determined by shared environment
Family studies
Compare concordance rate between individuals and family members
Grottesman (1991)
Meta analysis into schizophrenia
More shared genetics = higher concordance rate
