The Dark Personality Flashcards
What is the Dark Triad
(Paulhus & Williams, 2002)
- Psychopathy, impulsivity and enduring antisocial and bold behaviour
- Narcissism, ego gratification and a sense of superiority
- Machiavellianism, being manipulative for moral gain
- define personalities which are aversive but not clinical
The Dark Triad: Origins
Narcissism, was initially considered clinical the NPI was designed and used for sub clinical populations (difference between subclinical and clinical are not clear)
Psychopathy, was also initially considered clinical but later integrated to subclinical views of personality.
Machiavellianism, never considered clinically. Individuals who agree with Machiavelli’s view also behaved that way in their everyday life.
The Dirty Dozen
- 12 item questionnaire which measures the dark triad traits.
Machiavelliasm example:
‘I tend to manipulate others to get my way’
Psychopathy example:
‘I tend to lack remorse’
Narcissism example:
‘I tend to want others to admire me’
The Dark Triad and The Big Five
- Socially adverse personalities are less agreeable
- Socially adverse personalities are less conscientious
- narcism and psychopathy both relate to conscientiousness
The dark triad and HEXACO
- The HEXACO model has another dimension of honesty - humility
- The latent dark triad corresponds completely (-0.95) with the opposite of Honesty-Humility
- General personality captured better using HEXACO
- dark triad underrepresented in the five factor model
- The dark triad is basically the same as honesty humility, if you score low in honesty humility then you have traits of the dark triad.
HEXACO and Psychopathology
- There isn’t much research on honesty humility and how it relates to pscyhopathology/mental disorder
- Neuroticism dominants the literature for psychopathology
The dark triad - What is the core
- The three members of the triad are positively correlated
- D (dark factor) is the general underlying dark factor (the core) that ties the three together
- D correlated with self interest, unethical behaviour and undesirable behaviour
- D has a strong negative correlation with agreeableness and honesty humility (HH has the strongest negative correlation as they are measuring the same thing but the inverse).
- However, hh is too simple to measure the dark triad therefore we still use the dark triad.
Dark triad - warnings
- Dark triad is well researched however ‘D’ is less so.
- Research is interesting and often makes the news so it is important that news is interpreted with caution
- No clear applications to clinical psychology.
Light triad
- Humanism, valueing worth if each individual
- Faith in humanity, believing in the fundamental goodness of humans
- Kantianism, treating people as a means to themselves rather than a means to a end
The light triad scale
Twelve item questionnaire to measure the light triad traits
Examples:
Faith in humanity - ‘ I tend to see the best in people’
Humanism - ‘I tend to admire others’
Kantianism - ‘I prefer honesty over charm’
The light Triad and Hexaco
- HH correlates slightly with light triad but not as strong as the dark triad
- High triad positively correlates with light triad
Associations with the Light Triad
- easily taken advantage of as greater ‘reaction formation’
- Lower motives for achievement but higher productivity
- greater quality of life overall
- higher levels of openness
Dark triad - the workplace
- Banks (2012) meta analysis, dark triad has a medium positive correlation with Narcissism
- CEOs are high in narcism (not a significant amount of evidence for this)
- those with dark triads tend to derail at some point
Antisocial behaviour and the Dark triad
- Wright et al, those high in psychopathy are more likely to have confrontations with justice system compared to machiavellians and narcissists
- Particularly for violence
- agreeableness predicts violence
Education and the Dark triad
- Kaufman et al found that dark triad decreased with more advanced degrees such as Phds or medical degrees
- Plagiarism and cheating shows consistent association with dark triad as lower moral inhibition and lower fear of punishment
