The Dark Triad of Personality

Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy in Everyday Life

Minna Lyons

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128142929
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy in Everyday Life summarizes the latest research on how these personality traits (psychopathology, narcissism, Machiavellianism) are defined and displayed, while also exploring the impact they have on individuals and society, the relationship between clinical conditions and personality traits, and their adaptivity. The book introduces the Dark Triad through the lens of existing clinical and personality literature, discussing shared and unique cognitive and empathetic profiles associated with each trait. Antisocial, antagonistic, and criminal behaviors associated with the Dark Triad are also covered, as is the way these individuals compete socially and in the workplace.

• Reviews the development, measurement and evolutionary origins of these traits
• Explores how these traits may be adaptive
• Assesses the relationship between clinical conditions and Dark Triad personality traits
• Includes sections on manipulation, competition and cooperation

Chapter One

Introduction to the Dark Triad

Abstract

The first chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book, introducing the Dark Triad in the light of clinical, forensic, and personality literature. I will discuss briefly the historical background of the Dark Triad as a personality constellation and evaluate the traits in the nomological network with other personality traits. I will demonstrate how the traits relate to outcomes such as empathy, risk-taking, and impulsivity. This chapter is also going to include discussion of the Dark Triad from etiological point of view, looking into evolutionary theories, genetics, and environmental factors. The chapter contains a brief overview of sex differences, as well as an evaluation of different questionnaire measures for the Dark Triad. I will also discuss the concept of the Dark Tetrad (i.e., Dark Triad and sadism). Finally, the shortcomings in the current research will be highlighted.

Keywords

The Dark Triad; The Dark Tetrad; The Big Five; HEXACO; Empathy; Etiology; Risk-taking; Deviant behavior; Sex differences; Measurements

Chapter Outline

• 1.1 The Dark Triad: What Is It?
  • 1.1.1 Machiavellianism
  • 1.1.2 Narcissism
  • 1.1.3 Psychopathy
• 1.2 Dark Triad and Other Personality Traits
• 1.3 Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior
  • 1.3.1 Empathy, Emotional Intelligence, and Experiencing Emotions
  • 1.3.2 Risk-Taking and Impulsivity
• 1.4 Etiology
  • 1.4.1 The Dark Triad Within Evolutionary Framework
  • 1.4.2 Genetics
  • 1.4.3 Environmental Influences
• 1.5 Sex Differences in the Dark Triad
• 1.6 Measurement
  • 1.6.1 Measuring Machiavellianism
  • 1.6.2 Measuring Narcissism
  • 1.6.3 Measuring Psychopathy
  • 1.6.4 Composite Questionnaires
• 1.7 The Dark Tetrad
• 1.8 Conclusion
• Further Reading

1.1 The Dark Triad: What Is It?

Jack/Jodie is a player. S/he likes to gamble with money, and juggle multiple romantic relationships at the same time with several wo/men. S/he has a cynical view of the world, and other people in it. Jack/Jodie feels that it is best to take advantage of others before they try to take advantage of you. Jack/Jodie thinks that s/he is great at everything that s/he does, and deserves best things in life. S/he has very little empathy for others, and treats people as tools for achieving his goals. Jack/Jodie is easily insulted, and longs for revenge when things don’t go his/her way.

Jack and Jodie are fictional characters, but they could easily exist in real life. Characters like them have qualities that typify features of malignant personality traits, also known as the Dark Triad of personality. In the past few decades, the socially aversive Dark Triad of personality has captured the attention of both researchers and the general public alike. Since the conception of the construct by Paulhus and Williams in 2002, it has been studied intensively in thousands of academic publications. Without a doubt, we have a fascination for people who are antagonistic, selfish, and exploitative, to the extent that these people are often portrayed with admiration in the popular culture (Jonason, Webster, Schmitt, Li, & Crysel, 2012). This book is the first attempt to bring together the wealth of research on the topic, evaluating the significance of the Dark Triad in everyday life ranging from romantic relationship to workplace behavior.

The Dark Triad consists of three overlapping, yet distinctive personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The traits share a core of manipulation, callousness, and selfishness (Jones & Figueredo, 2013). All of the three traits are characterized by a disregard of social norms, which often leads to social transgressions in terms of lying, cheating, manipulating, and stealing. Individuals who are high in the dark traits are untrustworthy and uncaring romantic partners, backstabbing work colleagues, and cold and controlling as parents. In short, the Dark Triad can have toxic consequences for others who are in the radar of those high in these traits. However, Dark Triad traits do have positive sides too. Especially in circumstances where there is a possibility to gain something for oneself, individuals with Dark Triad traits can be loyal friends, effective leaders, and heroic rescuers (e.g., Hart, Richardson, & Tortoriello, 2018; Patton, Smith, & Lilienfeld, 2018; Smith, Hill, Wallace, Recendes, & Judge, 2018).

As well as the toxic core, the three traits have some unique characteristics. Machiavellianism is distinctive in the flexible, chameleon-like use of strategies from defection to cooperation to suit the demands of the situation, with the ultimate aim of gaining benefits for the self. Interestingly, a study on a sample of Polish participants found that out of the three traits, Machiavellianism was a significant positive predictor of fluid intelligence (Kowalski et al., 2018). In essence, individual high in Machiavellianism are skillful political maneuvers, with an eye for opportunities to exploit in order to achieve personal gain. The features of psychopathy include impulsivity, reckless risk-taking, and very shallow empathy toward other people. Those high in psychopathy may be less flexible and more opportunistic in their behaviors than high Machiavellian individuals. Narcissism, in turn, is characterized by vanity and grandiosity, and by an inflated self-assessment. Individuals high in narcissism believe that they have superior abilities in comparison to other people, but these beliefs are rarely grounded in reality. All the Dark Triad traits relate to dysfunctional interpersonal relationships, stemming from selfish behavior and lack of care for others. In this book, I will discuss the research on the Dark Triad traits in romantic relationships in Chapter 4 and evaluate dark traits among friends and friendship networks in Chapter 5. Unfortunately, the influence of the Dark Triad within families is less studied, especially in terms of the impact of having a parent with a toxic personality. Therefore parenting and families are only briefly considered later in this chapter, as part of the discussion of the origins (i.e., etiology) of the Dark Triad.

In the personality disorder literature, especially psychopathy and narcissism are often researched in “clinical” samples. Participants in these studies are individuals who are under the supervision of clinical or forensic facilities, and have received a personality disorder diagnosis. In contrast, research on “subclinical” or “nonclinical” populations consists of people in the community, often using students or diverse internet samples. In these samples, the Dark Triad is investigated as a continuum, without making a distinction between “normal” and “abnormal.” In Chapter 2, I will provide an overview of the Dark Triad within the clinical framework, and in Chapter 3, forensic implications will be discussed.

In most personality research, the continuous distribution of the scores on the Dark Triad questionnaires is correlated with the continuous distribution of other variables of interest. So far, the Dark Triad has been explored widely in thousands of studies in relation to a large number of intra- and interpersonal variables, including crime, bullying, risk-taking, deception, a host of mating behaviors, morality, racism, empathy, gossip, interoceptive awareness, chronotypes, and social cognition. The list goes on forever. In this book, I will give special consideration to workplace behaviors (Chapter 6), as well as to a rapidly burgeoning field of research, the Dark Triad in the cyberworld (Chapter 7).

The terminology used in clinical psychology/psychiatry is different to that utilized in personality psychology research. Because clinical research often utilizes diagnostic categories, individuals are referred to as “narcissists” or “psychopaths.” This terminology implies that there are distinctively different categories of people and relies on arbitrary thresholds for drawing a line between “normal” and “abnormal.” In personality literature, these kinds of terms are normally avoided, and people are referred to as being “narcissistic” or “psychopathic,” or even more commonly, being “high or low” in a trait narcissism and psychopathy. Throughout this book, I will attempt to use the terminology associated with personality literature rather than with diagnostic categories.

Although all the Dark Triad traits have been conceptualized as dispositional, stable features in an individual, there is some evidence that especially for narcissism, situations may play a part in the manifestation of the trait. For instance, levels of narcissism can be experimentally manipulated to some extent. Narcissism can be increased by asking participants to think about their own achievements (Sakellaropoulo & Baldwin, 2007), or even by thinking of oneself as being a prince or a princess (Li et al., 2016). In a diary study, Giacomin and Jordan (2016) looked at fluctuations in narcissism on daily basis. They found that feeling stressed reduced levels of narcissism and having power over others/doing something positive to other people increased narcissism. This findings is similar to that of Piff (2014), who discovered that although wealthier individuals were more narcissistic, their narcissism scores were lowered when they were primed to think about the benefits of egalitarianism (i.e...