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The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy

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Abstract

Of the offensive yet non-pathological personalities in the literature, three are especially prominent: Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and subclinical psychopathy. We evaluated the recent contention that, in normal samples, this ‘Dark Triad’ of constructs are one and the same. In a sample of 245 students, we measured the three constructs with standard measures and examined a variety of laboratory and self-report correlates. The measures were moderately inter-correlated, but certainly were not equivalent. Their only common Big Five correlate was disagreeableness. Subclinical psychopaths were distinguished by low neuroticism; Machiavellians, and psychopaths were low in conscientiousness; narcissism showed small positive associations with cognitive ability. Narcissists and, to a lesser extent, psychopaths exhibited self-enhancement on two objectively scored indexes. We conclude that the Dark Triad of personalities, as currently measured, are overlapping but distinct constructs.

Introduction

Among the socially aversive personalities cited in Kowalski (2001), three have attracted the most empirical attention: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The construct of Machiavellianism—in short, the manipulative personality—emerged from Richard Christie’s selection of statements from Machiavelli’s original books (see Christie & Geis, 1970). Christie fashioned those statements into a measure of normal personality by demonstrating reliable differences in respondents’ agreement with the items. Further research showed that respondents who agreed with these statements were more likely to behave in a cold and manipulative fashion in laboratory and real world studies (Christie & Geis, 1970).

The construct of subclinical or ‘normal’ narcissism emerged from Raskin and Hall’s (1979) attempt to delineate a subclinical version of the DSM-defined personality disorder. Facets retained from the clinical syndrome included grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, and superiority. Items were refined on large samples of students and assembled in the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The successful migration from clinical to subclinical construct is well supported by a strong research literature (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001).

The adaptation of psychopathy to the subclinical sphere is the most recent of the three (Hare, 1985; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Central character elements include high impulsivity and thrill-seeking along with low empathy and anxiety. The self-report psychopathy (SRP) scale was assembled from items that differentiated clinically diagnosed psychopaths from non-psychopaths (Hare, 1985). It was later validated in non-criminal samples (Forth, Brown, Hart, & Hare, 1996). Recent research by Williams and Paulhus (2002) confirmed that the SRP has the same four-factor solution as the Psychopathy Check List (Hare, 1991), which is the gold standard in the measurement of psychopathy. Moreover, SRP scores predict anti-social behavior in forensic and non-forensic populations (Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare, in press).

Despite their diverse origins, the personalities composing this ‘Dark Triad’ share a number of features. To varying degrees, all three entail a socially malevolent character with behavior tendencies toward self-promotion, emotional coldness, duplicity, and aggressiveness. In the clinical literature, the links among the triad have been noted for some time (e.g., Hart & Hare, 1998). The recent development of non-clinical measures of all three constructs has permitted the evaluation of empirical associations in normal populations. As a result, there is now empirical evidence for the overlap of (a) Machiavellianism with psychopathy (Fehr, Samsom, & Paulhus, 1992; McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998), (b) narcissism with psychopathy (Gustafson & Ritzer, 1995), and (c) Machiavellianism with narcissism (McHoskey, 1995). Given such associations, the possibility arises that, in normal samples, the Dark Triad of constructs may be equivalent.

In the present study, we exploited three methods for teasing apart the triad of constructs. First, we mapped the triad onto the Big Five domains to examine similarities and differences on fundamental dimensions of personality. Second, we compared the triad with respect to two measures of cognitive ability. Finally, we determined whether the substantial self-enhancement observed in narcissists (John & Robins, 1994; Paulhus, 1998; Raskin, Novacek, & Hogan, 1991) would also be evident in Machiavellian and subclinically psychopathic individuals. Two objective measures of self-enhancement were developed: One was an index of the tendency to over-claim general knowledge items; the other was a measure of discrepancy between self-reported intelligence and objectively scored intelligence.

Section snippets

Method

Two hundred and forty-five undergraduate psychology students (65% female) participated in the present study for extra course credit. The procedure involved two steps. First, each participant took home an anonymous questionnaire package, which included standard self-report measures of the Dark Triad and the Big Five as well as self-ratings of intelligence. Participants later returned to the lab for a supervised administration of the over claiming measure and an objective measure of global

Analysis and results

Males scored significantly higher on all three of the Dark Triad: Biserial correlations were .11, .21, and .40, for NPI, Mach IV, and SRP, respectively (all significant, p<.05, two-tailed). Within gender, however, the correlational patterns with external variables were remarkably similar: Therefore, we pooled the data across gender. The measures overlapped considerably, as evident from Fig. 1. Nonetheless, the maximum inter-correlation of .50 suggests that they cannot be considered equivalent.

Discussion

Our goal was to evaluate the similarities and differences among the Dark Triad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Our data do not support the contention that, when measured in normal populations, these three constructs are equivalent. The intercorrelations were all positive and ranged from .25 to .50. Their distinctiveness became most apparent in our examination of the external correlates, including both self-report and performance measures. Their locations in

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