The costs and benefits of the Dark Triad: Implications for mate poaching and mate retention tactics

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Abstract

The Dark Triadnarcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – have traditionally been considered to be undesirable traits. However, emerging work suggest that not only may there be a positive side to possessing these traits but they may also serve important adaptive functions, even if the strategies associated with them are viewed as socially undesirable. In an online survey (N = 336), we investigated the costs and benefits of the Dark Triad within the domain of mating psychology. The social style and lower order personality traits of the Dark Triad traits facilitated increased mateships in the form of poaching mates from others and being poached oneself to form mateships, pointing to possible benefits of possessing the Dark Triad traits. However, the costside was evidenced with rates of mates abandoning their current relationship for a new one. Mate retention is a problem faced by those with these traits and the tactics used to retain mates were characteristic of the Dark Triad: aggressive and narcisstic. Results are discussed using an adaptionist paradigm.

Introduction

Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – collectively known as the Dark Triad – are traits that are linked to negative personal and societal outcomes and have been considered undesirable (e.g., Bushman and Baumeister, 1998, Hare, 1996, Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001). However, the persistence of these traits over time (Foster, Campbell, & Twenge, 2003) and across various world regions like North America, Oceania, and Asia (Schmitt, 2008), as well as links to positive traits such as emotional stability (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), resilient self-esteem (Sedikides, Rudich, Gregg, Kumashiro, & Rusbult, 2004), and increased sexual success (Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009) suggest that the Dark Triad can also be potentially advantageous to individuals, especially for mating purposes. Therefore, in the current study we attempt to understand both the benefits and the costs associated with the Dark Triad within the mating domain.

The Dark Triad is characterized by low rates of conscientiousness (Jonason, Li, & Teicher, in press) and at least two parts of the Dark Triad – narcissism and psychopathy – are associated with high rates of impulsivity (Mealey, 1995, Vazire and Funder, 2006) and risk-taking (Jonason, Koenig, & Tost, in press). It may be that individuals who are high on the Dark Triad pursue novelty in their lives. Indeed, with regards to mating, high scorers on the Dark Triad have more sexual partners and a less restricted mating style (Jonason et al., 2009). The possession of these traits may translate to a particular mating style. First, when in relationships, high scorers on the Dark Triad may be especially likely to leave mating relationships to begin relations with new mates (Foster, Shrira, & Campbell, 2006). Second, disagreeableness, duplicitiousness, and aggressiveness link all three of the Dark Triad traits (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Accordingly, to satisfy both novelty and the competitive and aggressive nature that underlie these traits as well (Jonason et al., in press), scores on the Dark Triad may be correlated with one’s tendency to adopt a strategy of mate poaching (Schmitt & Buss, 2001).

Although these strategies may increase access to new partners, the novelty-seeking and aggression that characterize the Dark Triad may come at the expense of relationship costs. Research on macaques, baboons, and chimpanzees suggests that “acquisition and maintenance of high rank [narcissism] is a costly reproductive strategy” (Rodriguez-Llanes, Verbeke, & Finlayson, 2009, p. 643). First, mating effort allocated elsewhere creates lapses in mate guarding, which could open up opportunities for infidelity by current mates. Second, to the degree that romantic partners are aware that mating effort is being allocated elsewhere, they may be less committed and prone to desert the relationship. Third, to the degree that assortative mating occurs, the mates of opportunistic maters should themselves be more inclined to infidelity (Simpson & Gangestad, 1992). Therefore, we predicted that scores on the Dark Triad would be correlated with rates of losing mates.

Although the Dark Triad is linked by a short-term, exploitive sexual style (Jonason et al., 2009), individuals live in a world where monogamy is held out as a socially desirable state and is socially enforced to some degree (Kanazawa and Still, 1999, McDonald, 1995). Thus, such individuals may engage not only in short-term but also medium-term or long-term pairbonding (Campbell & Foster, 2002). Consequently, they face the adaptive problem of mate retention (Buss, 1988, Buss and Shackelford, 1997). Narcissism is associated with attempts to influence others in close relationships (Buss, 1992). Given that mate retention is a form of such influence, we expected scores on the Dark Triad to be positively associated with the use of tactics for mate retention. More specifically, because the Dark Triad is associated with an agentic and aggressive manner (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), we expected the Dark Triad to be related to aggressive (i.e., punishment and threats) and narcissistic-style tactics (i.e., self-enhancement and resource display).

In the current study we explored the costs and benefits imposed by the Dark Triad in people’s sexual and romantic lives. We assessed how scores on the Dark Triad are correlated with scores on mate poaching and mate retention scales. We interpret these results through the lens of an adaptionist program (Buss, 2009) to attempt to further understand the role that not only the Dark Triad, but individual differences in general, play in solving adaptive goals like mating.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

Volunteers (N = 336) from unique IP addresses completed an online survey that informed them of the nature of the study, asked demographic questions, and asked the self-report items described below. The sample consisted of 114 men (MAge = 28, SDAge = 11.14) and 222 women (MAge = 26, SDAge = 9.12). The majority of the sample (92%) was heterosexual, 4% was homosexual, and 4% was bisexual. Thirty-eight percent were single and 62% were involved in a serious relationship, including both married and dating

Results

Rates of internal consistency should, at a minimum, be above .50 (Schmitt, 1996) but ideally above .70 (Nunnally, 1978). Because of the low level of internal consistency for some of the measures in our study, we corrected for attenuation in any case where at least one internal consistency estimate was below .70. Where correlations were corrected, we reported both the uncorrected and the corrected correlations. Table 1 contains descriptive statistics and gender differences tests.

Table 2 contains

Discussion

Consistent with a view that the Dark Triad of traits are characterized by a need for sexual variety (Jonason et al., 2009), an aggressive nature (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), and a competitive and individualistic social style (Jonason et al., in press), scores on the Dark Triad were correlated with rates of poaching mates from others for new relationships and being poached by others for new relationships. Such associations may explain the higher numbers of sexual partners by high scorers on Dark

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Yla Tausczik for web-programming and Emily Teicher and Pamela Izzo for editing. This study was presented at the 2009 Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting.

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