Lyons Minna - The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy in Everyday Life

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

Chapter Outline

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 dont 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 (). 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 ().

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 (. 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 , forensic implications will be discussed.