Untangling the concurrent influences of the Dark Triad, personality and mating effort on violence

a r t i c l e i n f o The Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy; DT) and mating effort are associated with antisocial behaviour, but these associations may build on underlying personality traits not specific to violence. The DT (measured using the SD3), the HEXACO personality scale, and a measure of mating effort were regressed onto a measure of self-reported violence as defined by an adapted version of the MacArthur Community Violence Screening Instrument in 305 adults recruited via an online survey. While simple correlation analyses found violence and mating effort both systematically associated with most personality and DT measures, regression suggested overall violence was specifically associated with younger age, lower agreeableness, and greater psychopathy (R 2 = 0.32, 95% confidence interval = 0.24 to 0.40); unprovoked violence was associated with greater psychopathy. These results suggest that when personality, the DT, and mating effort are considered simultaneously, antisocial personality variance falls out of mating effort and narcissism constructs, leaving a more parsimonious set of associates for aggression and violence. This study reiterates the importance of concurrently measuring basic disposition when examining factors genuinely underlying violence and aggression, and the centrality of psychopathy and low agreeableness to such behaviour. Many personality constructs predict antisocial, aggressive, and violent behaviour (Egan, 2011). One difficulty conceptualising these associations is that many personality indices themselves correlate with each other, creating 'jingle-jangle' effects that confound the true patterns of association (Kelley, 1927). In search of a less confounded personality-violence model, the current study unravels these patterns of candidate associations by measuring them simultaneously, enabling their concurrent associations to be tested. and empathy, so while they may perceive the distress of others, they are not actually affected by the person's suffering, whereas uncontrolled secondary psychopaths may display poor behavioural inhibition, giving rise to more generalised antisocial acts (Glenn, Kurzban, & Raine, 2011). Machiavellianism is the social expression of selfishness, manipulation and amoral thinking (Rauthmann & Kolar, 2012), so can be seen as psychopathy expressed in the social domain. Austin, Farrelly, Black, and Moore (2007) found Machiavellian individuals were willing to use emotional manipulation to extort and gain benefits from others, and, given the opportunity, did so. The last dimension of the DT is narcissism. Although narcissistic individuals tend to be grandiose, have affectations of superiority, a sense of entitlement , and a need for attention met through the admiration of others, narcissism is nevertheless …