The term dark personalities refers to a set of socially aversive traits in the subclinical range. Not extreme enough to invite clinical or forensic attention, they can get along (even flourish) in everyday work settings, scholastic settings, and the broader community. Along with my research group, I have studied a constellation of these personalities— Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, ...

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 ...

As long as psychological researchers have worked toward characterizing and understanding human personality, the belief has existed that individual differences can yield important information that can aid in the prediction of specific behaviors or outcomes. Childhood personality offers the potential to better understand, even predict, outcomes such as academic achievement, success in interperson...

Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non...

While research concludes that populist leaders stand out for their “dark” personalities, studies on the psychological underpinnings of citizens’ attitudes are scant and inconclusive, with some agreement association between disagreeableness attitudes. By bringing Dark Triad personality traits narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism into picture, we aim to answer whether citizens -like leaders-...

Abstract Personality traits have been extensively studied to understand different behavioral addictions. However, less is known about the relationship of employees’ dark personality and work addiction. The purpose present study was examine associations between Big Five (i.e., extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness) narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism...

Deception is a central component of the personality 'Dark Triad' (Machiavellianism, Psychopathy and Narcissism). However, whether individuals exhibiting high scores on Dark Triad measures have a heightened deceptive ability has received little experimental attention. The present study tested whether the ability to lie effectively, and to detect lies told by others, was related to Dark Triad, Li...

Associations of Machiavellianism (Mach) with self-report and performance emotional intelligence (EI) and with personality were examined. The possible existence of an emotional manipulation capability, not covered within current EI measures, was also examined by constructing an emotional manipulation scale. Mach was found to be negatively correlated with self-report and performance EI, and also ...

There has been an exponential increase of interest in the dark side of human nature during the last decade. To better understand this dark side, the authors developed and validated a concise, 12-item measure of the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism. In 4 studies involving 1,085 participants, they examined its structural reliability, convergent and discriminant validity (Stud...

The Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) is a relatively new self-report measure of the basic traits thought to be associated with psychopathy: Boldness, Disinhibition and Meanness. The TRiPM was administered to 286 Italian individuals along with the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised as well as measures of negative affect (anxiety, depression, stress, and hopelessness) and normal-range...