Dark triad

In psychology, the dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They are called 'dark' because of their malevolent qualities. In psychology, the dark triad refers to the personality traits of narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They are called 'dark' because of their malevolent qualities. Research on the dark triad is used in applied psychology, especially within the fields of law enforcement, clinical psychology, and business management. People scoring high on these traits are more likely to commit crimes, cause social distress and create severe problems for an organization, especially if they are in leadership positions (for more information, see psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism in the workplace). They also tend to be less compassionate, agreeable, empathetic, satisfied with their lives, and likely to believe they and others are good. All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous-manipulative interpersonal style. A factor analysis carried out at the Glasgow Caledonian University found that among the big five personality traits, low agreeableness is the strongest correlate of the dark triad, while neuroticism and a lack of conscientiousness were associated with some of the dark triad members. In 1998, McHoskey, Worzel, and Szyarto provoked a controversy by claiming that narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are more or less interchangeable in normal samples. Delroy L. Paulhus and McHoskey debated these perspectives at a subsequent American Psychological Association (APA) conference, inspiring a body of research that continues to grow in the published literature. Paulhus and Williams found enough behavioral, personality, and cognitive differences between the traits to suggest that they were distinct constructs; however, they concluded that further research was needed to elucidate how and why they overlap. There is a good deal of conceptual and empirical overlap between the dark triad traits. For example, researchers have noted that all three traits share characteristics such as a lack of empathy, interpersonal hostility, and interpersonal offensiveness. Likely due in part to this overlap, a number of measures have recently been developed that attempt to measure all three dark triad traits simultaneously, such as the Dirty Dozen and the short dark triad (SD3). At their root, however, most of these measures are questionnaire-style and require either self-response or observer-response (e.g., ratings from supervisors or coworkers). Both methods can prove problematic when attempting to measure any socially aversive trait as self-responders may be motivated to deceive. A more specific confound might also exist for dark triad traits and Machiavellianism in particular: individuals who are skilled at deceiving and manipulating others should be perceived as low in deceptiveness and manipulation by others, and are therefore likely to receive inaccurate ratings.