The Dark Triad of Personality: And beyond......

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The Dark Triad of Personality And
beyond......
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NARCISSIST
PSYCHOPATH

• MACHIAVELLIAN

The Dark Triad
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Briefly..

• Narcissist egotistical attention-seeker
• Machiavellian planful manipulator
• Psychopath impulsive thrill-seeker

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CLINICAL LEVEL-serious problems-requires
professional help SUBCLINICAL-mild version,
allows person to manage in everyday society
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What is the common factor?
callousness
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Machiavellianism
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Niccolo Machiavelli
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Machiavellianism

• Advisor to the Medici family (ca. 1500)
• To succeed in politics, you must manipulate
  others
• E.g., flatter important people
• Most people are ignorant and deserve to be
  manipulated
• Richard Christie created the Mach scale

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Sun-Tzu The Art of War(ca. 500 B.C.)Chinese
predecessor
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The Psychopath
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Clinical version

• key features
• Nasty impulsive
• Keeps committing crimes
• Never learns
• Most of life spent in prison

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The Subclinical Version

• Normal psychopath
• Successful psychopath
• Non-criminal psychopath
• Businessman, lawyer, student

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• The Narcissist

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• Sense of superiority
• Needs attention
• Constant bragging
• Feels entitled to superior treatment
• Derogates others to promote self
• In principle, they are secretly insecure
• Raskin created the Narcissistic Personality
  Inventory

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• MODERN DAY EXAMPLES
• OF THE DARK TRIAD

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Subclinical narcissism
Donald Trump
Paris Hilton
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Others
Kanye West
Drew Pinsky

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MACHIAVELLIANS
Bernie Madoff

• 3. Machiavellianism

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• Sub-clinical psychopath

Chael Sonnen
Sean Avery
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SOME OF THE ISSUESQ are they actually the
same person?A No, but positively
correlatedQ Are they mutually exclusive?A
No, they can be found in the same personQ Why
arent they in jailA Psychopaths will get there
eventually. Also some Machs
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OUR RESEARCH

• Designed to differentiate the Dark Triad
• Included an extensive program of correlational
  and experimental studies
• Hoped to differentiate the three on the basis of
  predicting distinct outcomes
• Required solid measurement instruments

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Paulhus Williams (2002)

• INTRODUCED THE PARADIGM
• Each literature is massive
• Construct creep
• Must study together

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Paulhus Williams (2002)

• INTRODUCED THE PARADIGM
• Standard instruments
• SRP III (Self-Report Psychopathy)
• NPI (Narcissistic Personality Inventory)
• Mach IV (Machiavellianism scale)
• Dirty Dozen (Jonason Webster, 2010)
• Short Dark Triad (Jones Paulhus, 2010)

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TO ANTICIPATEThe Dark Triad members show
distinctive correlates across a wide range of
unsavory behaviors
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Williams Paulhus 2003

• Self-enhancement

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• Discrepancy measure
• Departure from reality
• Objective measure
• Over-Claiming Questionnaire
• How familiar are you with these 100 things?
• Some of them are not real

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Results

• Correlations with self-enhancement
• Narcissism were moderate to large
• Psychopathy were small
• Machiavellianism were zero

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• CHEATING FRAUD

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Exam copying Study(Nathanson et al., 2006)

• A. Administered battery of personality measures
• B. Used Wesolowsky Program to detect cheaters on
  midterm and final exams
• Examines wrong answers on multiple-choice tests
• Compares all combinations of students
• Statistical detection of error similarities
• Identifies outlier pairs

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• RESULTS
• Narcissism r .10
• Machivellianism r .11
• Psychopathy r .33

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Plagiarism StudyWilliams et al. (2010)

• 245 students
• Term papers scored for plagiarism by Turn-It-In
  program
• Both Psychopathy Machiavellianism worked

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Fraud Study

• E-mail questionnaire study (N 95)
• Participation motivation was lottery
• three 50.00 prizes for participating
• Before awarding prizes, we sent another email
• Oops, we lost the list of winners

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Results

• 12 of 63 students responders reported that they
  were a winner
• Narcissism r .04
• Machiavellianism r .10
• Psychopathy r .24 p lt .03

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Jones Paulhus (2010)

• AGGRESSION

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• white noise paradigm (e.g., Bushman)
• Advertised as Competitive Game Study

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• PROVOCATIONS BY PARTNER
• Actually there is no partner
• She decides how to respond by setting the noise
  delivered to the partner
• Aggression was measured by the noise setting
  administered to partner

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Results

• Narcissists increased aggression after an insult
• Psychopaths increased aggression after a
  gratuitous escalation

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Sexual deviance studies

• We asked students about deviant sex fantasies
  and behavior (paraphilias, etc.)
• RESULTS
• Most people have some deviant fantasies
• Link between fantasy and behavior was stronger
  among psychopaths

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RESEARCH BY OTHERS
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Behavior-Genetics Study

• Vernon et al. (2007)
• N 344 twins
• Psychopathy narcissism highly heritable
• Machiavellianism shows a strong shared
  environmental effect

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Big Six studies

• Ashton Lee (2006)
• They added Factor 6 called Honesty-Humility -- to
  the Big Five
• All of the triad load on Factor 6, with few
  loadings on other factors

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International Sex Survey

• Schmitt and colleagues (2005)
• Psychopaths steal other peoples lovers
• Same pattern in every one of 45 countries

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REVENGE
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Delongis, Nathanson Paulhus

• On-line anonymous data collection
• If youre like most people, you have fantasized
  about getting back at someone for something they
  did you.
• Tell us about an example of such a fantasy and
  and whether you actually got payback.

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Results

• Psychopathy and borderline personality predicted
  stalking
• Neurotics fantasized but never acted on it
• We also clarified the motivation for revenge

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STALKING
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Lau Paulhus (under review)

• Similar data collection to revenge studies
• Have you ever been rejected but continued to
  pursue the person anyway?
• Please give us the details
• RESULTS psychopaths were the most frequent
  stalkers

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• CONCLUSIONS

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Theoretical Features of D3

• Narc Mach Psychopathy
• Callousness HI HI HI
• Impulsivity MOD LO
  HI
• Manipulation MOD HI-1 HI-2
• Criminality LO only
  all kinds
• 
  white collar
• Grandiosity HI LO MOD

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• The newest member
• Sadism

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• See Erins Psychfest talk
• http//www.psych.ubc.ca/podcasts/psychfest.psy?vfi
  leebuckels.ogg

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• Combinations of the Dark Tetrad
• The Giants
• Hitler, Stalin, Ghadafi
• Mao?
• Likely high intelligence too

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And THANKS TO

• Kevin Williams
• Craig Nathanson
• Peter Harms
• Katherine Lau
• Bryce Westlake
• Dan Jones
• Erin Buckels

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• Discussion questions
• Other studies to distinguish them?
• How would they overlap with the Big Five
  circumplex?
• When would psychopathy be adaptive?

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Application to Group Hierarchies
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NEFARIOUS GROUPS

• Organized crime
• Motorcycle gangs
• Street gangs
• Terrorist organizations
• Politicians

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Ideal Roles

• LEADERS
• Narcissist Front man
• Machiavellian Mastermind
• HENCH-MEN
• Psychopath Hired gun
• Sadist Cruel

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• LEADERS
• Narcissist Front man
• Machiavellian Mastermind
• HENCH-MEN
• Psychopath Hired gun
• Sadist Brutalizers
• FOLLOWERS
• True believers

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• NARCISSISTS
• High profile
• charismatic
• spokesperson
• MACHIAVELLIANS
• Low profile
• Mastermind
• Manipulator
• Strategic thinker

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• TRUE BELIEVERS
• Need to belong
• Need for an admirable identity
• charismatic
• AUTHORITARIANS
• Obedient to authorities
• Escape from freedom
• Worldview Clarity

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• FAMOUS LEADERSHIP PAIRS
• The Narcissist The Machiavellian
• Nixon Kissinger
• Bush Karl Rove
• Bill Clinton Dick Morris
• Bin Laden Al-Zawahiri

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Others ?
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CONCLUSIONS

• To understand dark characters, more
  differentiation is needed
• Too often lumped together as simply evil
• They act in concert in certain nefarious groups
• Undermining such groups requires working on each
  ones weakness

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And THANKS TO

• Kevin Williams
• Craig Nathanson
• Peter Harms
• Katherine Lau
• Bryce Westlake
• Dan Jones
• Erin Buckels