Dark Triad traits and their structure: An empirical approach

Abstract

In the present research we investigated the structure of the Dark Triad of personality. On the basis of analyses performed on a broad spectrum of different items from different measures of traits usually included into the Dark Triad we provided support for the ideas that: (1) narcissism and the Dark Dyad are independent constructs; (2) it is possible to differentiate twelve meaningful dark facets in the pool of dark items from various measure of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism; (3) these facets could be organized within a hierarchical structure, which suggests that Machiavellianism as it is currently measured is an aspect of psychopathy in a similar manner as exhibitionism is an aspect of narcissism; (4) distinguished facets are organized in a theoretically predictable pattern of relations with basic personality traits and values, just as narcissism and the Dark Dyad are related to personality metatraits and higher order values.

An extension of the dark triad and five‐factor model to three Asian societies

“…Table 3 summarizes descriptive statistic results for the eight constructs across all three Asian samples. Our findings regarding the relationship between narcissism and agreeableness was consistent with that of Rogoza and Cieciuch's (2018) investigation of a Polish sample, in that despite previous literature citing a negative relationship between agreeableness and DT traits (Furnham et al, 2014;O'Boyle et al, 2015), we consistently observed a positive relationship between the two constructs across all three countries. These low alpha scores also were found in a recent cross-cultural extension of the DT (Jonason et al, 2017).…”

“…However, unlike previous studies examining the SD3's structure, we did not observe a high correlation (overlap) between items of psychopathy and Machiavellianism to warrant tested a bifactor or dark dyad model (Persson et al, 2019;Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2018). For example, despite our poor fit indices, our mean scores for both gender and DT constructs displayed patterns consistently found in previous literature exploring the DT framework.…”

“…The largest application was conducted by Schmitt et al (2007), who comparatively examined differences in self-reported measures of the BFF that covered six continents and 13 islands and were translated into 29 languages across 56 nations. Rogoza and Cieciuch's (2018) contradictory findings of the relationship between DT traits and agreeableness raise more questions than they provide answers to regarding what meaningful interpretations can be drawn from investigations with the DT structure. The Philippines, on the other hand, was grouped into the "South East Asia" cluster, which collectively reported levels of the BFF traits closer to that of the global mean.…”

“…Nearly all research investigating the DT to date has used North American or Western European participants, and most participants have consisted of undergraduate students (see O'Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, Story, & White, 2015). Despite the DT's growing popularity in research, its structural framework has recently come under scrutiny, for example, as fitting more of a "dark dyad" with psychopathy being indistinguishable from Machiavellianism (Persson, Kajonius, & Garcia, 2019;Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2018;Vize, Lynam, Collison, & Miller, 2018), and has been criticized as having poor model fit(s) when replicated (Atari & Chegeni, 2016;Pabian, De Backer, & Vandebosch, 2015;Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2017). We are interested in investigating the external validity of the DT framework on foreign cultures to see what meaning, if any, can be drawn from extending Western-based personality measures to foreign societies.…”

“…Our statistical approach includes a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) testing various models of the SD3, a measurement invariance assessment, and reporting of descriptive statistics such as internal reliability coefficients and intercorrelations within personality constructs of each measure. Despite the DT's growing popularity in research, its structural framework has recently come under scrutiny, for example, as fitting more of a "dark dyad" with psychopathy being indistinguishable from Machiavellianism (Persson, Kajonius, & Garcia, 2019;Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2018;Vize, Lynam, Collison, & Miller, 2018), and has been criticized as having poor model fit(s) when replicated (Atari & Chegeni, 2016;Pabian, De Backer, & Vandebosch, 2015;Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2017). Given this scrutiny, calls have been made in the literature to further investigate the external validity of the DT framework on foreign samples, where cultural differences and language translation are required (see Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2017).…”