“Evil” intentions: Examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad and victim selection based on nonverbal gait cues

Bashful Behaviours: The Association Between Perceived Vulnerability and the Dark Tetrad Personality Traits

“…From this approach, it could be argued that since those with Dark Tetrad traits engage in high frequencies of manipulation and deception, in conjunction with being driven by intrinsically motivated behaviours, these individuals should demonstrate an astute ability to recognize vulnerability within others by utilizing personality and/or behavioural cues. Past research has corroborated this as individuals with Dark Tetrad traits appear to be adept at identifying and/or extorting weakness in others (e.g., Book et al, 2013;Denardo et al, 2018;Ritchie et al, 2019). The question then, is what personality traits and/or behavioural cues are indicative of vulnerability.…”

“…23, p < .05). Psychopathy has also demonstrated strong associations with everyday sadism (r = .80, p < .01) and Machiavellianism (r = .70, p < .01), respectively (Ritchie et al, 2019).…”

“…Their results demonstrated that when the traits of the Dark Triad were controlled for, sadistic traits significantly predicted both a preference for killing bugs and hurting others, further corroborating the appropriateness of the Dark Tetrad . Given that the Dark Tetrad traits seemingly all relate strongly to aggressive and/or malignant behaviours, it is not surprising that the traits positively correlate with one another (Porter et al, 2014;Ritchie, 2016;Ritchie et al, 2019). Porter et al (2014) for example, found that psychopathy was most strongly related to Machiavellianism (r = .69, p < .001), followed by psychopathy and narcissism (r = .39, p < .001) and finally, Machiavellianism and narcissism (r = .…”

“…Although a relatively new line of inquiry, researchers have sought to examine if this success is due to dark personalities being able to accurately identify previous victimization and vulnerability in others. Findings within this line of research have been mixed, with some indicating that the Dark Triad constructs are not significantly correlated with accuracy in identifying victimization and vulnerability in others, but rather view everyone as weak and vulnerable (Black et al, 2014), while others have reported that the Dark Tetrad, psychopathy in particular, is associated with accuracy in identifying previous victimization (e.g., Book et al, 2013;Ritchie, 2016;Ritchie et al, 2019;Wheeler et al, 2009).…”

“…As previous research has utilized female participants as targets in victimization and vulnerability studies (e.g., Richards et al, 1991;Ritchie et al, 2019), a sample of 41 female undergraduate psychology students were recruited from a Southern Ontario University, with a mean age of 19.35 years (SD = 2.67; range = 17 to 31). The majority of participants identified as White (70%), followed by Asian (10%), Black (5%), Arab (5%), Mixed (5%), Latin American (2.5%), and West Indian (2.5%).…”