Screening for Dark Personalities

Abstract

Abstract. Consensus is emerging that the constellation of dark personalities should include the sadistic personality. To build a four-factor measure, we modified and extended the Short Dark Triad (SD3) measure to include sadism. A series of three studies yielded the Short Dark Tetrad (SD4), a four subscale inventory with 7 items per construct. Study 1 ( N = 868) applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to a diverse 48-item pool using data collected on MTurk. A 4-factor solution revealed a separate sadism factor, as well as a shifted Dark Triad. Study 2 ( N = 999 students) applied EFA to a reduced 37-item set. Associations with adjustment and sex drive provided insight into unique personality dynamics of the four constructs. In Study 3 ( N = 660), a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the final 28 items showed acceptable fit for a four-factor solution. Moreover, the resulting 7-item subscales each showed coherent links with the Big Five and adjustment. In sum, the four-factor structure replicated across student and community samples. Although they overlap to a moderate degree, the four subscales show distinctive correlates – even with a control for acquiescence. We also uncovered a novel link between sadism and sexuality, but no association with maladjustment.

The Nomological Network of the Short Dark Tetrad Scale (SD4)

“…Last, the narcissism scale from the SD4 revealed stronger than expected correlations with physical and verbal aggression (rs = .18 and .30, both expected rs = .10) and antagonism (r = .44, expected r = .30, pdiff < .05, psTOST ≤ .97). Paulhus et al (2020) found similar correlations with neuroticism, agreeableness, and extraversion.…”

Not only Trolls are Trolling the Internet: A study on dark personality traits, online environment, and commentary styles

“…Apart from the first three traits, Sadism can predict insensitivity to the suffering of others, and can also predict insensitivity when to "strike back" when threatened (Buckels et al, 2013). Sadism also has shown a unique relation to Internet Trolling (Buckels et al, 2013) and to sexuality (Paulhus et al, 2020). The unique aspect of Sadism is that the individual enjoys the suffering of others.…”

Reducing the Overlap Between Machiavellianism and Subclinical Psychopathy: The M7 and P7 Scales

“…We also administered the Narcissism subscale from the Short Dark Triad (Jones & Paulhus, 2014) and the Mach and Psychopathy subscales from the Short Dark Tetrad (Paulhus et al, 2020). Because we did not have any hypotheses for these three scales, their results are reported in the supplemental online material (Table S17).…”

“…That is, subclinical psychopathy focuses on the features that are nonoverlapping with Mach and narcissism. Generally, in the tradition of the Dark Triad research, the aim has been to create relatively unidimensional scales that isolate the unique features of Mach and psychopathy (e.g., Paulhus et al, 2020). Although established psychopathy scales that are used in Dark Triad research might also overlap with narcissism and sadism scales, we did not develop new narcissism and sadism measures because doing so would have diverted the focus and gone beyond the scope of the current research.…”