RESEARCH PAPER
The Dark Triad of personality and momentary affective states: an experience sampling study
 
More details
Hide details
1
University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
 
2
University College London, London, United Kingdom
 
 
Submission date: 2019-02-15
 
 
Final revision date: 2020-02-25
 
 
Acceptance date: 2020-03-05
 
 
Online publication date: 2020-05-15
 
 
Publication date: 2020-05-18
 
 
Current Issues in Personality Psychology 2020;8(1):10-17
 
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Dark Triad (DT; Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) refers to three distinct but interrelated socially undesirable traits which are associated with an antagonistic and exploitative strategy of conduct. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationships between the DT traits and momentary affective states using a longitudinal approach.

Participants and procedure:
University students (N = 81) completed personality measures and participated in an 8-day experience-sampling study. Subjects provided n = 2572 responses. Multilevel analyses were used to assess relationships between the DT and affect.

Results:
All the DT traits were associated with negative affect: the two psychopathy dimensions (boldness and mean-ness) negatively, and the remaining traits positively. Boldness and grandiose narcissism were associated with positive affect. The presence of others differentiated the relationships between Machiavellianism and mean-ness and negative affective states.

Conclusions:
The findings showed a tendency to experience more negative affect in everyday life in people with higher lev-els of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, Machiavellianism, and disinhibition.

REFERENCES (26)
1.
Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: a short measure of the major dimensions of per-sonality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 340–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/002238....
 
2.
Bazińska, R., & Drat-Ruszczak, K. (2000). Struktura narcyzmu w polskiej adaptacji kwestionariusza NPI Ruskina i Halla [The structure of narcissism in the Polish adaptation of Ruskin’s and Hall’s NPI questionnaire]. Czasopismo Psychologiczne, 6, 171–188.
 
3.
Brislin, S. J., Drislane, L. E., Smith, S. T., Edens, J. F., & Patrick, C. J. (2015). Development and val-idation of triarchic psychopathy scales from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. Psy-chological Assessment, 27, 838–851. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas000....
 
4.
Christie, R., & Geis, F. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.
 
5.
Del Gaizo, A. L., & Falkenbach, D. M. (2008). Primary and secondary psychopathic-traits and their relationship to perception and experience of emotion. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 206–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
6.
Fatfouta, R. (2017). To be alone or not to be alone? Facets of narcissism and preference for solitude. Personality and Individual Differences, 114, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
7.
Galante, J., Dufour, G., Vainre, M., Wagner, A. P., Stochl, J., Benton, A., Lathia, N., Howarth, E., & Jones, P. B. (2018). A mindfulness-based intervention to increase resilience to stress in universi-ty students (the Mindful Student Study): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Public Health, 3, e72–e81. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-....
 
8.
Groth, J., & Kleka, P. (2018). Patterns of intentional faking in questionnaire-based study of psychopa-thy. Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 6, 305–317. https://doi.org/10.5114/cipp.2....
 
9.
Hendin, H. M., & Cheek, J. M. (1997). Assessing hypersensitive narcissism: a reexamination of Mur-ray’s narcissism scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 588–599. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1....
 
10.
Jakobwitz, S., & Egan, V. (2006). The dark triad and normal personality traits. Personality and Individ-ual Differences, 40, 331–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
11.
Jonason, P. K., & Krause, L. (2013). The emotional deficits associated with the Dark Triad traits: Cog-nitive empathy, affective empathy, and alexithymia. Personality and Individual Differences, 55, 532–537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
12.
Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., & Buss, D. M. (2010). The costs and benefits of the Dark Triad: Implications for mate poaching and mate retention tactics. Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 373–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
13.
Jonason, P. K., & Webster, G. D. (2012). A protean approach to social influence: Dark Triad personal-ities and social influence tactics. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 521–526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
14.
Love, A. B., & Holder, M. D. (2014). Psychopathy and subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, 112–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
15.
Maas, C. J., & Hox, J. J. (2005). Sufficient sample sizes for multilevel modeling. Methodology, 1, 86–92. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-2....
 
16.
Miller, J. D., Hoffman, B. J., Gaughan, E. T., Gentile, B., Maples, J., & Campbell, K. W. (2011). Gran-diose and vulnerable narcissism: a nomological network analysis. Journal of Personality, 79, 1013–1042. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467....
 
17.
Nezlek, J. B. (2007). A multilevel framework for understanding relationships among traits, states, situ-ations and behaviours. European Journal of Personality, 21, 789–810. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.64....
 
18.
Patrick, C. J., Fowles, D. C., & Krueger, R. F. (2009). Triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy: De-velopmental origins of disinhibition, boldness, and meanness. Development and Psychopathology, 21, 913–938. https://doi.org/10.1017/S09545....
 
19.
Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The dark triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-....
 
20.
Pilch, I. (2014). Makiawelizm, narcyzm, psychopatia: ciemna triada jako próba opisania osobowości eksploatatora [Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy: the dark triad as an attempt at describ-ing the personality of an exploiter]. Chowanna, 43, 165–181.
 
21.
Pilch, I., Sanecka, E., Hyla, M., & Atłas, K. (2015). Polska adaptacja skali TriPM do badania psychopatii w ujęciu triarchicznym [The Polish adaptation of the TriPM scale measuring psychopathy]. Psychologia Społeczna, 10, 435–454. https://doi.org/10.7366/189618....
 
22.
Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1037/h00777....
 
23.
Skeem, J. L., Poythress, N., Edens, J. F., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Cale, E. M. (2003). Psychopathic per-sonality or personalities? Exploring potential variants of psychopathy and their implications for risk assessment. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 8, 513–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1359-....
 
24.
Sleep, C. E., Weiss, B., Lynam, D. R., & Miller, J. D. (2019). An examination of the Triarchic Model of psychopathy’s nomological network: a meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 71, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.....
 
25.
Uziel, L. (2006). The extraverted and the neurotic glasses are of different colors. Personality and Indi-vidual Differences, 41, 745–754. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
 
26.
Żemojtel-Piotrowska, M., Clinton, A., & Piotrowski, J. (2014). Agentic and communal narcissism and subjective well-being: are narcissistic individuals unhappy? Current Issues in Personality Psycholo-gy, 2, 10–16. https://doi.org/10.5114/cipp.2....
 
Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
eISSN:2353-561X
ISSN:2353-4192
Journals System - logo
Scroll to top