The Dark Core of Personality: Dark Triad, Dark Tetrad and the D Factor
Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism make up the Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad. Research shows they share a common core, the Dark Factor of Personality (D). Here is what it is and how it relates to the Big Five.
এই আর্টিকেলটি এখনও অনূদিত হয়নি, তাই ইংরেজিতে দেখানো হচ্ছে।
The short answer: The Dark Triad is three socially aversive personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Add everyday sadism and you get the Dark Tetrad. Research shows that these and other dark traits share a common core, the Dark Factor of Personality, or simply D: the tendency to put your own interests first at the expense of others, and to justify it to yourself. In the Big Five, dark traits are most closely linked to low agreeableness.
You can measure all four traits with our free dark personality test, based on the Short Dark Tetrad (SD4).
These are not diagnoses. Everyone has dark traits to some degree, and the research is about normal variation in the population, not about criminals or patients.
Key findings
- Narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlap substantially, but are not identical.
- Everyday sadism predicts cruel behaviour that the other three do not explain, which is why it was added as a fourth trait.
- Dark traits share a common core, D, which was found across samples totalling more than 165,000 people.
- In the Big Five, dark traits are linked above all to low agreeableness. Narcissism is less clearly so, and is also linked to high extraversion.
- The HEXACO model's honesty-humility factor captures the dark core even better than the Big Five.
- Dark traits are somewhat more common in men than in women.
- Narcissism and psychopathy appear to be substantially heritable. Machiavellianism seems to depend more on the environment people grow up in.
- Machiavellianism and psychopathy are linked to poorer job performance, and all three Dark Triad traits are linked to counterproductive behaviour at work.
- Internet trolls stand out most on sadism.
The Dark Triad
In 2002, Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams described three "dark" personality traits that are found in the normal population, not only in clinical or forensic settings:
- Narcissism: a grandiose sense of self-importance, a need for admiration and a feeling of superiority.
- Machiavellianism: manipulation, cynicism and the strategic exploitation of others. The name comes from Niccolò Machiavelli, the Renaissance author of The Prince.
- Psychopathy: low empathy, a lack of guilt, impulsivity and thrill-seeking.
Paulhus and Williams found that the three traits overlapped, but were distinct enough to be treated as separate traits. All three were linked to low agreeableness. Narcissists were also more extraverted and open, while people high in psychopathy scored low on neuroticism and low on conscientiousness.
In 2014, Jones and Paulhus published the Short Dark Triad (SD3), a 27-item questionnaire that is now one of the most common ways to measure the three traits.
Are they really three different traits?
There is an ongoing debate. A meta-analysis by Vize, Lynam, Collison and Miller found that Machiavellianism and psychopathy are so similar that they may largely measure the same thing, while narcissism stands more apart. Muris and colleagues reached a similar conclusion in a large review: the three traits are strongly correlated, and the way they are usually measured may be too simple to capture the dark sides of personality.
The Dark Tetrad: adding sadism
Buckels, Jones and Paulhus tested whether everyday sadism, enjoying the suffering of others, should be added to the list. In one experiment, participants could choose between tasks, including killing bugs in a grinder (the bugs were in fact protected and survived). People who scored high on sadism volunteered to kill bugs more often.
In a second experiment, participants could blast an innocent person with loud noise. When it was easy, both sadism and the Dark Triad traits predicted unprovoked aggression. But only the sadists were willing to do extra work for the opportunity to hurt someone. Sadism predicted an appetite for cruelty that the other three traits did not.
Paulhus therefore proposed the Dark Tetrad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism.
Trolls just want to have fun
Buckels, Trapnell and Paulhus surveyed more than 1,200 people about their online behaviour. Trolling was linked to sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, but sadism showed the strongest and most specific association. For many trolls, the point is simply that they enjoy other people's distress.
The Dark Factor of Personality (D)
New dark traits kept being introduced: egoism, spitefulness, moral disengagement, psychological entitlement and more. Morten Moshagen, Benjamin Hilbig and Ingo Zettler asked whether all of these might be expressions of one underlying disposition.
In four studies with more than 2,500 participants, they found that the answer was yes. They called the common core the Dark Factor of Personality (D) and defined it as the general tendency to maximise your own benefit while disregarding, accepting or even deliberately causing harm to others, together with beliefs that justify this behaviour.
The justifying beliefs are a central part of D. People high in D do not usually see themselves as bad. They tend to believe, for example, that everyone is selfish, that the world is a competition, or that they deserve more than others.
D predicted a wide range of ethically and socially questionable behaviour, and the result did not depend on any single dark trait being included. The individual dark traits can be seen as different flavours of the same core: narcissism adds the need for admiration, sadism the pleasure in harm, psychopathy the impulsivity and so on.
The same researchers later developed shorter questionnaires to measure D directly, with 70, 35 and 16 items. They tested them on seven large samples totalling more than 165,000 people. The measures predicted actual behaviour, such as taking advantage of others for personal gain in economic games.
Triad, Tetrad or D?
| Concept | What it includes | Main idea |
|---|---|---|
| Dark Triad | Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy | Three overlapping, socially aversive traits |
| Dark Tetrad | The Dark Triad plus everyday sadism | Sadism predicts cruelty the other three do not |
| D factor | The common core of all dark traits | Pursuing your own interests at the expense of others, and justifying it |
How dark traits relate to the Big Five
Dark traits are not a separate personality system. They are largely combinations of familiar traits:
| Big Five trait | Link to dark traits |
|---|---|
| Agreeableness | Low agreeableness is the common thread for almost all dark traits |
| Extraversion | Narcissism is linked to high extraversion |
| Conscientiousness | Psychopathy is linked to low conscientiousness and impulsivity |
| Neuroticism | Psychopathy is linked to low neuroticism: little fear and anxiety |
| Openness | Narcissism is linked to somewhat higher openness |
The meta-analysis by Muris and colleagues confirmed that dark traits are mainly related to low agreeableness.
Honesty-humility: the missing sixth factor
In the HEXACO model, personality has six factors rather than five. The extra factor is honesty-humility: sincerity, fairness, modesty and a lack of greed. Lee and Ashton found that all three Dark Triad traits were strongly negatively correlated with honesty-humility. The correlation was −0.72 for psychopathy, −0.53 for Machiavellianism and −0.57 for narcissism.
The Big Five did less well. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism had moderate negative correlations with agreeableness, but narcissism was practically unrelated to it. The overlap among the three dark traits was explained well by the HEXACO factors, but not by the Big Five.
In the Big Five, parts of honesty-humility are found in agreeableness facets such as morality, modesty and altruism. If you take our Big Five test, these facets say more about the "light" side of your personality than the overall agreeableness score does.
Where do dark traits come from?
A twin study by Vernon, Villani, Vickers and Harris estimated how much of the variation in dark traits is due to genes:
- Narcissism: about 59% genetic.
- Psychopathy: about 64% genetic.
- Machiavellianism: about 31% genetic, with a substantial effect of the shared family environment.
Heritability estimates from a single twin study should be read with caution, but the pattern suggests that manipulation may be learned more than the other dark traits.
Dark traits are also somewhat more common in men than in women, according to the meta-analysis by Muris and colleagues.
Dark traits in everyday life
At work
O'Boyle and colleagues analysed 245 samples with almost 44,000 people. Machiavellianism and psychopathy were linked to poorer job performance, and all three Dark Triad traits were linked to counterproductive work behaviour: theft, sabotage, bullying and similar acts. The links were affected by context, such as how much authority people had and which culture they worked in.
In relationships
Jonason, Li, Webster and Schmitt found that the Dark Triad was linked to a preference for short-term relationships, but not long-term ones. The link was stronger in men. The researchers interpret this as an exploitative mating strategy.
The light side
Scott Barry Kaufman and colleagues developed a counterpart, the Light Triad: treating others as ends in themselves rather than as means, valuing the dignity of every individual, and believing in the basic goodness of people. In four samples with more than 1,500 people, the Light Triad predicted higher life satisfaction and personal growth. The Dark Triad was linked to lower life satisfaction and more selfish and aggressive outcomes.
What this means
- Dark traits are a matter of degree. Almost everyone has some selfishness and some willingness to bend the rules. What differs is how much, and how often it wins over consideration for others.
- Look for the justifications. A person who often says that "everyone is only out for themselves" or that "nice people lose" may be expressing the beliefs that are part of D.
- Charm is not the opposite of darkness. Narcissists are often extraverted and make a good first impression. Look at how people treat others over time, not just how they come across at first.
- Agreeableness is not the whole story. Someone can be blunt and argumentative, and therefore low in agreeableness, while still being honest and fair.
Find out where you score
Take our free dark personality test. It uses the Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) by Paulhus and colleagues, 28 statements that measure all four traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism. You see where you score compared with a research sample, in about five minutes.
The free Big Five personality test does not measure the Dark Triad directly, but it measures agreeableness and its six facets, including morality, modesty and altruism. These are the parts of personality most closely related to the dark core.
Sources
- Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Behavioral confirmation of everyday sadism. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201–2209. doi:10.1177/0956797613490749
- Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. D., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences, 67, 97–102. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.01.016
- Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., Webster, G. D., & Schmitt, D. P. (2009). The dark triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy in men. European Journal of Personality, 23(1), 5–18. doi:10.1002/per.698
- Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personality traits. Assessment, 21(1), 28–41. doi:10.1177/1073191113514105
- Kaufman, S. B., Yaden, D. B., Hyde, E., & Tsukayama, E. (2019). The Light vs. Dark Triad of personality: Contrasting two very different profiles of human nature. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 467. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00467
- Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2005). Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism in the Five-Factor Model and the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Individual Differences, 38(7), 1571–1582. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2004.09.016
- Moshagen, M., Hilbig, B. E., & Zettler, I. (2018). The dark core of personality. Psychological Review, 125(5), 656–688. doi:10.1037/rev0000111
- Moshagen, M., Zettler, I., & Hilbig, B. E. (2020). Measuring the dark core of personality. Psychological Assessment, 32(2), 182–196. doi:10.1037/pas0000778
- Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Otgaar, H., & Meijer, E. (2017). The malevolent side of human nature: A meta-analysis and critical review of the literature on the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 183–204. doi:10.1177/1745691616666070
- O'Boyle, E. H., Forsyth, D. R., Banks, G. C., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012). A meta-analysis of the Dark Triad and work behavior: A social exchange perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(3), 557–579. doi:10.1037/a0025679
- Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Toward a taxonomy of dark personalities. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(6), 421–426. doi:10.1177/0963721414547737
- Paulhus, D. L., Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. D., & Jones, D. N. (2021). Screening for dark personalities: The Short Dark Tetrad (SD4). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 37(3), 208–222. doi:10.1027/1015-5759/a000602
- Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556–563. doi:10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00505-6
- Vernon, P. A., Villani, V. C., Vickers, L. C., & Harris, J. A. (2008). A behavioral genetic investigation of the Dark Triad and the Big 5. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(2), 445–452. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.09.007
- Vize, C. E., Lynam, D. R., Collison, K. L., & Miller, J. D. (2018). Differences among dark triad components: A meta-analytic investigation. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 9(2), 101–111. doi:10.1037/per0000222
