We’ve covered a lot of new ground since we created our Dark Triad Summary page last month.  As our research continues to progress, we’ll update this page periodically to help you stay up to speed.  As always, feel free to contact us with questions, or drop a comment on a past or future Dark Triad post if you have any tips or insights you’d like to share.

Here’s the latest version of the Dark Triad Summary page:

What Is The Dark Triad?

The Dark Triad is a term used by social psychologists that refers to three inter-related personalities: sub-clinical narcissism, sub-clinical psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.  The connections between these traits were first documented in 2002 by psychologist Delroy L. Paulhus.

How Are The Dark Triad Personalities Measured?

The most common tool for measuring sub-clinical narcissism is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, or NPI.  It usually contains 40 items, although the Corry version uses only 23.  Psychologists still debate the validity of this tool.  The most common tool for measuring sub-clinical psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised, or PPI-R.

In 2010, personality researcher and Dark Triad specialist Peter K. Jonason published a consolidated tool for measuring Dark Triad traits called The Dirty Dozen.  The tool contains 12 of the most reliable and representative items pulled from the NPI, PPI-R, and MACH-IV (Machiavellianism) tools.

Narcissism

1.  I tend to want others to admire me.

2.  I tend to want others to pay attention to me.

3.  I tend to expect special favors from others.

4.  I tend to seek prestige or status.

Psychopathy

5.  I tend to lack remorse.

6.  I tend to be callous or insensitive.

7.  I tend to not be too concerned with morality or the morality of my actions.

8.  I tend to be cynical.

Machiavellianism

9.  I have used deceit or lied to get my way.

10.  I tend to manipulate others to get my way.

11.  I have used flattery to get my way.

12.  I tend to exploit others towards my own end.

How Does The Dark Triad Relate To The Big Five Personality Traits?

The Big Five personality traits are Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness:

Extraversion: This trait includes characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.
Agreeableness: This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other pro-social behaviors.
Conscientiousness: Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goal-directed behaviors.
Neuroticism: Individuals high in this trait tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.
Openness: This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight, and those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests.

All three personalities are associated with disagreeableness (low agreeableness).  Narcissism and psychopathy both share an association with high extraversion.  Research suggests that narcissists can be neurotic; psychopaths generally are not.

How Are Dark Triad Traits Exhibited?

Personalities exhibit themselves through various factors.  Our simplified narcissism factor model has two factors, borrowing from the Corry Two-Factor Model:

Status-Seeking (Trying to assume power or control over others through leadership or expertise)

Overconfidence (Believing others are more interested in oneself than in other things)

 Our simplified psychopathy factor model has three factors, borrowing from the PPI-R Three-Factor Model:

Recklessness (Disregarding consequences of one’s actions to oneself or to others; lack of planning/goal-setting)
Nonchalance (Disdaining potential danger/embarrassment; inability to feel stress)
Coldheartedness (Lacking remorse when one’s actions negatively affect others)

 The Big Question – What, if anything, enables Dark Triad males to sleep with more women, more often, with less romantic commitment? 

There are at least three possibilities:

1. Dark Triad males may employ unique social strategies that effectively enlarge their pool of potential successes.

One online survey showed Dark Triad males have lower mate-selection standards for traits like creativity, kindness, and liveliness, and characteristics like physical attractiveness and social status.  If that is true, then these men are simply lowering their standards and increasing their options, not attracting more women.  However, another study’s findings suggest that narcissists do not lower their standards when choosing which women to target.  Although the men in this study were paid to approach women, they weren’t incentivized to approach women indiscriminately.  In other words, more approaches did not increase their individual payouts.  They were motivated purely by personal preference.  In our opinion, the second study’s findings are stronger.
In Positive Psychopathy, we examined 7 different psychopathic traits featured in Kevin Dutton’s book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths.  Four traits – focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, and action – are traits that strategically help psychopaths in social situations, including dating and seduction:

Focus – The ability to mute distractions in extremely hectic environments.  Focus is obviously a useful trait in any situation.  By quickly seeing, processing, and remembering tiny details most people miss, psychopaths with this traits excel where others fall behind.
Mental Toughness – The ability to remain unfazed in high pressure situations.  A psychopath with a high level of mental toughness does not respond negatively to criticism or rejection; he simply continues on until he succeeds.  Only a psychopath absorbs stress this easily.  For the rest of us, high rates of failure are inefficient and emotionally taxing.
Fearlessness – The ability to approach high-risk situations without apprehension or inhibited faculties.  It allows the psychopath to try things that other people don’t attempt.  These endeavors have fewer competitors, and succeeding at them is easier for the psychopath as a result.
Mindfulness – An intense, Zen-like state of attention for a current task.  Very similar to focus, mindfulness enables the psychopath to ignore not only present distractions, but also future worries and consequences.
Action – The companion trait to fearlessness.  Action allows psychopaths to constructively channel their natural disdain for risk and embarrassment; they proceed with a task that’s likely to fail even if they know it probably will.  Because psychopaths attempt high-risk endeavors more often than most people, they can claim more individual successes.  From a distance, it seems as if they succeed at them more often than they actually do.

2. Dark Triad males may possess personality traits that are intrinsically attractive.

In Zeroing in on Narcissism, the researchers isolated boldness as a mediator of narcissistic attractiveness.  They did not, however, test what common narcissistic behaviors best demonstrate boldness (besides simply walking up to girls and blatantly asking for contact information.)  We plan on using Vangelisti’s list of narcissistic conversational tactics to help us determine what some of these behaviors could be.
Charm, one of Kevin Dutton’s seven positive psychopathic traits, is the exception to the other six; the rest are strategically useful because they statistically increase success rates for psychopaths in social situations. Charm, however, is intrinsically attractive; it almost always succeeds.  Whether or not it can be learned or mimicked is an open question.

3. Dark Triad males may appear more physically attractive than the average male.

“Zeroing in on Narcissism” also isolated physical attractiveness as a mediator of narcissistic attractiveness. Cleanliness and neatness of dress were two characteristics common to narcissists in the Back Zero-Acquaintance study, but the researchers didn’t control for physical attractiveness.  Given the results of these two studies, it seems that narcissists put more effort into their physical fitness and aesthetic appearance than the average person.  This isn’t surprising, but it is important.
Decades of research suggests that attractive people are afforded more benefits than unattractive people.  If the Dark Triad males is in fact better-looking than the average male, his successes in and out of the dating world could simply be the result of a kind of stereotyping called behavioral confirmation.