Examining the Relationship Between the Light Triad and the Dark Triad in Terms of Various Variables

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the consumer behavior of the Dark Triad (DT) personality traits. It investigates the sequential mediating role of consumer self-confidence and aggressive interpersonal orientation in the relationship between the DT personality traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism) and consumer behavior.Design/methodology/approachUsing identity theory as a theoretical framework, the authors develop and assess a model linking the DT personality traits to consumer behavior, using two products: a watch and restaurant menu items, in different experimental settings.FindingsResults from the two studies that surveyed consumers show that individuals with the DT personality traits have a positive significance of consumers’ attitudes, intent to recommend to others and purchase intentions, regardless of hedonic or utilitarian products. Further, consumer self-confidence mediates the DT–consumer behavior relationship, and this relationship is sequentially mediated by aggressive interpersonal orientation of the consumer.Research limitations/implicationsConsumer behavior researchers and marketing managers will have a better understanding of who DT consumers are and the variables associated with their consumption attitudes and intentions. This understanding allows marketers to focus on promotions to boost consumer self-confidence and aggressive interpersonal orientation of these DT consumers, which will increase their purchase intentions. Future researchers could replicate the results beyond an experimental design to improve the external validity of the findings, among other future research opportunities.Originality/valueOur findings highlight the underlying reasons behind dark triad consumption behaviors. This furthers our understanding of dark triad consumers using identity theory as our theoretical framework.

The literature suggests that people can accurately infer dark triad (DT) personality traits from other peoples' faces. Using a self-report scale, this study investigated the impact of participants' DT personality traits on their ability to accurately infer other peoples' DT traits from facial cues. We created composite facial photographs of Japanese people with varying Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism scores. The Japanese participants (N = 170) assessed these three DT traits in the facial photographs and completed a questionnaire that assessed their own DT traits. The results indicated that the participants could accurately infer all three DT traits from female faces but not from male faces. Male participants showed a positive correlation between accurate inferences of other men's Machiavellianism and their own DT traits. In contrast, female participants showed a negative correlation between correct inferences of men's DT traits and their own DT traits. These findings offer novel insights into human evolutionary and social adaptations.

This study aimed to further investigate the perceived attractiveness of the Dark Triad (DT) personality in different types of relationships (i.e. friendship, short-term and long-term relationship) controlling for basic personality traits from the HEXACO model. The participants were 167 female students (M = 20.82 years, SD = 1.54) who rated personality and attractiveness of a man with highly expressed DT characteristics (n = 91) or a low-scoring DT character (n = 76) presented in a vignette. In line with recent findings, we observed a high negative correlation between the Honesty-Humility factor and DT personality (r = -.88, p < .001). As hypothesized, there was a significant difference in attractiveness ratings for the two characters in the context of different interpersonal relationships, with high DT character rated as significantly more attractive than the low DT character in the context of short-term mating. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis showed that DT personality had a unique contribution in predicting attractiveness in the context of short-term relationship, after controlling for the basic personality traits.

In recent years, online dating websites, applications, and social media have become increasingly popular tools for finding romantic and/or sexual partners. Individual differences in personality traits predict the use of online dating websites and applications and also influence the motives for their use. Previous work regarding mating strategies in the context of online dating has focused on the Dark Tetrad concept of malevolent personality while ignoring the Light Triad concept of beneficent personality. Light and dark personality traits are not seen as polar opposites as they supplement each other. Thus, the current study aimed to explore the utility of both light (i.e., Faith in Humanity, Humanism, and Kantianism) and dark (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) personality traits in predicting mating strategies in the online context. A total of 216 participants, ages 20 to 56, which used online dating sites, apps, and social media for finding partners in the past year, completed an online questionnaire assessing Dark Tetrad traits, Light Triad traits, and mating orientations. Narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism positively correlated, while Faith in Humanity and Kantianism negatively correlated with short-term mating. However, only Faith in Humanity was a significant predictor of short-term mating. As for long-term mating, the results have shown that it is negatively related to psychopathy and sadism, while it is positively related to all Light Triad traits. Faith in Humanity, Humanism, and Kantianism were significant predictors of long-term mating. These findings highlight the utility of the Dark Tetrad and Light Triad traits in mating orientation research.

In a recent study appearing in Neuroethics, I reported observing 11 significant correlations between the “Dark Triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy – and “conservative” judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey. Surprisingly, I observed no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments. In order to determine whether these results were an artifact of the particular issues I selected, I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism. 1154 participants (680 male, 472 female; median age 29), recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed three surveys: a 15-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), the 28-item Short Dark Triad personality inventory, and a five-item demographic survey. The results strongly reinforce my earlier findings. Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008). This article concludes by developing a novel research proposal for determining whether the results of my two studies are “bad news” for conservatives or liberals.

In the recent times, the social networking sites act as a rich source of information, which is shared among online users, who post comments and express their opinions in the form of likes and dislikes. Such content reflects important clues about the personality and behavior of the online community. The dark triad personality traits, such as the psychopathic behavior of individuals, can be detected using computational models. The earlier studies on the dark triad (psychopath) prediction exploit traditional machine learning techniques with limited dataset size. Therefore, it is required to develop an advanced deep neural network-based technique. In this work, we implement a deep neural network model, namely BILSTM for the efficient prediction of dark triad (psychopath) personality traits regarding online users. Experimental results depict that the proposed model attained an improved AUC (0.82) when compared to the baseline study.

Background: Cyber bullying is defined as a series of deliberate and repeated sadistic behaviors which occur through such tools as computer, phone and other electronic devices. The current study was aimed to determine to what extent the dark triad personality predicts the phenomenon of cyber bullying among the youth. Methods: For this investigation, 200 internet users were selected through snowball sampling and data were obtained by the questionnaires sent via e-mail. Results: The results of investigation indicated that all dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, Psychopath and Narcissism) had a significantly positive relationship with cyber bullying. Also, Machiavellianism and Psychopath personality traits were respectively the strongest variables in predicting cyber bullying. Conclusion: all dark triad personality traits have the ability to predict cyber bullying phenomenon.

Our study tests in a sample of 87 organizational groups (297 employees and 87 supervisors) the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) and collective narcissism in the relationship between supervisors’ dark triad (SDT) personality traits and ratings of team outcomes made by supervisors and team members. We show that LMX mediates the association between SDT and team performance and innovation as rated by team members, while collective narcissism mediates the association between SDT and supervisory ratings of team innovation and team performance. Moreover, collective narcissism also mediates the association between SDT and team innovation as rated by team members. Results show that team-level performance appraisal is influenced by supervisory attributes and that the quality of relational exchanges and collective narcissism are plausible mechanisms explaining this association. The use of supervisory ratings of team outcomes in empirical research should also account for the supervisory attributes.

A cyberbullying study in Indonesia found that 84% of young people aged 12-17 years conducted cyberbullying. The consequences of cyberbullying emphasize the importance of studying the predictors and mechanism of cyberbullying. A number of studies have found that cyberbullying is related to Dark Triad personality traits and self-esteem. Dark Triad personality traits consist of three characteristics, namely the traits of: (1) psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. This study aims to see the role of self-esteem as a mediator in the relationship between Dark Triad personality traits and cyberbullying in the age of 20-35 years. Participants of this studi consist of 292 individuals where 70.89% of them are women. This study utilizes three scales, namely cyberbullying scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and Short Dark Triad Scale (SD3). The result of this study finds that self-esteem mediates traits of psychopathy toward cyberbullying. High self-esteem in individuals with traits of psychopathy results in higher trend in conducting cyberbullying. On the other hand, self-esteem may not significantly mediate between the traits of narcissism and Machiavellianism with cyberbullying. Results of this study aims to provide an implication related to the prevention or intervention of cyberbullying.
 
 Sebuah studi cyberbullying di Indonesia menemukan sebanyak 84% anak muda berusia 12-17 tahun melakukan cyberbullying. Konsekuensi dari cyberbullying menekankan pentingnya meneliti prediktor dan mekanisme cyberbullying. Sejumlah studi telah menemukan bahwa cyberbullying terkait dengan kepribadian Dark Triad dan self-esteem. Kepribadian Dark Triad terdiri dari tiga karakteristik, yaitu sifat psikopati, Machiavellianisme, dan narsisisme. Studi ini bertujuan untuk melihat peran self-esteem sebagai mediator dalam hubungan antara kepribadian Dark Triad dan cyberbullying pada usia 20-35 tahun. Partisipan studi terdiri dari 292 individu, dengan 70,89% merupakan perempuan. Studi ini menggunakan tiga alat ukur yaitu skala pengukuran cyberbullying, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), dan Short Dark Triad Scale (SD3). Hasil studi ini menemukan bahwa self-esteem memediasi sifat psikopati terhadap cyberbullying. Self-esteem yang tinggi pada individu dengan sifat psikopati menghasilkan kecenderungan yang lebih tinggi dalam melakukan cyberbullying. Di sisi lain, self-esteem tidak memediasi secara signifikan antara sifat narsisisme maupun sifat Machiavellianisme dengan cyberbullying. Hasil studi ini diharapkan mampu menyediakan implikasi sehubungan pencegahan atau intervensi cyberbullying.

Objective: Dark Triad is an umbrella term that involves sub-clinical psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. According to the researches studied the related factors about the development of Dark Triad, there may be a relationship within the environmental, biological and genetic factors and dark triad personality traits. The aim of this study is, examining both Dark Triad personality traits and the researches about the role of genetic in the development of Dark Triad’s three types. Methods: In this direction, this research examines family, twin and candidate gene studies about the hereditary components of Dark Triad, narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Also, researches examining the genetic components of some personality traits known to be related to the Dark Triad are included. Conclusion: It’s seen that, all three sub-personality types are affected by genetic factors, the hereditary characteristics of psychopathy and narcissism are more than Machiavellianism, among the three personality types, the personality type that is most affected by environmental factors is Machiavellianism and the personality traits related to the Dark Triad can also be determined by some genetic factors according to reviewed studies.

Purpose: This study investigates the effects of Big Five, HEXACO, and Dark Triad personality traits on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), and examines the moderating effects of countries where the studies were carried out, gender rate of samples, and scales used to measure personalities. Method: Following the rules of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), we include 74 empirical studies published between 2007 and September 2022 with 83 samples and 394 correlations. Studies are selected from both English databases such as Web of Science and Chinese databases such as CNKI. The meta-analysis and metaregression analysis were both performed using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) program, version 3.7. Results: Although emotionality is irrelevant to CWBs, other Big Five, HEXACO, and Dark Triad personality factors are all significant predictors of CWBs. The effect of Dark Triad (ρ = 0.412) is stronger than that of Big Five (ρ = −0.176) and HEXACO (ρ = −0.221). Gender negatively moderates the positive relationship between Dark Triad traits (total and subdimensions) and CWBs. The moderating effects of countries and scales are only significant for very few personalities. Conclusion: Personality traits are important antecedents of CWBs, and gender ratio plays a role as moderator for some personality traits. We propose that organizations should pay more attention to the mental health of employees and future studies could investigate other types of characteristics and moderators.

This study aims to see how dark triad personality traits (narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism) influence counterproductive work behaviours (CPWBs), with the mediating role of Perception of Organizational Politics, Psychological Contract Breach, and Perceived Accountability. Previous studies have engrossed the dark triad's effect on measuring individuals' unproductive work conduct. As a result, the dark triad personality traits are examined in this study to investigate counterproductive work behaviour. This research proposes and empirically validates this link model, suggesting that three mediators of the association between dark triad personalities and CWBs are Perception of Organizational Politics, Psychological Contract Breach, and Perceived Accountability. This study applied regression analysis and the Sobel Test to test the hypotheses on a sample of 342 employees working in the Manufacturing sector of Egypt. The results of this study reveal that the dark triad has a positive and significant effect on counterproductive work behaviours, and Perception of organisational Politics, psychological contract breach, and Perceived Accountability significantly mediate the relationship between the dark triad and counterproductive work behaviour.

Exploring the relationship between the Dark Triad personality traits and voice behaviour of hotel employees with the moderating effect of intention to leave

As young adults enter college, many seem to increase their alcohol consumption. Whether this behavior change is solely due to environmental factors, such as peer pressure or lack of supervision, has not been fully separated from developing or emerging intrapersonal traits that might facilitate the behavior. This trend underscores the importance of investigating the relationship between excessive drinking habits and deviant personality traits. This study, aimed at investigating the relationship between "dark triad" personality traits and harmful alcohol behaviors, may provide valuable insights into the social cultures on college campuses that promote maladaptive drinking habits. Based on the trait theory of personality, we hypothesized that dark triad traits would be associated with negative alcohol behaviors. To test our hypothesis, we administered the Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire (YAACQ) and Short Dark Triad scale (SD3) to 800 participants. After cleaning the data, we analyzed 799 responses to study measures and demographic items. Our findings revealed that, of the dark personality traits, Machiavellianism and psychopathy had small positive associations with harmful alcohol consumption. Moreover, we found that both personality and Greek life participation were significant predictors of alcohol misuse. This study may serve as a stepping-stone for future research into the interplay between the behavioral tendencies and cultural settings in which alcohol abuse occurs among college students. Thus, provides additional insight into a complex problem plaguing college communities.

Cosmetic surgery refers to procedures aimed at changing and enhancing external body appearance. This study aims to investigate the correlation between the dark triad personality traits and the acceptance of cosmetic surgery among university students in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. This quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted between October and November 2024 using random sampling and self-report questionnaires. The dark triad and acceptance of cosmetic surgery were assessed by using the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen and the Acceptance of Cosmetic Surgery Scale, respectively. Data were analyzed using t tests, Pearson correlations, and multiple regressions in SPSS software. A sample of 1321 participants-984 females and 337 males-participated in the study. Descriptive statistics of gender differences revealed that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism were significantly higher in males than females, whereas consider the sub-scale of acceptance of cosmetic surgery, which was higher in females. The correlational analysis illustrates that all variables are correlated regarding dark traits and acceptance of cosmetic surgery sub-scales. Narcissism was found to be the most predictable dark triad among applicants who seek cosmetic surgery. Individuals with high levels of narcissism are more likely to consider cosmetic surgery. Health professionals should be aware of the effects of the dark triad on cosmetic surgery decisions, and the study recommends further research. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each submission to which Evidence-Based Medicine rankings are applicable. This excludes Review Articles, Book Reviews, and manuscripts that concern Basic Science, Animal Studies, Cadaver Studies, and Experimental Studies. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 www.springer.com/00266 .