Abstract
Chronic cocaine use has been associated with impairments in social cognition, self-serving and antisocial behavior, and socially relevant personality disorders (PD). Despite the apparent relationship between Machiavellianism and stimulant use, no study has explicitly examined this personality concept in cocaine users so far. In the frame of the longitudinal Zurich Cocaine Cognition Study, the Machiavellianism Questionnaire (MACH-IV) was assessed in 68 recreational and 30 dependent cocaine users as well as in 68 psychostimulant-naïve controls at baseline. Additionally, three closely related personality dimensions from the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI)–cooperativeness, (social) reward dependence, and self-directedness–and the screening questionnaire of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders (SCID-II) were acquired. At the one-year follow-up, 57 cocaine users and 48 controls were reassessed with the MACH-IV. Finally, MACH-IV scores were correlated with measures of social cognition and interaction (cognitive/emotional empathy, Theory-of-Mind, prosocial behavior) and with SCID-II PD scores assessed at baseline. Both recreational and dependent cocaine users showed significantly higher Machiavellianism than controls, while dependent cocaine users additionally displayed significantly lower levels of TCI cooperativeness and self-directedness. During the one-year interval, MACH-IV scores showed high test-retest reliability and also the significant gap between cocaine users and controls remained. Moreover, in cocaine users, higher Machiavellianism correlated significantly with lower levels of cooperativeness and self-directedness, with less prosocial behavior, and with higher cluster B PD scores. However, Machiavellianism was not correlated with measures of cocaine use severity (r<-.15). Both recreational and dependent cocaine users display pronounced and stable Machiavellian personality traits. The lack of correlations with severity of cocaine use and its temporal stability indicates that a Machiavellian personality trait might represent a predisposition for cocaine use that potentially serves as a predictor for stimulant addiction.
Highlights
Disturbed socio-cognitive abilities are important features of all substance use disorders, but they affect stimulant-using populations [1, 2]
Given that chronic cocaine users exhibit impaired socio-cognitive functioning and increased personality disorders (PD) comorbidities [4,5,6,7] and that Machiavellianism has been negatively associated with socio-cognitive functioning [8] but positively linked to most PD [9], we investigated the association of Machiavellianism with socio-cognitive functioning and PD symptoms as well
The major finding of the present study is that both recreational cocaine users (RCU) and dependent cocaine users (DCU) exhibited a higher level of Machiavellianism than controls, reflecting a stronger tendency toward cynical views on human nature and–albeit less pronounced–toward interpersonal manipulation
Summary
Disturbed socio-cognitive abilities are important features of all substance use disorders, but they affect stimulant-using populations [1, 2]. Until recently, systematic investigations examining social characteristics and attitudes in stimulant users were scarce, accumulating evidence suggests that, e.g., chronic cocaine use is associated with broad alterations in socio-cognitive functioning [4,5,6]. Dependent cocaine use is commonly associated with a variety of socially relevant personality disorders (PD), including antisocial and narcissistic PD [6, 7]. These specific social characteristics of chronic cocaine users resemble the broad concept of Machiavellianism [8, 9], which describes a social attitude characterized by cynical beliefs, interpersonal manipulation, and pragmatic morality [10]. We aimed to investigate Machiavellianism in a large sample of RCU, DCU, and stimulant-naïve healthy controls (matched for age, sex, verbal IQ, and cigarette smoking) using the self-assessment Machiavellianism-questionnaire MACH-IV [10]
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