The Dark Triad and the PID-5 Maladaptive Personality Traits: Accuracy, Confidence and Response Bias in Judgments of Veracity.

Benno G Wissing,Marc-André Reinhard

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01549

Abstract

The Dark Triad traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy—have been found to be associated with intra- or interpersonal deception production frequency. This cross-sectional study (N = 207) investigated if the Dark Triad traits are also associated with deception detection accuracy, as implicated by the recent conception of a deception-general ability. To investigate associations between maladaptive personality space and deception, the PID-5 maladaptive personality traits were included to investigate if besides Machiavellianism, Detachment is negatively associated with response bias. Finally, associations between the Dark Triad traits, Antagonism, Negative Affectivity and confidence judgments were investigated. Participants watched videos of lying vs. truth-telling senders and judged the truthfulness of the statements. None of the Dark Triad traits was found to be associated with the ability to detect deception. Detachment was negatively associated with response bias. Psychopathy was associated with global confidence judgments. The results provide additional support that dark and maladaptive personality traits are associated with judgmental biases but not with accuracy in deception detection. The internal consistencies of 4 of the 8 subscales of the used personality short scales were only low and nearly sufficient (αs =0.65–0.69).

Highlights

Research on the Dark Triad (Paulhus and Williams, 2002)—the moderately intercorrelated personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy—has accumulated over the recent years
The data did not support the predicted negative association of Machiavellianism with response bias [r(205) = −0.05, 95% CI = (−0.19, 0.08), p = 0.448]; the predicted negative association between Detachment and response bias was supported by the data [r(205) = −0.23, 95% CI = (−0.36, −0.10), p < 0.001]
The present study investigated the relation between the Dark Triad traits, the PID-5 maladaptive personality traits and the process of lie detection including detection accuracy, response bias, confidence judgments and process measures for selfreported cue reliance and self-reported decision time

Summary

Introduction

Research on the Dark Triad (Paulhus and Williams, 2002)—the moderately intercorrelated personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy—has accumulated over the recent years. Within the two dominant personality frameworks, the Five-Factor Model (FFM; Costa and McCrea, 1992) and the HEXACO model (Lee and Ashton, 2005), they converge on a core of low agreeableness (Paulhus and Williams, 2002) and low Honesty-Humility (Lee and Ashton, 2005). Individuals high in Dark Triad traits are more agentic and lower in communion (Jonason et al, 2010; Jones and Paulhus, 2010) reflecting a low manifestation of agreeableness, which is defined as the willingness to cooperate and, of central importance for group inclusion (Buss, 1991). High Antagonism might be adaptive in exploitable and exploitative environments, exemplified by individuals high in Machiavellianism who disregard conventional morality by rationally defecting when defection is the equilibrium strategy (Gunnthorsdottir et al, 2002)

Methods

Results

Conclusion