The Dark Triad of Personality

Lecture notes

Allport’s trait theory
- Lexical approach
- Asked people what words described them
- 3 categories
  - Cardinal traits - Those that make up the individuals entrie personality
  - Central traits - Make up our personality
  - Secondary traits - Heavily context dependant
Eysenck’s Giant Three
- Existed on a continuum
Myers-Briggs
- 4 Categories
  - Introversion/extraversion
  - Sensing/intuition
  - Thinking/Feeling
  - Judging/Perceiving
Five factor model
- Dominant trait model in personality psychology today
- Big 5
  - Openness to experience
  - Conscintiousnes
  - Extraversion
  - Agreeableness
  - Neuroticism
Critics argue that trait theory is limited as people do not behave the ame across all situations

Start by generating appropriate statements or questions
Make sure items are valid and they relate in a predictable way to similar personality traits
Is the correlation + or -
Personality is typically assessed through self-report
Personality questionnaires undergo a process of validation

'‘Entitled self-importance”
A term that originates from greek mythology
Characteristics include
- Grandiosity
- Self-importance
- A desire to be admired
Grandiose & Vulnerable narcissism

“The ends justify the means”
Better for a leader to be feared then loved
Only unidimensional dark triad trait
Characteristics include
- Manipulation
- Long-term strategic planning
- Callous social interactions
- Cynical and cold view of the world

Consider all these traits to have ethical moral and socially deviant behaviour
Strong positive correlation between all three
All three result in similar outcomes (interestingly can be associated with business and career success as well as crime)

Human personality consists of traits and facets
Dark triad comprises of three personality traits; Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissim
All dark triad traits share commonalities and are social aversive, but have important differences