Colin E. Vize

Differences Among Dark Triad Components: A Meta-Analytic Investigation.

Since its emergence 14 years ago the dark triad (DT), composed of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, has become an increasingly popular research focus. Yet questions remain over whether the DT components are sufficiently distinct from another. We examined the nomological networks of each DT component through a meta-analysis of the available literature on the DT. We conducted 3 separate analyses—an examination of the average intercorrelations among the DT components (k = 156), an examination of similarities in each DT component’s nomological network (k = 159), and an examination of the effect sizes between DT components and 15 outcome categories (k range = 7 to 42). Our results indicate that the nomological networks of psychopathy and Machiavellianism overlap substantially while narcissism demonstrated differential relations compared with psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These results remained relatively constant after controlling for DT assessment approach. We argue that the current literature on Machiavellianism may be better understood as a secondary psychopathy literature. Future directions for DT research are discussed in light of our meta-analytic results.

Vulnerable Narcissism Is (Mostly) a Disorder of Neuroticism

OBJECTIVE Increasing attention has been paid to the distinction between the dimensions of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability. We examine the degree to which basic traits underlie vulnerable narcissism, with a particular emphasis on the importance of Neuroticism and Agreeableness. METHOD Across four samples (undergraduate, online community, clinical-community), we conduct dominance analyses to partition the variance predicted in vulnerable narcissism by the Five-Factor Model personality domains, as well as compare the empirical profiles generated by vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism. RESULTS These analyses demonstrate that the lions share of variance is explained by Neuroticism (65%) and Agreeableness (19%). Similarity analyses were also conducted in which the extent to which vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism share similar empirical networks was tested using an array of criteria, including self-, informant, and thin slice ratings of personality; interview-based ratings of personality disorder and pathological traits; and self-ratings of adverse events and functional outcomes. The empirical correlates of vulnerable narcissism and Neuroticism were nearly identical (MrICC  = .94). Partial analyses demonstrated that the variance in vulnerable narcissism not shared with Neuroticism is largely specific to disagreeableness-related traits such as distrustfulness and grandiosity. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate the parsimony of using basic personality to study personality pathology and have implications for how vulnerable narcissism might be approached clinically.

Identifying Essential Features of Juvenile Psychopathy in the Prediction of Later Antisocial Behavior: Is There an Additive, Synergistic, or Curvilinear Role for Fearless Dominance?

Despite years of research and the inclusion of psychopathy in DSM-5, there remains debate over the fundamental components of psychopathy. Although there is agreement about traits related to agreeableness and conscientiousness, there is less agreement about traits related to fearless dominance (FD) or boldness. The present article uses proxies of FD and self-centered impulsivity (SCI) to examine the contribution of FD-related traits to the predictive utility of psychopathy in a large, longitudinal sample of boys to test four possibilities: FD (a) assessed earlier is a risk factor, (b) interacts with other risk-related variables to predict later psychopathy, (c) interacts with SCI interact to predict outcomes, and (d) bears curvilinear relations to outcomes. SCI received excellent support as a measure of psychopathy in adolescence; however, FD was unrelated to criteria in all tests. It is suggested that FD be dropped from psychopathy and that future research focus on agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Examining the Effects of Controlling for Shared Variance among the Dark Triad Using Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modelling: Dark Triad metaSEM

Multivariate procedures (e.g. structural equation modelling) are essential to personality psychology, but interpretive difficulties can arise when examining the relations between residualized variables (i.e. the residual content of a variable after its overlap with other variables has been statistically controlled for) and outcomes of interest. These issues have been the focus of recent debate within the research literature on the Dark Triad, which is a collection of interrelated but theoretically distinct personality constructs made up of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. The present paper highlights previous work on the issue of partialling and also makes use of recent developments surrounding meta–analytic structural equation modelling to reliably assess the impact of partialling on the empirical profiles of the Dark Triad components. The results show that numerous interpretive difficulties arise after partialling the overlap among the Dark Triad components, most notably for narcissism and Machiavellianism. The results are discussed in the context of contemporary Dark Triad research in addition to discussing the implications for structural equation modelling methods in personality psychology more generally. Recommendations are made for how future research can mitigate the interpretive difficulties that may arise from partialling. Copyright

Personality Disorder Traits: Perceptions of Likability, Impairment, and Ability to Change as Correlates and Moderators of Desired Level.

Historical conceptualizations have framed personality disorders (PDs) as unchanging and ego-syntonic. However, recent evidence suggests that individuals with PD traits may have some insight into their personality and consider those traits to be somewhat ego-dystonic. To replicate and extend previous findings, participants (N = 328) self-reported their PD trait levels, likability of those traits, impairment, capability for change, and desired trait levels. The results demonstrated that individuals with PD traits tolerate but still dislike those traits, believe that they cause them problems, and are interested in reducing them. Level of PD trait did not relate to perception of capability for change. Likability and impairment moderated most of the relations between actual PD trait and desired level. That is, there was a stronger correlation between actual and desired levels among individuals who liked the trait more; there was also greater agreement between actual and desired levels among individuals who found the traits less impairing. For 2 of the traits—Negative Affectivity and Detachment—individuals who felt more capable of changing these traits demonstrated greater agreement between their actual and desired levels. These data suggest that individuals with PD traits do not generally see them as particularly likable and see them as impairing; such impressions may have important implications for where individuals ultimately prefer to reside on these PD trait domains.

Using Dominance Analysis to Decompose Narcissism and Its Relation to Aggression and Externalizing Outcomes

Research on narcissism has shown it to be multidimensional construct. As such, the relations the larger construct bear with certain outcomes may mask heterogeneity apparent at the more basic trait level. This article used the Five Factor Narcissism Inventory, a Five-Factor Model–based measure of narcissism that allows for multiple levels of analysis, to examine the relative importance of narcissistic traits in relation to aggression, externalizing behavior, and self-esteem outcomes in two independent samples. The relative importance of the narcissism factors was determined through the use of dominance analysis—a relatively underused method for determining relative importance among a set of related predictors. The results showed that antagonism, compared with agentic extraversion and neuroticism, was the dominant predictor across all forms of aggressive behavior. Additional analyses showed that subscales within the broader factor of antagonism also showed differential importance relative to one another for certain aggression outcomes. The results are discussed in the context of the relation between narcissism and aggression and highlight the utility of using extensions of regression-based analyses to explore the heterogeneity within personality constructs.

Development and preliminary validation of a five factor model measure of machiavellianism.

Machiavellianism is characterized by planfulness, the ability to delay gratification, and interpersonal antagonism (i.e., manipulativeness and callousness). Although its theoretically positive relations with facets of Conscientiousness should help distinguish Machiavellianism from psychopathy, current measurements of Machiavellianism are indistinguishable from those of psychopathy in large part because of their assessment of low Conscientiousness. The goal of the present study was to create a measure of Machiavellianism that is more in line with theory using an expert-derived profile based on the 30 facets of the five-factor model (FFM) and then test the validity of that measure by comparing it with relevant constructs. Previously collected expert ratings of the prototypical Machiavellian individual on FFM facets yielded a profile of 13 facets including low Agreeableness and high Conscientiousness. Items were written to represent each facet, resulting in a 201-item Five Factor Machiavellianism Inventory (FFMI). Across 2 studies, with a total of 710 participants recruited via Mechanical Turk, the FFMI was reduced to its final 52-item form and was shown to relate as expected to measures of Big Five personality traits, current Machiavellianism measures, psychopathy, narcissism, ambition, and impulsivity. The FFMI is a promising alternative Machiavellianism measure.

Using Bayesian methods to update and expand the meta-analytic evidence of the five-factor model's relation to antisocial behavior

The Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality is the dominant hierarchical model of personality. Previous work has demonstrated the importance of the FFM domains and facets in understanding a variety of antisocial behaviors ranging from non-violent antisocial behavior to a variety of aggression outcomes. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to quantitatively summarize the empirical work that has examined these relations, as well as update and expand previous work in this area using Bayesian meta-analytic methods. A comprehensive search of available literature on the FFM and antisocial behavior was conducted and posterior distributions of effect sizes were computed for the FFM domains (across 12 antisocial outcomes). The meta-analytic results supported the primary importance of (low) Agreeableness and (low) Conscientiousness in predicting antisocial behavior across antisocial outcomes, with the exception of the outcome related to child molestation. The importance of Neuroticism was more dependent on the specific antisocial outcome under examination. The results are discussed in the context of the descriptive research on the FFM and antisocial behavior, and how Bayesian methods provide additional utility in estimation and prediction compared to more common frequentist methods. Furthermore, we recommend that future work on the FFM and antisocial behavior move towards process-level analyses to further examine how traits are implicated in different forms of antisocial behavior.