The Dark Tetrad of Personality: Relevance to Nefarious Groups Delroy L. Paulhus University of British Columbia

Outline Dark Triad Dark Tetrad Application to groups

Positive personalities Boring

Negative personalities Fascinating Exciting Consequential

The Dark Triad NARCISSIST MACHIAVELLIAN PSYCHOPATH Standard measures intercorrelate in the + .20 to +.50 range The Dark Triad

Narcissist: egotistical attention-seeking Machiavellian: planful manipulation Psychopath: reckless and callous

CLINICAL LEVEL -serious problems -requires professional help SUBCLINICAL -mild version, allows person to manage in everyday society

What is the common factor? P callousness

Machiavellianism

Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavellianism Advisor to the Medici family (ca. 1500) To succeed in politics, you must manipulate others E.g., flatter important people Most people are ignorant and deserve to be manipulated Richard Christie created the Mach scale

Sun-Tzu: The Art of War (ca. 500 B.C.) Winning battles is all about preparation. Knowing the foe.

The Psychopath

Clinical version key features: Nasty & impulsive Keeps committing crimes Never learns Most of life spent in prison

The Subclinical Version Normal psychopath Successful psychopath Non-criminal psychopath Businessman, lawyer, student Either milder version or cases where an over-riding asset precludes prison.

The Narcissist

Sense of superiority Needs attention Constant bragging Feels entitled to superior treatment Derogates others In principle, they are secretly insecure Raskin created the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

MODERN DAY EXAMPLES OF THE DARK TRIAD

Paris Hilton Subclinical narcissism Donald Trump Impulsively reckless and callous Self-enhancing and egocentric Cheated more people out of more money than any person in history Donald Trump Paris Hilton

Machiavellian Bernie Madoff Impulsively reckless and callous Self-enhancing and egocentric Cheated more people out of more money than any person in history 3. Machiavellianism Machiavellian

Sean Avery Sub-clinical psychopath Impulsively reckless and callous Self-enhancing and egocentric Cheated more people out of more money than any person in history Sub-clinical psychopath

SOME OF THE ISSUES Q: are they actually the same person SOME OF THE ISSUES Q: are they actually the same person? A: No, but positively correlated Q: Are they mutually exclusive? A: No, they can be found in the same person.

OUR RESEARCH Designed to differentiate the Dark Triad Included an extensive program of correlational and experimental studies Hoped to differentiate the three on the basis of predicting distinct outcomes Required solid measurement instruments Primarily student and Mechanical Turk samples

Paulhus & Williams (2002) INTRODUCED THE RESEARCH SRP III (Self-Report Psychopathy) NPI (Narcissistic Personality Inventory) Mach IV (Machiavellianism scale) Short Dark Triad (Jones & Paulhus, 2010)

TO ANTICIPATE: The Dark Triad members show distinctive correlates across a wide range of unsavory behaviors

Williams & Paulhus 2003 Self-enhancement

Discrepancy measure Departure from reality Objective measure Over-Claiming Questionnaire How familiar are you with these 100 things? Some of them are not real

Results Correlations with self-enhancement Narcissism were moderate to large Psychopathy were small Machiavellianism were zero

CHEATING & FRAUD

Exam copying Study (Nathanson et al., 2006) A. Administered battery of personality measures B. Used Wesolowsky Program to detect cheaters on midterm and final exams Examines wrong answers on multiple-choice tests Compares all combinations of students Statistical detection of error similarities Identifies outlier pairs

RESULTS Narcissism r = .10 Machivellianism r = .11 Psychopathy r = .28

Plagiarism Study Williams et al. (2010) 245 students Term papers scored for plagiarism by Turn-It-In program Both Psychopathy & Machiavellianism worked

Fraud Study E-mail questionnaire study (N = 95) Participation motivation was lottery three $50.00 prizes for participating Before awarding prizes, we sent another email “Oops, we lost the list of winners”

Results 12 of 63 students responders reported that they were a winner Narcissism r = .04 Machiavellianism r = .10 Psychopathy r = .24 p < .03

AGGRESSION Jones & Paulhus (2010)

white noise paradigm Advertised as Competitive Game Study

It’s not you whose tilted – it’s the computer image.

PROVOCATIONS BY ‘PARTNER’ Actually there is no partner She decides how to respond by setting the noise delivered to the partner Aggression was measured by the noise setting administered to partner

Results Narcissists increased aggression after an insult Psychopaths increased aggression after a gratuitous escalation

Sexual deviance studies We asked students about deviant sex fantasies and behavior (paraphilias, etc.) RESULTS Most people have some deviant fantasies Link between fantasy and behavior was stronger among psychopaths

RESEARCH BY OTHERS

Behavior-Genetics Study Vernon et al. (2007) N = 344 twins Psychopathy & narcissism highly heritable Machiavellianism shows a strong shared environmental effect

Big Six studies Ashton & Lee (2006) They added Factor 6 called Honesty-Humility -- to the Big Five All of the triad load on Factor 6, with few loadings on other factors

International Sex Survey Schmitt and colleagues (2005) Psychopaths steal other people’s lovers Same pattern in every one of 45 countries

REVENGE

Nathanson & Paulhus (in preparation) On-line anonymous data collection If you’re like most people, you have fantasized about getting back at someone for something they did you. Tell us about an example of such a fantasy and and whether you actually got payback.

Results Psychopathy and borderline personality predicted stalking Neurotics fantasized but never acted on it We also clarified the motivation for revenge

STALKING

Lau & Paulhus (under review) Similar data collection to revenge studies Have you ever been rejected but continued to pursue the person anyway? Please give us the details RESULTS : psychopaths were the most frequent stalkers

CONCLUSIONS

Theoretical Features of D3 Narc Mach Psychopathy Callousness HI HI HI Impulsivity MOD LO HI Manipulation MOD HI HI Criminality LO only all kinds white collar Grandiosity HI LO MOD

The newest member Sadism

Sexual Sadism

EVERYDAY SADISM

Abu Graib prison guards

Cage Fighting

Video games Postal 2 Grand Theft Auto 3 Manhunt Mad World Thrill Kill

EVERYDAY (NON-SEXUAL SADISM) MOTIVATIONS Sadism encouraged by authorities Sadism encouraged by in-group Encouraged by sports norms Personal revenge CONCEPT: enjoyment vs. callous acceptance i.e., appetitive not low disgust

MEASURES QUESTIONNAIRES Short Sadism Scale (Davies, 2008) Our Multi-Sadism Questionnaire The SSIS plus: sexual sadism enjoyment of sadistic sports, films, video games, etc. partner abuse, self-harm, animal cruelty

Answer: Question: How to show sadism in the psychology laboratory? Bug crunching

Your job is to crunch this bug 30 percent of psychology students agreed Another 38 percent agreed to help

RESULTS Those who score high on the Sadism Questionnaire will be more willing to crunch the bug themselves Also those scoring high on RWA (cf. Milgram)

OTHER RESULTS Similar results for males and females Common enjoyment of all violent media Predicted by Everyday Sadism scale Linked to animal cruelty, fire-lighting, and vandalism Sexual sadism only slightly related Unrelated to self-harm Relatively independent of Dark Triad !

Combinations of the Dark Tetrad The Giants Hitler, Stalin, Mao? Likely high intelligence too

Application to Group Hierarchies

NEFARIOUS GROUPS Organized crime Motorcycle gangs Street gangs Terrorist organizations Politicians

Ideal Roles LEADERS HENCH-MEN Narcissist Front man Machiavellian Mastermind HENCH-MEN Psychopath Hired gun Sadist Cruel

LEADERS HENCH-MEN FOLLOWERS Narcissist Front man Machiavellian Mastermind HENCH-MEN Psychopath Hired gun Sadist Brutalizers FOLLOWERS True believers

NARCISSISTS MACHIAVELLIANS High profile charismatic spokesperson MACHIAVELLIANS Low profile Mastermind Manipulator Strategic thinker

TRUE BELIEVERS AUTHORITARIANS Need to belong Need for an admirable identity charismatic AUTHORITARIANS Obedient to authorities Escape from freedom Worldview Clarity

FAMOUS LEADERSHIP PAIRS The Narcissist The Machiavellian Nixon Kissinger Bush Karl Rove Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton Bin Laden Al-Zawahiri

Others ?

CONCLUSIONS To understand dark characters, more differentiation is needed Too often lumped together as simply evil They act in concert in certain nefarious groups Undermining such groups requires working on each one’s weakness

THANK YOU for listening !

And THANKS TO MY STUDENTS Kevin Williams Craig Nathanson Peter Harms Katherine Lau Bryce Westlake Dan Jones Sabrina Kitching