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

2. Outline
Dark Triad
Dark Tetrad
Application to groups

3. Positive personalities
Boring

4. Negative personalities
Fascinating
Exciting
Consequential

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

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

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

8. What is the common factor?P
callousness

9. Machiavellianism

10. Niccolo Machiavelli

11. 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

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

13. The Psychopath

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

15. 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.

16. The Narcissist

17. 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

18. MODERN DAY EXAMPLES OF THE DARK TRIAD

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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.

23. 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

24. 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)

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

26. Williams & Paulhus 2003
Self-enhancement

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

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

29. CHEATING & FRAUD

30. 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

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

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

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

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

35. AGGRESSION
Jones & Paulhus (2010)

36. white noise paradigm
Advertised as Competitive Game Study

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

38. 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

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

40. 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

41. RESEARCH BY OTHERS

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

43. 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

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

45. REVENGE

46. 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.

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

48. STALKING

49. 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

50. CONCLUSIONS

51. 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

52. The newest member
Sadism

53. Sexual Sadism

54. EVERYDAY SADISM

55. Abu Graib prison guards

56. Cage Fighting

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

58. 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

59. 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

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

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

62. 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)

63. 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 !

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

65. Application to Group Hierarchies

66. NEFARIOUS GROUPS Organized crime Motorcycle gangs Street gangs
Terrorist organizations
Politicians

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

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

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

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

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

72. Others ?

73. 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

74. THANK YOU for listening !

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