Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism in the Five-Factor Model and the HEXACO model of personality structure

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Abstract

We investigated the relations of the “Dark Triad” personality traits—Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism—with the variables of the Five-Factor Model and the HEXACO model of personality structure. Results (N = 164) indicated that all three Dark Triad traits were strongly negatively correlated (rs = −0.72, −0.57, and −0.53, respectively) with the HEXACO Honesty–Humility factor. Psychopathy and Machiavellianism showed moderate negative correlations with Big Five Agreeableness (rs = −0.39 and −0.44, respectively), but Narcissism did not (r = −0.04). However, Narcissism correlated positively with Big Five Extraversion (r = 0.46) and HEXACO Extraversion (r = 0.49). Correlations among the Dark Triad variables were explained satisfactorily by the HEXACO variables, but not by the Five-Factor Model variables.

Introduction

Socially aversive personality traits such as Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism have been studied intensively in clinical and social psychology. Psychopathy refers to a pattern of callous, remorseless manipulation and exploitation of others, and has been investigated as a psychological cause of antisocial and criminal behaviours (Hare, 1991). Narcissism, which has been widely studied as a personality disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), has been conceptualized as a “normal” personality variable characterized by dominance, exhibitionism, and exploitation as well as feelings of superiority and entitlement (Raskin & Terry, 1988). Machiavellianism refers to individual differences in manipulativeness, insincerity, and callousness (Christie & Geis, 1970), and has been widely studied in social psychological investigations involving persuasion, leadership, and ethical behaviours. Although each of these three constructs may have some unique features not shared by the other two, they do appear to share some common elements such as exploitation, manipulativeness, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. Accordingly, Paulhus and Williams (2002) have called these three constructs the “Dark Triad” of personality, and we will use the same term here to refer collectively to the three traits.

Despite the voluminous literature on each of the Dark Triad constructs, they have not yet been fully understood in terms of a general framework of personality structure such as the Big Five or Five-Factor Model (e.g., Goldberg, 1993, McCrae, 1989; despite some minor differences between the Big Five and the Five-Factor Model, we will use the two names interchangeably). Thus far, global factor-level measures of the Big Five factors—known as Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (versus Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience (or Intellect/Imagination)—have typically shown only moderate correlations with the Dark Triad traits (see Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The purpose of the present study is to delineate the Dark Triad constructs within two competing structural models of personality variation: the Five-Factor Model and a newly proposed framework known as the HEXACO model (Ashton et al., 2004, Lee and Ashton, 2004).

Paulhus and Williams (2002) recently conducted a study to investigate the similarities and differences among the Dark Triad traits. In this study, self-report measures of the three variables were moderately intercorrelated (r = 0.50 for Psychopathy/Narcissism, r = 0.31 for Psychopathy/Machiavellianism, and r = 0.25 for Narcissism/Machiavellianism). The three constructs were further delineated in terms of their relations with the Big Five personality traits, intelligence, and some indices of self-enhancement. With respect to personality variables, results showed that only one Big Five factor—Agreeableness—was consistently correlated with all three of the Dark Triad personality traits. The sizes of the correlations, however, were modest (r = −0.25 for Psychopathy, r = −0.47 for Machiavellianism, and r = −0.36 for Narcissism).

The sizes of the correlations of the Dark Triad traits found with Agreeableness in Paulhus and Williams (2002) are too small to account for the observed correlations among the three variables. In other words, the pattern of covariation among the Dark Triad traits cannot be explained in terms of their correlations with the Big Five variables, and this fact might be considered a shortcoming of the Five-Factor Model. However, a new model of personality structure has recently been proposed, and this model contains a sixth independent dimension that bears a strong conceptual similarity to—and likely a strong empirical overlap with—the Dark Triad traits. Interestingly, this new six-dimensional model was derived on the basis of cross-cultural findings from lexical studies of personality structure.

Section snippets

A new model of personality structure: the HEXACO model

Lexical studies of personality structure involve factor analyses of ratings on a comprehensive set of personality descriptive terms. Several investigations of the structure of the English personality lexicon have been conducted in the past, and have repeatedly produced a similar set of five factors now known as the Big Five. Since the late 1980s, lexical studies of personality structure have been conducted using several other European and Asian languages. Interestingly, however, the findings

Hypotheses regarding the Big Five and HEXACO Models

The new factor named Honesty–Humility has typically been defined by traits such as sincerity, fairness, and modesty versus slyness, pretentiousness, and greed (see Ashton et al., 2004). The range of content captured by this factor is thus largely the same as that subsumed by the Dark Triad variables, and suggests strong empirical relations between Honesty–Humility and all three of the Dark Triad. In contrast, the Big Five model has no direct counterpart of Honesty–Humility, and only a fraction

Participants

One hundred and sixty four undergraduate students participated for either course credits or cash payments. Women constituted 56% of the sample, and the mean age of participants was 23.9 years (s.d. = 7.3).

Measures

Responses on the personality measures described below were made on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly disagree). Items from all personality scales were interspersed in quasi-random fashion throughout a single personality questionnaire booklet. Internal-consistency reliabilities

Results

Before examining the correlations among the study variables, we investigated sex differences in mean levels of the Dark Triad traits, because previous studies indicated that high scores on these variables are more prevalent among men. As expected, men scored higher than women did on the Dark Triad traits (Cohen’s d values equalled 0.70 for Primary Psychopathy, 0.64 for Narcissism, and 0.40 for Machiavellianism). A series of moderated multiple regression analyses indicated that there are no

Discussion

Although the Dark Triad traits were found to show strong associations with Honesty–Humility, these three constructs are not identical. In particular, Narcissism appears to be distinct in several ways from Machiavellianism and Primary Psychopathy. First, Narcissism did not correlate with Primary Psychopathy and Machiavellianism as strongly as those two correlated with each other (see also McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998, Table 4). Second, Narcissism was strongly correlated with Extraversion,

Conclusion

Despite the conceptual overlap of Primary Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism, studies investigating the personality correlates of these constructs have not located a personality dimension that underlies all three of these constructs. The present research has demonstrated the strong negative relations of this Dark Triad of personality with the new sixth factor of personality, Honesty–Humility.

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    This research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grants 410-2003-0946 and 410-2003-1835.

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