Here you can assess your dark personality traits in a self-attempt. The questionnaire below, the so called dirty dozen is a consistent and commonly used form of determining the dark triad (machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy). It was developed by Jonason and Webster in 2010 and gives an accurate and fast result for this interesting side of human nature. And i also do not like to answer 10.000 questions…
After completing each question with a value from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), you will get the result in form of a graph and some literature based description about the most dominant trait.
No data will be saved, so please feel free to try out different answers or do an assessment for a friend or colleague.
The additional information are not meant to deliver a complete personality profile. It is just designed as a teaser for interested readers to get an entry point in the material.
It seems that there is no dominant facet in the current assessment. Try shifting a rating to get a dominant facet with additional information below.
In this case, narcissism seems to be the dominant personality trait within the dark triad. Campbell and Miller 2011 put together a very comprehensive literature overview on this topic in their handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. Below you find a little summary of interesting points emerging from this facet which you can take into account.
Romantic relationships:
Since they appear as desirable relationship partners, Narcissists are specialists at initiating romantic relationships (Brunell, Campbell 2011). This desirableness stays in contrast to the realistic attributes of this facet. Relationships with narcissists are frequently short- lived and destructive in direction of the partner. Furthermore, narcissism is related to sociosexuality which refers to individuals’ willingness or propensity to engage in sexual activity outside of a committed relationship (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991).
Carreer:
When reading dark triad and job performance, literature focus strongly on leadership topics. Due to the self-promoting attribute of narcissists, Narcissism often relates to success in business. Sorrentino and Boutillier showed already in 1975 that the ones talking much emerged as leader from a group of people.
On leadership/ CEO behavior, Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007) state that narcissistic leaders engage more often in big, widely visible projects which results in volatile performance for the company.
Working for a narcissistic leader can result in higher stress due to the unpredictable demands. (Robert Hogan and James Fico)
Money and consumer behavior:
For narcissitc individuals the purchasing power from money is not primary motive of possession but the prestige arising from it. Consumer choices align with self-beliefs (Dunning 2007) and there is direct evidence that narcissism is linked to materialism (Sedikides, Gregg, Cisek, & Hart, 2007). Furthermore, these type of individuals strongly prefer brand-clothing. (Constantine Sedikides, Sylwia Cisek, and Claire M. Hart)
[read more]
- Brunell, Amy B. and W. Keith Campbell; 2011; Narcissism and romantic relationships: Understanding the paradox; Research Gate.
- Campbell, W. Keith and Joshua D. Miller; 2011; The handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder: Theoretical approaches, empirical findings and treatments; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Chatterjee, Arijit and Donald C. Hambrick; 2007; It’s All about Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance; SAGE journals; Corporate Governance and Strategy; 52; 3.
- Cisek, Sylwia and Constantine Sedikides and Claire M. Hart; Hayward Godwin; 2014; Narcissism and Consumer Behaviour: A Review and Preliminary Findings; PubMed; Frontiers in Psychology; 5; 232.
- Dunning, David Dunning; 2007; Self image Motives and Consumer Behavior: How Sacrosanct Self-Beliefs Sway Preferences in the Marketplace; Journal of Consumer Psychology; 17; 4; 237-249.
- Hogan, Robert and James Fico; 2011; Leadership; Chapter 35 in The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcisstic Personality Disorder: Theoretical Approaches, Empirical Findings, and Treatments.
- Simpson, Jeffry A. and Steven W. Gangestad; 1991; Individual differences in sociosexuality: Evidence for converand discriminant validity; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; 60; 6; 870-883.
- Sedikides, Constantine and Aiden O. Gregg and Sylwia Cisek and Claire M. Hart; 2007; The I That Buys: Narcissists as Consumers; Journal of Consumer Psychology; 17; 4; 254-257.
[/read]
Machiavellianism seems to be the dominant personality traits within this assessment. For a deep dive I recommend the paper “Machiavellianism” from Jones and Paulhus (2009) which gives an excellent introduction to this topic. Below you find a summary over some interesting features potentially arising from this personality.
Career:
The relation between Machiavellianism and achievement motivation is significant. This means that they are very driven people in general. (Nelson and Gilbertson 1991)
Political skill camouflages machiavellianism and Individuals high in Machiavellianism and high in political skill did not tend to avoid engaging in overtly mean behaviors toward others. (Blickle et. al. 2020)
Intransigence with regard to own errors. Machiavellianism prevents these individuals from blaming themselves and feeling ashamed. (Gürlek 2020).
Relationships:
With regard to live-style machiavellianism shows the tendency for more hostile behavior with regard to partners and also living a faster live. There were negative associations found in literature between machiavellianism and social and emotional understanding (Barlow 2010).
Relationship satisfaction was lower among women with higher levels of Machiavellianism. (Brewer 2017)
Women who had higher levels of Machiavellianism felt their husbands were less dependable, had less confidence in them, and were less likely to remain in a relationship than women who had lower levels of Machiavellianism.
- Barlow, Alexandra and Pamela Qualter and Maria Stylianou; 2010; Relationshipts between Machiavellianism, emotional intelligence and theory of mind in children; Personality and Individual Differences; 48; 1; 78-82.
- Blickle, Gerhard and Bastian P. Kückelhaus and Iris Kranefeld and Nora Schütte and Hanna A. Genau and Dominic-Nicolas Gansen-Ammann and Andreas Wihler; Political skill camouflages Machiavellianism: Career role performance and organizational misbehavior at short and long tenure; Journal of Vocational Behavior; 118; 103401; Elsevier.
- Brewer, Gayle and Loren Absell; 2017; Machiavellianism, Relationship Satisfaction, and Romantic Relationship Quality; Europe’s Journal of Psychology; 13; 3; 491-502.
- Gürlek, Mert: Shedding light on the relationships between Machiavellianism, career ambition, and unethical behavior interaction; Ethics & Behavior; 32; 1; 38-59.
- Jones, Daniel N. and Delroy L. Paulhus; 2009; Machiavellianism; in M.R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle (Eds.); Handbook of individual differences in social behavior; The Guildford Press; 93-108.
- Nelson, George and Diana Gilbertson; 1991; Machiavellianism revisited; Journal of Business Ethics; 10; 633-639.
[/read]
This setting shows psychopathy as dominant trait in the dark triad. For an excellent clarification on this trait, I recommend The Mask of Sanity by Cleckley.
Crime:
Most popular aspect of psychopathy is still found in criminal behavior. There is substantial empirical research to suggest that psychopathy is a robust predictor of criminal behaviour and recidivism (Dhingra and Boduszek 2013). For this reason we see an ongoing debate whether psychopaths should be held criminally responsible for their actions (Morse 2008)
Romantic relationships:
Results of current studies support that psychopaths explore antisocial behaviours online, particularly when online dating (Duncan and March 2019).
Using Tinder for acquiring sexual experience was related to being male and being high in psychopathy. Psychopathy was positively correlated with using Tinder to distract oneself from other tasks (e.g., procrastination). Further Results indicate that individuals high in Machiavellianism use Tinder for a number of utilitarian reasons, whereas the main motive for high psychopathy individuals is hook-up for casual sex. (Lyons 2020)
- Cleckley, Hervey; 2015; The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-called Psychopathic Personality; Martino Fine Books.
- Dhingra, Katie and Daniel Boduszek; 2013; Psychopathy and Criminal Behaviour – A Psychosocial Research Perspective; Journal of Criminal Psychology; 3; 2.
- Duncan Zoe, and Evita March; 2019; Using Tinder to start a fire: Predicting antisocial use of Tinder with gender and the Dark Tetrad; Personality and Individual DIfferences; 145; 9-14.
- Lyons, Minna and Ashleigh Messenger and Rebeca Perry and Gayle Brewer; 2020; The Dark Tetrad in Tinder: hook-up app for high psychopathy individuals, and a diverse utilitarian tool for Machiavellians?; Current Psychology; 2020.
- Morse, Stephen J; 2008; Psychopathy and Criminal Responsibility; Neuroethics; Springer; 1; 205-212.
[/read]
