What is the Dark Triad?

This video answers the question: What is the dark triad? When we talk about the dark triad, we're talking about a theory that there are three specific personality traits that can come together to cause specific difficulties. These traits are narcissism, psychopathy, and a trait referred to as Machiavellianism. The idea with this theory is that all three of these traits share a personality trait called antagonism, which we could conceptualize as low agreeableness on the five-factor model. Narcissism, as it relates to the dark triad, has two different types: grandiose and vulnerable. With grandiose narcissism, we see traits like being dominant, arrogant, exploiting other people, and exhibitionism. With vulnerable narcissism, we see characteristics like being shy, distrusting other people, having mood lability, and being self-critical. Most of the research on the dark triad is really referring to grandiose narcissism and not vulnerable narcissism. With psychopathy, we see characteristics like violating social norms, being callous, having a lack of empathy, being impulsive, irresponsible, having superficial charm, being manipulative, and having shallow effect. When we look at the research that studies psychopathy related to the dark triad, we're really talking about a continuum where there can be subclinical psychopathy all the way up to clinical psychopathy. The last trait in the dark triad is Machiavellianism. We don't really see this mentioned in the clinical literature very much. This is really something we see more in literature related to careers. With Machiavellianism, we see characteristics like being manipulative, callous, being goal-oriented, having a satisfactory to a good level of impulse control, and tending to be related to white-collar crime or at least white-collar antisocial behavior. An important point with Machiavellianism is that there's no clinical impairment here with this particular trait.
Vize, C. E., Lynam, D. R., Collison, K. L., & Miller, J. D. (2018). Differences among dark triad components: A meta-analytic investigation. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 9(2), 101-111. doi:10.1037/per0000222

Видео What is the Dark Triad? канала Dr. Todd Grande