Personality Neuroscience and Dark Values

Personality Neuroscience and Dark Values
Master Degree Project in Cognitive Neuroscience

One year 30 ECTS
Spring term 2014
Björn Persson
Supervisor: India Morrison

Supervisor: Petri Kajonius
Examiner: Judith Annett
Submitted by Björn Persson to the University of Skövde as a final year project to-
wards the degree of M.Sc. in the School of Bioscience. The project has been super-
vised by Petri Kajonius and India Morrison.
12 August, 2014
I hereby certify that all material in this final year project which is not my own work
has been identified and that no work is included for which a degree has already been
conferred on me.
Signature:
II
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Petri, for your friendliness, patience, and invitation to this project. I also
extend my gratitude towards India Morrison, for your supervision. Most of all, thanks
to Gabriel Sjödin, for his friendship.
”...but there is no shelter”

— R, Watchmen
”There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”

— A C, The Myth of Sisyphus
III
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements III
Table of Contents IV
Abstract VII
Introduction 1
Theoretical Foundation 2
The Dark Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Machiavellianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Narcissism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Psychopathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Personality: Big Five, and HEXACO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Biological Basis of Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Empathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Schwartz Value Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
General Methods 28
Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Study I 31
Introduction 32
Methods 33
Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
IV
Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Results 36
Descriptive statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Dark Triad and Schwartz’s Value Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Discussion 39
Traits and Values in the Dark Triad Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Dark Values and Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Conclusion and Future Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Study II 43
Introduction 44
Methods 45
Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Results 48
Descriptive Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Moderating Dark Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Controlling for Big Six and Dark Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Principal Component Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Discussion 52
General Discussion 54
V
Conclusions from Empirical Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
References 59
Appendix A 90
Appendix B 91
Appendix C 92
Appendix D 93
Appendix E 94
Appendix F 95
Appendix G 96
VI
Abstract
Personality neuroscience offers a new theory of the biological basis of personality traits. It
involves the use of neuroscientific methodologies to study individual differences in behav-
ior, motivation, emotion, and cognition. Personality psychology has contributed much
in identifying the important dimensions of personality, but relatively little to understand-
ing the biological sources of those dimensions. In recent years, personality psychology
has become the foundation for the study of personality disorders, and by extension, neu-
roscience. First, I provide a theoretical foundation for the neuroscience of normal and
abnormal personality traits. Second, I conduct two empirical studies on deviant person-
ality traits captured by the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopa-
thy) and relate them to universal human values. Study I shows that darker personalities
endorse values that are self-enhancing, and that justify self-serving behavior. Study II in-
vestigates the relationship between the aforementioned constructs and empathy based on
the idea that empathy is an important moderating factor of dark traits. In the discussion,
suggestions for future studies in neuroscience are presented, as well as some limitations
relating to the constructs.
Keywords: Personality neuroscience, Dark Triad, Schwartz Universal Values,
Empathy
VII
Running head: PERSONALITY NEUROSCIENCE AND DARK VALUES 1
Personality psychology describes how personality traits are expressed in different
behaviors. In recent years, the emerging field of personality neuroscience has offered a
new theory of the biological basis of personality traits. It involves the use of
neuroscientific methodologies to study individual differences in behavior, motivation,
emotion, and cognition. Branched together with the study of personality disorders –
which has previously been exclusively a matter for psychiatry – personality neuroscience
is becoming popular way of studying both normal and abnormal personality traits.
The integration of personality psychology and neuroscience is not coincidental.
Respectable psychiatrists have long argued that ”[b]y re-defining the foundation of
psychiatry as clinical neuroscience, we also accelerate the integration of psychiatry with
the rest of medicine” (Insel & Quirion, 2005, p. 5), thus acknowledging the
fundamental insight from contemporary neuroscience that mental illnesses are brain
disorders. Moreover, psychiatric journals are shifting towards a neurobiological
perspective (Widiger, 2013), and empirical evidence has shown that psychiatrists in
training have positive attitudes about the relevance of the brain (Fung, Akil, Widge,
Roberts, & Etkin, 2014). The circle is coming to its close with the emergence of
personality neuroscience (DeYoung & Gray, 2009), a field dedicated towards observing
individual differences in both brain structure and function.
This thesis consists of a theoretical framework and two empirical studies. The main
topic is the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy), which is
theory that describes exploitative, antisocial, and manipulative personality traits. The
first study is explorative, as no other studies have investigated the relationship between
dark personality traits and values. The research questions posed in the first study are:
PERSONALITY NEUROSCIENCE AND DARK VALUES 2
what do individuals with dark personality traits value? Do individuals with higher
scores on dark traits value other things than low scorers? The result of the first study is
something we decided to call Dark Values, due to the strong relationship between the
dark traits, and values that justify self-serving behavior, even at the expense of others.
The second study is an expansion of the first study. Its purpose is to examine
whether empathy moderates the relationship between personality and values. A lack of
empathy is considered the core of many darker personality traits. Thus, we ask whether
more empathic individuals have more prosocial values? Is the relationship between
dark personality traits moderated by empathy? These questions are important to better
understand why people behave and feel the way they do. People with dark traits
unsurprisingly behave in various antisocial ways that ultimately hurt other people.
Understanding more about how and why such people function the way they do is a
fundamental step in preventing such behavior. This thesis is a small step towards that
goal. In the discussion the results are discussed and conclusions are drawn. Future
directions and study proposals are considered.
Theoretical Foundation
This section serves the purpose of providing a theoretical framework for the two
studies. Even though the two studies could stand by themselves, the coming subsections
provide a much broader picture than is available in the articles. The first section
describes the main topic, namely the three components of the Dark Triad. The second
section describes the most common measurement of normal personality traits: the
Five-Factor Model (FFM). The third section describes empathy focusing on the most
commonly used self-report instrument, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The final
section describes personal values, which is the dependent variable in this thesis.
Before presenting the contents of the constructs, the hypothesized relation between
them is important to acknowledge. The Big Five, and Dark Triad are both theories
pertaining to personality traits, the former referring to normal traits, and the latter to
deviant traits. Empathy is used as a potential moderator between traits and values, the
latter being the dependent variable selected for these two studies. The Big Five is
essentially used as a control in both studies: darker personality traits are both
theoretically and empirically used as an extension of normal traits. Thus, the inclusion
of the Big Five is to be sufficiently rigorous, but the main focus is on deviant, and
anti-social behaviors captured by the Dark Triad. Personal values are chosen as a
convenient dependent variable, as values have previously been used in research on
personality disorders (Locke, 2000).
The Dark Triad
The Dark Triad is a non-pathological personality construct consisting of three
different components: Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and subclinical
psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The term subclinical refer to individuals in
the general population that share certain characteristics with the clinical
(institutionalized or imprisoned) population. There is often an implicit assumption that
subclinical refers to a less severe version of a disorder, but such claims are not
necessarily true, being that subclinical samples naturally cover wider ground and thus
also include extreme cases (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, 2013). It should be noted
that Machiavellianism is not a disorder, which is the case for narcissism and
psychopathy. As the reader will notice, the constructs comprising the Dark Triad have
all been investigated within neuroscience, but the Dark Triad itself has remained
outside: within work and personality psychology.

Machiavellianism
The concept of Machiavellianism is derived from the writings of the 16th-century
Italian political philosophers, Niccolò Machiavelli. In his treatises, The Prince
(1532/1992) and The Discourses (1531/2007), Machiavelli presented his view of people
as untrustworthy, self-serving, and malevolent, and argued that a ruler would better
maintain power by utilizing exploitative and deceitful tactics. About four centuries
later, during the 1950s and 60s, psychologist Richard Christie became interested in the
relation between personality and political ideology, and this led to an investigation of
Machiavellian attitudes such as having a cynical view of human nature, a low level of
interpersonal affect, and minimum concern for conventional morality. Ultimately, it led
Christie towards the development of a theory which proposed that the tendency to
accept Machiavelli’s world view was a measurable individual difference variable
(Christie & Geis, 1970).
In the landmark manuscript Studies in Machiavellianism, Christie and Geis (1970)
described how they collected statements from Machiavelli’s writings and started asking
people how much they agreed with them, and why. Eventually, after much item
discrimination and analysis, this became the questionnaire that has now been in use for
over 40 years. Christie and Geis developed five renditions of the MACH scale. The vast
majority of research has been performed using MACH-IV (Fehr, Samsom, & Paulhus,
1992), because the MACH-V, according to some critics, created more problems than it
resolved (Fehr et al., 1992; Hunter, Gerbing, & Boster, 1982; Ray, 1983). Both the
MACH-IV and MACH-V are available for use and have remained in the same
composition since 1970. However, the validity of the MACH-IV is controversial: some
regard it reliable and valid (Jones & Paulhus, 2009; Ramanaiah, Byravan, & Detwiler,
1994), while others have the opposite opinion (Panitz, 1989; Rauthmann, 2012, 2013;
Rauthmann & Will, 2011). For instance Rauthmann and Will (2011) criticized it for
alleged shortcomings concerning response style, varying reliability, varying factor
structures, insufficient content and construct validity.
Many years after the publication of Studies in Machiavellianism, many things are
clear about Machiavellians. They are characterized as focusing on winning at any cost
(Ryckman, Thornton, & Butler, 1994), being detached, cold, selfish, and act based on
pure instrumentality (Fehr et al., 1992). Machiavellians are interested in money, power,
and competition (Stewart & Stewart, 2006), while deprioritizing community building,
self-love, and family concerns (McHoskey, 1999). They are not more intelligent in
terms of IQ (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), but are nevertheless very good at reading
social situations (Gunnthorsdottir, McCabe, & Smith, 2002) and forming beneficial
alliances (Christie & Geis, 1970). Some researchers hypothesized that in order to
succeed in one’s manipulations, a precondition would have to be a refined use of
Theory of Mind (ToM; Premack & Woodruff, 1978). However, when empirically
tested, high scorers on Machiavellianism have been shown to be quite weak mind
readers (Ali & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010; Lyons, Caldwell, & Shultz, 2010), and have
lower emotional intelligence (EI; Ali, Amorim, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2009; Austin,
Farrelly, Black, & Moore, 2007). More expectedly, high scorers have lower levels of
empathy, and are worse at understanding emotions than low scorers (Bagozzi et al.,
2013; Wastell & Booth, 2003). For more elaborate reviews of the literature, see
(Christie & Geis, 1970; Fehr et al., 1992; Jones & Paulhus, 2009).
Gunnthorsdottir et al. (2002) hypothesized that the MACH-IV could be used as an
identifier of cooperativeness. However, they failed to confirm this hypothesis, but

nevertheless found that levels of Machiavellianism predict reciprocity. Using a
bargaining game in which participants are faced with a choice between trust and
distrust, and between reciprocation and defection, they found that high MACH-IV
scorers overwhelmingly defect, whereas low scorers are inclined to cooperate. Another
study found that schizophrenics have lower ”Machiavellian intelligence” when
compared to controls, on the basis that they were less able to understand Machiavellian
expressions when constructed in narratives. The authors interpret this finding as
showing that schizophrenics have poorer mentalizing abilities (Mazza, De Risio,
Tozzini, Roncone, & Casacchia, 2003).
Using a similar game called The Trust Game (Fehr & Rockenbach, 2003), one of
few fMRI studies on Machiavellianism was conducted (Bereczkei, Deak, Papp, Perlaki,
& Orsi, 2013). The Trust Game is played by an investor and a trustee. The investor
must decide how much of her initial capital (in this study, the equivalent of about $5)
she wants to transfer to the trustee. Once the money has been transferred, the sum is
tripled by the experimenter and then the trustee has the opportunity to return none,
some, or all of the money to the investor. Low scorers on Machiavellianism ended up
receiving less money than high scorers (the participants’ were paid the sum they ended
up with in the game), and offering more money to the other player both when playing
as an investor and trustee. Similar results have been reported in other studies (Czibor &
Bereczkei, 2012; Spitzer, Fischbacher, Herrnberger, Grön, & Fehr, 2007). When
comparing the brain activity in high scorers versus low scorers, the former showed
greater activity in certain brain regions. When playing as instructors, high scorers
showed greater activity in anterior cingulate cortex and thalamus. When playing as
trustees, greater activity was elicited in the dorsal anterior insula, and inferior frontal
gyrus. In other words, decisions in social dilemma situations evoked higher neural
response in Machiavellian individuals. The researchers suggest that Machiavellians may
conduct specific neural operations when faced with social dilemmas that allow them to
be more successful at exploiting others (Bereczkei et al., 2013).
In a study on the neurological correlates of Machiavellianism in patients with
Parkinson’s disease, McNamara, Durso, and Harris (2007) found that high scorers on
Machiavellianism were impaired on tests relating to prefrontal function in contrast to
low scorers. This study opens up the possibility that patients with Parkinson’s disease
with frontal lobe impairment are susceptible to personality change, and that an intact
prefrontal lobe is required in order to maintain prosocial (as opposed to Machiavellian)
personality traits (McNamara et al., 2007).
Verbeke et al. (2011) hypothesized that because Machiavellians are sensitive to
status seeking in social contexts, this would lead to neuroplasticity, and ultimately
structural changes in the basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, insula, and hippocampus.
Using structural MRI and a technique called Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM), the
results showed an array of brain structures varying in size across the two groups (high
versus low scorers). These areas were the caudate, pallidum, putamen, insula, inferior
opercular frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal gyrus, inferior triangular frontal gyrus, superior
medial frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, superior temporal
gyrus, the calcarine, the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus (Verbeke et al.,
2011). The researchers offer explanations for why these areas correlate with MACH-IV
scores, but ultimately the study is difficult to interpret, being that all listed brain areas
are also involved in many other things.
Another study looked more closely at the orbital frontal cortex (OFC). The OFC
was parcellated into three regions, the gyrus rectus, the middle orbital gyrus, and the
lateral orbital gyrus. The participants completed the MACH-IV, social comprehension
and memory tests, which were all used to gauge the features of social cognition in the
participants. The results were very interesting, as hierarchical regression analyses
revealed what may be a double dissociation between MACH-IV scores and left lateral
orbital gyrus on one hand, and social comprehension with right middle orbital gyrus,
on the other. The left lateral orbital gyrus had a partial correlation of 0.62, and the left
middle orbital gyrus 0.48 with MACH-IV scores. Further, the regression showed that
51.3 to 61.67% of the variance in MACH-IV scores could be accounted for by
individual differences in gray matter volumes in left lateral and middle orbital gyri
(Nestor et al., 2012).
Narcissism
The concept of narcissism comes from the legend of Narcissus in Greek mythology:
a dismally vain hero who fell in love with his own reflection. This classical account was
later utilized in clinical psychology at the end of the 19th century (Ellis, 1898), albeit
with some characteristics that have since been removed from the current definition of
narcissism (Levy, Ellison, & Reynoso, 2011). The term narcissism, as it was used
originally, and NPD can hardly be said to refer to the same phenomenon. A crucial
construct transformation has taken place, especially due to the publication of the
DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1980), which transformed clinical
descriptions into a working definition, ultimately yielding assessable criteria
(Rhodewalt & Peterson, 2009). For a more detailed review of the history of narcissism,
the reader is directed to (Levy et al., 2011) and for a thorough analysis of the
development of the construct over time, see (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010).
The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
fifth edition, describes the typical features of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as:
”…variable and vulnerable self-esteem, with attempts at regulation through attention
and approval seeking, and either overt or covert grandiosity” (DSM-V; APA, 2013,
p. 767). Further, the diagnostic criteria include impairment in personality function
concerning identity, self-direction, empathy, and intimacy, along with the pathological
personality traits grandiosity and attention-seeking.
NPD is perhaps best described by way of elucidating the terminology listed above
in terms of more specific abnormal behaviors typical of narcissistic individuals. These
include: (1) exaggerated self-appraisal, either inflated or deflated, or a combination of
the two, possibly representing emotional regulation; (2) unreasonably high goals in
order to elevate one’s status above everyone else’s; (3) impaired empathy manifested as
disregard for others, while being excessively attuned to others’ reactions if perceived as
relevant to oneself; (4) largely superficial relationships maintained for personal gain; (5)
a general self-centeredness, believing oneself to be better than others, and often
expressing such beliefs, as well as (6) attempting to be in the center of attention in order
to seek admiration (APA, 2013).
Narcissism is a very complex construct due to its inconsistent definitions in
different fields (i.e., clinical psychology, psychiatry, personality psychology). With the
various turns the DSM has taken, it is difficult to disentangle the terms narcissism and
NPD. Many support the notion that some narcissistic tendencies are healthy and even
beneficial, whereas when they are endorsed in excess they become abnormal and pass
into the realm of abnormal and maladaptive behavior. The debate concerning
dimensionality versus taxonicity has not been fully resolved, as some researchers
maintain that there is a difference in kind between normal and abnormal narcissism
(Pincus et al., 2009).
In subclinical samples, NPD is most commonly studied with the Narcissistic
Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1979; Raskin & Terry, 1988). In fact, the
frequency with which the NPI has been used has been criticized as being too
commonplace (e.g., Brown, Budzek, & Tamborski, 2009; Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010).
Cain, Pincus, and Ansell (2008) noted that the NPI has been the main or only measure
of narcissistic traits in approximately 77% of social and personality psychology studies
since 1985. However, Miller and Campbell (2011) argued that the criticism of NPI has
been blown out of proportion, but nevertheless agree that a better assessment
instrument can and should be developed.
The underlying factor structure of the NPI has been investigated by several
research groups, ultimately yielding various unstable results with two (Corry, Merritt,
Mrug, & Pamp, 2008), three (Ackerman et al., 2011; Kubarych, Deary, & Austin,
2004), four (Emmons, 1984, 1987), and seven (Raskin & Terry, 1988) factors. Raskin
and Terry (1988) sought roughly eight components, because DSM-III had eight
behavioral dimensions under narcissistic personality disorder but ultimately proposed a
seven factor solution. However, neither the factor structure nor the issue of the relative
merits of the various scales has been resolved (Ackerman et al., 2011; Miller, Price, &
Campbell, 2012). Furthermore, with the difficulties of clear conceptualization and
operationalization in light of the DSM-V, more researchers have advocated
investigating lower order traits associated with narcissism (Brown et al., 2009;
Rosenthal & Hooley, 2010) and moving away from the NPI. In response, Miller et al.
(2012) compared a large number of instruments – and without being negative about the
possible benefits of alternative assessments – they concluded that the NPI is a
well-known and well validated measurement of grandiose narcissism that cannot be
pushed to the side without good statistical evidence for doing so.
The relationship between NPD and the FFM has been thoroughly studied. The
most consistent finding being that narcissists are high in extraversion and low in
agreeableness (Saulsman & Page, 2004). For the other three domains, results have been
quite inconsistent. Samuel and Widiger (2008) compared five measures of narcissism1
and found a large degree of variability across measures, concluding however, that all
five measures include narcissistic grandiosity but not narcissistic vulnerability.
Grandiose and vulnerable narcissism is a further distinction complicating the matter of
how to conceptualize and measure narcissism. While it is possible to derive two
separate factors illustrating the difference between these two categories, the
nomological connection between the two is not clear (Miller et al., 2011).
Furthermore, narcissism and deficits in empathy have long been thought to be
deeply interconnected, dating back at least to the writings of the psychoanalyst Wälder
(1925). Lack of empathy has remained a fundamental postulate, and was one of the
original NPD criteria in the publication of the DSM-III (APA, 1980) and has since been
highlighted in much narcissism research (e.g., Adler, 1986; Akhtar, 1989, 2000;
Baskin-Sommers, Krusemark, & Ronningstam, 2014; Cooper, 1998; Watson, Grisham,
Trotter, & Biderman, 1984; Watson & Morris, 1991).
A neuroscientific study has investigated stress levels in subclinical narcissists, on
the basis that narcissism has been associated with heightened sensitivity to social
evaluation, which should increase physiological and psychological stress responses. The
study found that a higher level of narcissism in men (but not in women) is related to
1
MMPI-2, MCMI-III, PDQ-4, NPI, and SNAP
heightened cortisol reactivity and negative affect (Edelstein, Yim, & Quas, 2010). In
another stress-related study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI),
researchers found that the level of subclinical narcissism is associated with activation in
an a priori anatomically defined social pain network (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
[dACC], anterior insula [AI], and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex [subACC]). The
effect was found by investigating what happens in people’s brain when they are socially
excluded. Activation in the region of interest (dACC, AI, subACC) correlated
significantly (r = .42, CI=[.12, .60]) with NPI scores. This study suggests that
narcissistic individuals have heightened neural responses to exclusion (Cascio, Konrath,
& Falk, 2014).
In what may the first fMRI study on subclinical narcissism, researchers found that
decreased activation in the right anterior insula was associated with high levels of
narcissism in an empathy task (Fan et al., 2011a). In a related study on the structural
properties of the narcissist’s brain, researchers found that clinical narcissists have less
gray and white matter volume than healthy controls (HC), after controlling for IQ.
Gray matter volume in HC was 730.0 cubic centimeters (cc), and 691.4 cc in narcissists
(d = .57). Gray matter volume was 573.1 cc in HC and 537.3 in narcissists (d = .53).
Both results are ”marginally significant” (p = 0.1 for gray matter and 0.13 for white
matter). Moreover, these effects were especially large in the anterior insula (d = 1.23);
there was also an association between self-reported emotional empathy and size of left
anterior insula (r = .62) (Schulze et al., 2013).
Other studies have found relationships between narcissism and higher testosterone
levels (Lobbestael, Baumeister, Fiebig, & Eckel, 2014), diminished skin conductance
response reactivity, and enhanced cardiac deceleration in anticipation of aversive stimuli

(Kelsey, Ornduff, McCann, & Reiff, 2001). To what extent these latter findings are
generalizable to the rest of the Dark Triad is unknown, but resting heart rate and heart
rate during a stressor are associated with antisocial behavior, even after controlling for
gender, age, method of recording, use of psychiatric control group, recruitment source,
concurrent versus prospective nature of testing, and source of behavioral rating (Lorber,
2004; Ortiz & Raine, 2004). Low heart rate has been referred to as one of the most
important explanatory factors for violence (Farrington, 1997).
Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a severe personality disorder characterized by self-centeredness,
callousness, and a profound lack of empathy, which hinders the individual to form
warm, and healthy emotional relationships with others (Hare, 1999). In 1941, Hervey
Cleckley published the seminal work The Mask of Sanity, which is still used as a
reference for describing how psychopaths behave. Cleckley presented a description of
the typical psychopath on the basis of countless clinical observations of adult male
patients categorized as “psychopathic”. He introduced 16 characteristics typical of the
psychopath: superficial charm, absence of delusions, absence of nervousness or
psychoneuroticism, unreliability, insincerity, lack of remorse, antisocial behavior, poor
judgment, pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love, lack of affect, specific loss
of insight, unresponsiveness in interpersonal relations, fantastic and uninviting
behavior, suicides rarely carried out, impersonal sex life, and failure to meet life plans.
These criteria were used as a starting point for Robert D. Hare during the creation of
the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL; Hare, 1985) and in the subsequent development of
the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003). The PCL-R has since
become the gold standard assessment instrument for psychopathy (Patrick, 2006).
This thesis is mainly concerned with subclinical psychopathy, or what is sometimes
referred to as successful psychopathy. The literature on subclinical psychopathy is
rapidly growing, especially with the rising interest in the Dark Triad. However, there is
little consensus regarding what subclinical psychopathy refers to. Hall and Benning
(2006) described the subclinical psychopath as an individual that embody most of the
psychopathic behaviors, but refrains from serious antisocial behavior, and is therefore
rarely imprisoned or institutionalized. Further, the subclinical psychopath is engaged in
behaviors that breach social norms – but are not necessarily illegal – such as achieving
personal or professional success at the expense of others. However, this description
aligns better with Machiavellianism, as psychopaths tend to be bad at carrying out long
term goals (Furnham et al., 2013). In a more recent publication, Glenn and Raine
(2014) provide four different criteria utilized in research:
1. Individuals scoring high in psychopathy who have never been convicted of a
crime.
2. Individuals scoring high in psychopathy who are not incarcerated.
3. Individuals with psychopathic traits and high social status.
4. Serial killers who have escaped detection for a significant period.
Evidently, there is a great deal of conceptual separation between these items that
may cause problems. Items (2) and (4) are especially problematic. Very few clinical
psychopaths are imprisoned at all times, thus with (2), the distinction between a clinical
and a subclinical psychopath turns into a matter of temporality. The possibility exists
that an individual is considered a clinical psychopath on Monday, and a subclinical
psychopath on Tuesday, upon release from an institution. This is merely a
terminological distinction, rather than a substantial distinction relating to any specific

etiology or nomological network. It does not offer any explanation as to why or how
the subclinical psychopath would be different, qualitatively or quantitatively, from a
clinical psychopath, because they are one and the same. Item (4) goes against the more
traditional definition (Hall & Benning, 2006) of refraining from serious antisocial
behavior. Item (3) is one of the notions that circulate in popular media (Skeem,
Polaschek, Patrick, & Lilienfeld, 2011), but this conception, too, has been criticized
because ”it is the corporate Machiavellian who successfully perpetrates white collar
crime” (Furnham et al., 2013, p. 208). Moreoever, a distinction between the two
groups should preferably be generalizable cross-culturally, and as such, it cannot rely
strictly on incarceration status, being that people are incarcerated very different things
in different cultures. Thus, additional theoretical work – and subsequent empirical
work – is needed in order to make non-arbitrary distinctions between psychopathic
categories, assuming that the clinical–subclinical distinction is a categorical one.
There are several difficulties with studying subclinical psychopathy. First, it has
been argued that the focus on antisocial behavior in DSM-III, and DSM-IV has led to
an under-representation of other behaviors and traits (Lilienfeld, 1998; Messick, 1995).
Second, identifying subclinical psychopaths has proven to be a difficult task. Third, the
screening of psychopaths in subclinical environments is not as rigorous as in the clinical
population (Hall & Benning, 2006). This problem has led to the creation of alternative
instruments, such as the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld &
Andrews, 1996), with the purpose of deriving similar data from the general population.
In a cross-sectional analysis, Harpur and Hare (1994) showed that psychopathy
factors were differently related to age. Mean scores on Factor 2 – the antisocial
component – declined with age. Factor 1 – the affective and interpersonal component –
was shown to be unrelated to age. In fact, Factor 1 scores were very similar in different
age groups, which indicate that age is not a significant moderator of callous behavior.
This finding also serves the purpose of illustrating that psychopathy consists of two
distinct but correlated components. On the basis of this and other similar studies, Hare,
Neumann, and Widiger (2013) note that psychopaths seems to ”age out” of their
criminal activity over time. However, the traits associated with psychopathy continue
to cause problems throughout their lives. This phenomenon is consistent with a very
general picture of person–situation interaction. Despite situational changes over time,
the underlying traits continue to produce antisocial behavior.
In recent years there has been a rapid increase in fMRI studies in psychopathy, and
meta-analytic findings has highlighted reductions in the right orbitofrontal cortex, right
anterior cingulate cortex, and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Yang & Raine, 2009).
In a very large recent study (N = 218), Ermer, Cope, Nyalakanti, Calhoun, and Kiehl
(2013) showed that similar structural deficits are found in adolescent with psychopathic
traits. Self-report psychopathy (Psychopathy Checklist–Youth Version; Forth, Kosson,
& Hare, 2003) correlated negatively with gray matter volume in paralimbic regions
and multiple regression showed that volume of various brain areas can be used as
predictors of self-reported psychopathy score. These findings show that psychopathic
traits are a neurodevelopmental disorder. Another very large study by the same group
(N = 298) found similar structural abnormalities in adult psychopaths from
medium/maximum correctional facilities. The orbitofrontal cortex, parahippocampal
cortex, the temporal poles, and posterior cingulate cortex showed especially large gray
matter volume reductions (Ermer, Cope, Nyalakanti, Calhoun, & Kiehl, 2012). These
findings were later replicated in a smaller sample (N = 39) of female adolescents with
psychopathic traits (Cope, Ermer, Nyalakanti, Calhoun, & Kiehl, 2014).
Other studies have found abnormal function and lower volume in the amygdala in
clinical psychopaths (Dolan & Fullam, 2009; Pardini, Raine, Erickson, & Loeber,
2014), but not subclinical psychopaths (Yang, Raine, Colletti, Toga, & Narr, 2010).
The same finding applies to the prefrontal cortex, where clinical psychopaths, but not
subclinical psychopaths, have reduced gray matter volume (Yang, Raine, Colletti, Toga,
& Narr, 2009, 2005). Raine et al. (2004) also reported an exaggerated anterior
hippocampal volume asymmetry (right > left) in clinical psychopaths, relative to both
control, and subclinical psychopaths. Functional studies have also revealed deficient
fear conditioning (Birbaumer et al., 2005), aberrant processing of moral decisions
(Harenski, Harenski, Shane, & Kiehl, 2010), the neural correlates social decision
making (Rilling et al., 2007), abnormal processing of language (Intrator et al., 1997;
Kiehl, Hare, McDonald, & Brink, 1999, 2004; Williamson, Harpur, & Hare, 1991),
and deficient emotional processing (Kiehl et al., 2001; Müller et al., 2003) in
psychopaths. The interested reader is referred to (Yang & Raine, 2009) for a review of
structural findings and to (Seara-Cardoso & Viding, 2014) for functional findings. The
latter article contrasts clinical findings with community samples, and concludes that
both groups are very similar, with a few exceptions.
Studies such as these have ultimately led to the possibility of better predicting
future rearrest via brain activity. The odds that an offender with relatively low anterior
cingulate activity would be rearrested were approximately double to that of an offender
with high activity in this region, holding constant other observed risk factors (Aharoni
et al., 2013).
Personality: Big Five, and HEXACO
Personality traits are defined as ”dimensions of individual differences in tendencies
to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions” (McCrae & Costa, 2003,
p. 25). Traits are considered enduring dispositions (e.g., Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, &
Knafo, 2002), due to studies revealing their relative stability over time, especially after
the age of 30 (Bleidorn et al., 2013; Ferguson, 2010; Terracciano, Costa, & McCrae,
2006).
The Five-Factor Model (FFM) also known as the ”Big Five” is the most popular
paradigm for representing personality structure and it has been claimed to be the most
scientifically rigorous taxonomy in behavioral science (McCrae, 2009). The FFM is
comprised of the factors Openness to Experience (O), Conscientiousness (C),
Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A), and Neuroticism (N), creating the frequently used
mnemonic OCEAN. Typical characteristics of high scores on the respective factors are
listed below (from Matthews, Deary, & Whiteman, 2003).
• Openness: Inquiring intellect, appreciation of art and unusual ideas.
• Conscientiousness: Organized, dependable, disciplined, and willing achieve
• Extraversion: Energy, positive emotions, assertiveness, and sociability
• Agreeableness: Compassion, cooperation, helpfulness, and likability
• Neuroticism: Nervous, anxious, angry, depressed, and vulnerable.
Many traits defined in the FFM co-vary: a person who is sociable and assertive
also tends to be cheerful and energetic (DeYoung et al., 2010). Such an individual will
get a high score on the Extraversion factor. However, the same individual may or may
not score highly on the Openness factor, which denotes characteristics such as
intellectual curiosity, appreciation of art and unusual ideas. Neuroticism describes an

individual’s sensitivity to anxiety, stress, and negative emotions; Agreeableness includes
cooperation, social harmony, and trust; and Conscientiousness concerns the way we
direct and control our impulses, and includes domains like self-efficacy, dutifulness, and
achievement-striving.
There is an abundance of inventories currently in use for measuring the FFM, the
most common ones being the commercial Revised NEO Personality Inventory
(NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the International Personality Item Pool
(IPIP-NEO; Goldberg, 1999), available for the public domain, but both inventories
exist in various versions varying in length. It should be noted that the NEO-PI-R and
the IPIP-NEO are not directly equivalent (Goldberg et al., 2006), albeit very similar.
The longer versions (>100 items) include measurements of second-order facets whereas
shorter versions (~5-60 items) only include the five first-order factors, without facets.
In recent years, a sixth factor has been proposed, known as the Honesty-Humility
(HH) factor (Ashton & Lee, 2007). It belongs to an alternative six factor
conceptualization of personality, known as HEXACO, in which both the factor and
facet structure is different from the traditional FFM. The relative merits of each model
is still being debated (Ashton & Lee, 2007; Saucier, 2002) and go beyond the scope of
this thesis. Honesty-Humility denotes personality features like being sincere, honest,
faithful, loyal, and unassuming, and is commonly measured with the HEXACO
Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R; Ashton & Lee, 2009; Lee & Ashton,
2004). Recently, HH has been included in a 24-item IPIP-inventory known as the
Mini-IPIP6 (Sibley et al., 2011).

The Biological Basis of Personality
The biological approach to studying personality has its roots in Eysenck’s (1967)
seminal study, in which he argued that introverts differed from extroverts in arousal.
Specifically, in the regulation of the ascending reticular activation system, based on the
idea that introverts are more easily stimulated than extroverts and thus have lesser need
to explore the environment for new stimuli. Eysenck’s work was criticized by his
student, Jeffrey Alan Gray (1981), and interest in the neuroscience of personality
stagnated for decades to come. However, in the recent decade there has been increasing
interest which ultimately culminated in a field DeYoung and Gray (2009) calls
Personality Neuroscience. The relevance of a neuroscientific approach to the Big Five
comes from the fact that the FFM is descriptive, rather than explanatory. What this
means is that a causal theory of the Big Five is lacking, and it is believed that a
neuroscientific approach can make a significant advance towards this goal by
connecting traits to specific biological systems (DeYoung et al., 2010).
With this newfound approach arise several difficulties. Arguably, the most
important one being the serious methodological issues associated with functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in research on social cognition. Specifically, studies
have been criticized for being under-powered, leading to an increased proportion of
false-positive results (Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler, 2009; Yarkoni, 2009).
Proposed solutions have been presented focusing on sample size and determining a
priori regions of interest (ROIs) (Mar, Spreng, & DeYoung, 2013). However, results in
many studies have been undermined due to the criticisms raised by Vul et al. (2009) and
Yarkoni (2009). Thus, evaluating the available evidence is difficult and conclusions
must be drawn carefully.

Adelstein et al. (2011) studied the Big Five in relation to resting-state functional
connectivity (RSFC) in order to determine whether the individual brain’s intrinsic
activation patterns are different in different types of personalities. RSFC represents
intrinsically organized functional brain networks that persist across tasks (Damoiseaux
et al., 2006), in other words, the researcher needn’t rely on any specific task. RSFC has
been successfully utilized in research on other individual difference risk-taking (Cox
et al., 2010) aggression (Hoptman et al., 2010) and cognitive efficiency
(Andrews-Hanna et al., 2007). These RSFC patterns are, like personality traits, stable
across time (Shehzad et al., 2009; Zuo et al., 2010). Adelstein et al. (2011) decided to
study the anterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, because they are thought to be
cortical hubs, connecting to the majority of the rest of the brain (Buckner et al., 2009).
Among many other results, the findings showed that neuroticism and extraversion
predicted connectivity between the two hubs and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and
lateral paralimbic regions, respectively. Furthermore, personality and functional
connections were inconsistently present across participants, which suggest that there is
a common core across individuals, and outside that core are inter-individual differences
(Adelstein et al., 2011).
In another fMRI study, DeYoung et al. (2010) tested a number of hypotheses on
the basis of previous neuroscientific studies pertaining to traits, and managed to
confirm their hypotheses for four out of five traits. Extraversion was associated with
the volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in reward values of stimuli.
Extraversion appears to reflect sensitivity to reward. This finding has since been
replicated (DeYoung, Hawes, Civai, & Rustichini, in press). Neuroticism was
associated with reduced volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the left posterior
hippocampus, and with increased volume in the mid-cingulate gyrus, both in gray and
white matter. The authors argue that this finding is consistent with the theory that
neuroticism reflects sensitivity to threat and punishment. Agreeableness was associated
with reduced volume in posterior left superior temporal sulcus and with increased
volume in posterior cingulate cortex. The latter has been implicated as a component in
theory of mind (Saxe & Powell, 2006). Conscientiousness was positively associated
with a large region around the middle frontal gyrus volume in the left lateral prefrontal
cortex. The prefrontal cortex is involved in many executive functions, such as planning,
which aligns well with trait conscientiousness. Finally, Openness to Experience was not
associated with anything in specific, but other studies have connected it to the
prefrontal cortex and dopamine function (DeYoung, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005), and
the D4 receptor gene (DRD4) catechol-O-methyltransferase gene (COMT) has been
found to predict Openness (DeYoung et al., 2011). Ultimately, these studies are
impressive, because of the large sample sizes used (N > 100), but despite making a
priori hypothesis (as opposed to carrying out exploratory work), the various parts of
the brain is involved in so many things that some correlations may be spurious.
Empathy
In all three Dark Triad components, a marked lack of empathy has, at one point or
another, been a central concern. Empathy is a notoriously complicated construct and
researchers have substantial disagreements pertaining to theoretical and methodological
matters. The focus here is not to outline the many problems, but rather to provide
empirical evidence. Hence, I will not discuss the many theoretical problems
surrounding empathy. For detailed reviews of this matter, I direct the reader to (Batson,
2009; Bernhardt & Singer, 2012; Davis, 1996; Walter, 2012).

One definition states that: “Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is
thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate
emotion” (Baron-Cohen, 2012, p. 12). Recently, Zaki and Ochsner (2012) grouped
empathic processes into three classes: (I) experience sharing, the sharing of internal
states, (II) mentalizing, explicitly considering (and perhaps understanding) targets’
states and their sources, and (III) prosocial concern: expressing motivation to improve
targets’ experiences (for example, by reducing their suffering). Thus, empathy involves
recognizing, predicting, and responding appropriately to others’ emotions.
Empathy is commonly studied through simple observations, (Keysers et al., 2004),
imagination (Jackson, Brunet, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2006), or evaluation (Jackson,
Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005). Empathy is also studied across domains, meaning that
many different paradigms are applied to the study of empathy, such as pain (Coll,
Budell, Rainville, Decety, & Jackson, 2012), disgust (Jabbi, Swart, & Keysers, 2007),
touch (Keysers et al., 2004), anxiety (Morelli, Rameson, & Lieberman, 2012),
happiness, and anger (Dimberg & Thunberg, 2012). At least 13 brain regions have
been suggested to be part of the empathy network (Baron-Cohen, 2012). However,
given that ”brain areas” differ in levels of abstraction, this is not very valuable
information. However, an fMRI based meta-analysis aggregated results from 40 studies
(Fan, Duncan, de Greck, & Northoff, 2011b). The researchers found that the dACC,
anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC), supplementary motor area (SMA), and bilateral
anterior insula were all consistently activated during empathy tasks. The authors
further distinguish between cognitive–evaluative and affective-perceptual empathy. The
dorsal aMCC was more frequently more activated during cognitive-evaluative empathy,
and the right anterior insula was more activated during affective-perceptual empathy.
The left anterior insula was active in both forms of empathy. Moreover, the researchers
argue that the difference between the empathy systems can be detected at the level of
regional activation. Others have argued that the link between the systems is provided
by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Walter, 2012).
The most commonly used self-report measurement of empathy is the Interpersonal
Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983). IRI is a 28 item questionnaire that measures
empathy on four sub-scales. Each sub-scale consists of seven items scored on a
five-point Likert scale. The sub-scales are: (1) Perspective Taking, the tendency to
spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others; (2) Fantasy, which taps
respondents’ tendencies to transpose themselves imaginatively into the feelings and
actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays; (3) Empathic Concern,
assesses ”other-oriented” feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others; and
(4) Personal Distress, which measures ”self-oriented” feelings of personal anxiety and
unease in tense interpersonal settings (Davis, 1983). Factor analysis has shown that the
IRI has a hierarchical structure of four first-order factors corresponding to the four
scales, with two second-order orthogonal factors, one general empathy factor and one
emotional control factor (Pulos, Elison, & Lennon, 2004). Furthermore, Pulos et al.
(2004) argue that if a higher order empathy scale is desired, the sub-scales empathic
concern, perspective taking, and fantasy may be useful to summarize.
A common question pertaining to all self-report methods is whether such reports
are trustworthy. To answer this question, one method is to triangulate or compare it to
other measures. Cliffordson (2001) compared agreement between parents’ judgments
of self and students’ judgments of their parents and concluded that the agreement was
both substantial and likely to be accurate. Another study found that individuals with
low levels of self-reported empathy were more aggressive than individuals with high
empathy while under the influence of alcohol (Giancola, 2003). An fMRI study found
that Empathic Concern scale covaried with activity in the ACC, and left AI, but not
right AI. Individuals with high scores on empathy scales showed stronger activations in
the aforementioned areas (Singer et al., 2004). This study is however, severely
underpowered (Vul et al., 2009).
However, a recent study investigated relative and global meta-accuracy in relation
to empathy in two different experimental paradigms (Kelly & Metcalfe, 2011). Global
meta-accuracy assesses whether people know how good they are with respect to other
people. Relative meta-accuracy assesses whether people know what they know. In this
case, the relative measures were carried out by showing participants successive sets of
eyes using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill,
Raste, & Plumb, 2001) or the Emotional Expression Multimorph Task (in experiment
two; Blair, Colledge, Murray, & Mitchell, 2001). Having seen all sets of eyes, the
participants were asked to rate how confident they were that they would be able to
make correct emotion identification. This phase was prospective. There was also a
retrospective phase, in which participants watched the same sets of eyes, but this time
accompanied by the response alternatives. This design captures an important aspect,
because it is more difficult to make prospective judgments, due to the lack of
information about response alternatives.
In both experiments, using two different tasks, the results were similar. People are
generally quite good at relative meta-accuracy, especially of the retrospective kind, as
the gamma correlation2 between judgment and performance was 0.40 in experiment
one, and 0.45 in experiment two. The global accuracy level was measured using the
2
Gamma correlation is a nonparametric correlation, for details about this statistic, see (Nelson, 1990)
Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern scales from the IRI. Both experiments
yielded nonsignificant correlations. This indicates that people are quite good at
knowing whether they are right or wrong in their judgments when actually reading
faces. The study also indicates that the participants’ own estimation of empathic ability
did not correlate at all with actual task performance. There are inherent difficulties
with these two experiments, one of them being that the sample size was quite small (N
= 100), another being that the tasks are quite unrealistic, as you are required to make a
judgment based solely on a facial expression, without seeing the rest of the body
language.
There are additional reasons to not have complete trust in self-report
measurements of empathy, as a recent meta-analysis of aggression and (lack of)
empathy showed a surprising non-relation (Vachon, Lynam, & Johnson, 2014). 82%
of the studies included in the meta-analysis used self-report questionnaires, samples
included community, student, and criminals. One should not discard the possibility that
aggressiveness is uncorrelated with lack of empathy, but it goes against a very long
tradition of researchers and clinicians whom have drawn opposite conclusions (e.g.,
Cleckley, 1988). Thus, thorough studies using procedural tasks in combination with
self-report instruments – both in clinical and subclinical populations – are required to
better determine the role of empathy in human behavior.
Schwartz Value Orientation
Basic human values are empirically measured on the cultural or individual level.
Values have been neglected in psychology because of their inherently subjective nature,
measurement difficulty (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004), complex theory, and definitional
inconsistency (Rohan, 2000). Despite these issues, values are important as they relate
both to behavior and how we feel about ourselves and others. Here the focus is solely
on the individual level, more specifically on personal values as conceptualized by
Shalom H. Schwartz, who is the founder of the dominant theory of personal values. In
Schwarz’s theory there are 10 value types: Security, Tradition, Conformity, Benevolence,
Universalism, Self-direction, Stimulation, Hedonism, Achievement, and Power (cf.
Figure 1).
Figure 1. Schwartz’s quasi-circumplex model (Schwartz, 1994)
According to Schwartz and Bilsky (1987, p. 551) values are ”(a) concepts or
beliefs, (b) about desirable end states or behaviors, (c) that transcend specific situations,
(d) guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and (e) are ordered by relative
importance.” Further, values are relatively stable cognitive representations of desirable,
abstract goals (Roccas et al., 2002); these cognitive structures are closely linked to
feelings (Schwartz, 2003). Values should not be conflated with (I) attitudes, (II) traits,
(III) norms, and (IV) needs because: (I) Values are more idealized and abstract than
attitudes, which is a more concrete expression of favor or disfavor toward a thing,
person, situation etc. (II) Traits describe what people are like whereas values describe
what people consider important (e.g., one may have a neurotic disposition without
valuing such a disposition;) Roccas et al., 2002). (III) Norms are situation based, values
are trans-situational. Norms can pressure one into behaving a certain way, but value
based behavior does not exert such pressure. (IV) Needs describe biological influences.
Values carry the function of articulating needs in a socially acceptable way (Hitlin &
Piliavin, 2004).
Values are higher order cognitive components that are difficult to link to behaviors.
Thus, very little empirical research has been conducted on the origins of values. One
behavior genetics study showed that all value types (except Achievement) have common
genetic components, with heritability estimates ranging from 10.8% (Power) to 38%
(Conformity). While more research is needed, this study indicates that values should
not be viewed as completely learned behaviors (Schermer, Feather, Zhu, & Martin,
2008). Furthermore, the importance of values has been stressed by Locke (2000), who
reasoned that values do not only influence behavior, but is also an appropriate target
for interventions. Previous studies have utilized similar circumplex models and applied
them to personality disorders (Locke, 2000).
General Methods
In both studies, measurements of the Dark Triad, general personality traits, and
personal values are collected. Further, in Study II, empathy measures are collected in
order to ascertain the relationship between dark personality traits and empathy. In both
studies, the overarching assumption is that personality traits and values are connected,
and that traits are antecedents of values. Olver and Mooradian (2003) presented an
integrative model with personality traits representing “nature”, and values as learned
behaviors representing “nurture”, based on the observation that values seem to be more
externally influenced and traits more internally influenced. Personality neuroscience
(DeYoung & Gray, 2009) provides additional support for this premise, demonstrating
biological correlates of the Big Five traits (DeYoung, 2010; DeYoung, Quilty, &
Peterson, 2007; Yarkoni, 2014). Considering the long history of research on traits and
values, these constructs have been infrequently studied together (Olver & Mooradian,
2003; Parks & Guay, 2009; Rokeach, 1973), but the relevance of interpersonal values
in relation to personality disorders has been highlighted previously (Locke, 2000).
Design
The general approach taken in the two studies is a correlational one. Both studies
use well-validated self-report questionnaires. Self-report questionnaires, even very brief
ones, have been found to be reliable predictors of behavioral outcomes (Gosling,
Rentfrow, & Swann Jr, 2003; Konrath, Meier, & Bushman, 2014; Meyer et al., 2001;
Milojev, Osborne, Greaves, Barlow, & Sibley, 2013). The results are investigated using
Pearson correlations (r), and hierarchical multiple regression. Pearson correlations, in
these circumstances, are considered large when they approach 0.3 or greater (Hemphill,
2003).
Multiple regressions are used in two ways. First, for predicting the increase in a
dependent variable when an independent variable increases; and second, for estimating
the relative contributions of individual independent variables on a dependent variable,
by controlling for the effects of other independent variables. In this case, Schwartz’s
value types are dependent variables and personality traits (Big Five and Dark Triad) are
independent variables. The Big Five is used a control for normal personality traits, or in
other words, to determine what the contribution of abnormal traits are on values, when
holding normal traits constant. All regression analyses met the relevant regression
assumptions.3
A few limitations deserve mentioning. First, Study I has a relatively low sample
size (N = 155), but Schönbrodt and Perugini (2013) found that (N = 161) is a critical
starting point for where correlations does not intolerably deviate from its true value.
Accordingly, we do not believe that sample size is a major issue. Furthermore, no causal
claims are intended in either study, because the correlational nature of the data
collection logically excludes the possibility of causal determination.
To restate the research questions: The first study is set out to answer what
individuals with dark personalities value. Do individuals with higher scores on dark
traits value other things than low scorers? The second study asks whether the
relationship between dark personalities and self-enhancing values are moderated by
empathy.
3
Tested with Shapiro-Wilk test on standardized residuals, tests indicated normality; there was no sig-
nificant autocorrelation in adjacent residuals (Durbin-Watson statistic); no perfect multicollinearity as
measured by variation inflation factors (VIFs) (Field, 2013).
Study I
Dark Values: The Dark Triad in Schwartz’s Value Types
Introduction
The Dark Triad is an increasingly popular construct representing malevolent and
anti-social personality traits in the general population (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).
Recent studies include investigations of the relation between Dark Triad traits and
morally related behaviors pertaining to Internet use (Buckels, Trapnell, & Paulhus,
2014), schadenfreude (James, Kavanagh, Jonason, Chonody, & Scrutton, 2014), and
work behavior (O’Boyle Jr, Forsyth, Banks, & McDaniel, 2012).
The Dark Triad traits are seen in interactions with others, a common feature being
the tendency to exclude others and promote oneself (Gurtman, 2009; Rauthmann &
Will, 2011). A possible unifier of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy is the
disregard for conventional morality (Campbell et al., 2009; Furnham et al., 2013).
Values are intimately connected with morality in that they reflect what people believe to
be good or bad (Bardi, Lee, Hofmann-Towfigh, & Soutar, 2009; Schwartz, 2007).
Traits account for how people behave, whereas values describe what people
consider important. To the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has been
conducted on the Dark Triad traits and Schwartz’s basic human values (Schwartz,
1992). Thus, it is currently unknown whether high Dark Triad scorers endorse different
sets of values from low scorers. In this study the author investigated and coined the
term Dark Values, denoting the set of values held by high scorers on the Dark Triad.
The present study aims to identify which values are shared by dark personalities,
by ascertaining the relationships between the factors in the Dark Triad and Schwartz’s
10 value types. The main prediction is that the Dark Triad explains additional variance
on universal values, after controlling for the Big Five traits. On the assumption that the
main prediction holds, the second prediction is a positive relationship between the Dark
Triad and Self-enhancing values (Power and Achievement), on the basis that they
emphasize the pursuit of self-interest (Schwartz, 1992). From this it follows that a
negative relationship is to be expected with Self-transcendence values (Universalism and
Benevolence). An exploratory approach with no proposed predictions was used
regarding Openness to change (Self-direction, Stimulation, and Hedonism) and
Conservation values (Security, Conformity, and Tradition). No causality is implied in
the reporting of the study. The term Dark Values coined in this study refers to the
values adopted by high scorers on the Dark Triad.
Methods
Participants
The participants (N = 155) constituted two samples. The first sample was from
University West in Sweden and consisted of a class of 79 freshmen from a human
resource management program (63 female, 16 male; ranging from 18 to 56 years, M =
25.1, SD = 7.2).
The second sample was collected through Amazon’s international online polling
service, Mechanical Turk (MTurk). This method of adding online samples has been
used successfully in previous studies (Buckels et al., 2014; Jones & Paulhus, 2014).
MTurk has demonstrated reliability (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011), and
provides a good spread of socio-economic backgrounds (Casler, Bickel, & Hackett,
2013). The sample consisted of 76 U.S. participants (46 female, 30 male; 18 to 82
years, M = 42.6, SD = 15.4), having completed at least 50 MTurk tasks with an
acceptance rate of 95% or more, according to recommendations. The participants were
compensated with $1. Five control questions were added to ensure that participants
were paying attention (e.g. “This questionnaire is about classical economics”). This
procedure led to the exclusion of 9 participants.
Cronbach alphas were calculated and compared with a meta-analysis
(Parks-Leduc, Feldman, & Bardi, 2014), yielding similar results. Samples differed
significantly (p < .01) on two traits; Extraversion which was higher in the Swedish
sample and Openness which was higher in the online US sample. These differences are
unlikely to matter, as they are both expected, and likely irrelevant for ascertaining the
general relationship between the Dark Triad and values. Appendix C demonstrates the
reliability of the data, comparing the Big Five factor Agreeableness from the on-site
student sample (S1) and the MTurk sample (S2), against meta-analytic results
(Parks-Leduc et al., 2014). Agreeableness is the most relevant trait, as some consider it
the core of the Dark Triad (Jakobwitz & Egan, 2006).
Instruments
The Big Five Inventory (BFI-44; John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008) is a 44-item
self-report personality inventory. Participants rated how much they agreed (1 =
Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree) with statements such as: “I see myself as someone
who is full of energy” (Extraversion). Cronbach’s alphas for the 5 factors ranged
between .82-.91.
The Short Dark Triad (SD3; Jones & Paulhus, 2014) is a 27-item self-report
questionnaire measurement of Dark Triad traits. Participants rated how much they
agreed (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree) with statements such as: “You should
wait for the right time to get back at people” (Machiavellianism). The SD3 has been
used successfully in other MTurk studies (e.g., Buckels et al., 2014; Jones & Paulhus,
2014). Cronbach’s alphas for the 3 factors ranged between .75-.84.

Table 1
Descriptive Analysis of Personal Value Types
M SD α S K
Security 4.11 0.76 0.64 0.23 -0.55

Tradition 3.22 0.93 0.54 0.33 -0.06
Conformity 4.14 0.82 0.72 -0.19 0.07
Benevolence 4.66 0.72 0.65 -0.66 0.72
Universalism 4.35 0.79 0.78 -0.06 0.84
Self-direction 4.61 0.73 0.64 0.38 -0.29
Stimulation 3.34 0.99 0.74 0.05 -0.78
Hedonism 4.19 1.01 0.83 -0.32 -0.57
Achievement 3.70 1.06 0.85 -0.05 -0.83
Power 3.14 1.07 0.69 0.25 -0.46
Self-enhancement 3.46 0.95 0.87 0.11 -0.57
Self-transcendence 4.48 0.62 0.80 -0.55 1.51
Openness 4.10 0.62 0.79 -0.13 -0.51
Conservation 3.85 0.63 0.79 0.32 0.14
Note. S = Skewness; K = Kurtosis. The scores ranges from 1-6.
The Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ-40; Schwartz et al., 2001) is a 40-item
self-report questionnaire that measures values by allowing the participant to identify
with short vignettes. These are scored on a six-point Likert scale ranging from “Not
like me at all” to “Very much like me”. The scale requires centering to control for
differences in individual response patterns. All questionnaires were administered in the
original English versions, both in class, and online (30 min). The mandatory high-level
English ability and practical use in Swedish universities is regarded to secure a similar
high level of understanding (Bolton & Kuteeva, 2012). Cronbach’s alphas in the 10
factors ranged between .54-.85, which is within the expected range (Parks-Leduc et al.,
2014).
Results
Descriptive statistics
BFI-44 means and standard deviations for Openness (M = 3.52, SD = 0.68),
Conscientiousness (M = 3.75, SD = 0.61), Extraversion (M = 3.42, SD = 0.86),
Agreeableness (M = 3.69, SD = 0.65), and Neuroticism (M = 2.85, SD = 0.91)
conformed to expectations. Cronbach alphas for BFI-44 were very good, ranging from
0.82-0.91. PVQ-40 descriptives are reported in Table 1. Being that the purpose of
using the Big Five is as a control, the correlations between the Big Five and the Dark
Triad, and the Big Five and PVQ have been omitted from this section. However,
omitted results are found in the Appendices.
Dark Triad and Schwartz’s Value Types
The relationship between the Dark Triad and Schwartz’s 10 value types are
summarized in Table 2. As expected, the correlations with Self-enhancing values such
as Power (PO) and Achievement (AC) were particularly strong. The opposite,
Self-transcending values such as Universalism (UN) and Benevolence (BE), showed
slightly smaller effects. The PVQ-40 and BFI instruments tend to yield particularly
strong relationships when combined (Parks-Leduc et al., 2014).
Furthermore, a sinusoid pattern can be seen in Figure 2, which is not as easily
derived from Table 2. The pattern describes how Machiavellianism, narcissism, and
psychopathy relate to the circumplex. A similar pattern has been found between
empathy and values (Myyry, Juujärvi, & Pesso, 2010). The correlations align with the
orthogonal structure of the circumplex: starting at Tradition (TR), the trend is a
negative relationship reaching a null-effect at Self-direction (SD), continuing with a

Table 2
Correlations between Dark Triad and Schwartz’s value types
Machiavellianism Narcissism Psychopathy
Security −.10 −.29** −.30**

Tradition −.41** −.47** −.35**
Conformity −.24* −.36** −.27*
Benevolence −.51** −.17 −.43**
Universalism −.44** −.30** −.31**
Self-direction .02 .06 .01
Stimulation .19 .32** .32**
Hedonism .37** .24* .38**
Achievement .59** .48** .46**
Power .65** .64** .60**
Note. N = 136. After Bonferroni correction, * p < .01. ** p <.0025. (two-tailed).
positive relationship peaking at Power (PO).
The research aim in this study was to explore Dark Values (the added explained
variance on values from the Dark Triad, after controlling for the Big Five). Two-step
hierarchical regression analyses on the ten value types are reported in Table 3. The first
three columns report percentages of accounted variance. The results indicate that the
Dark Triad accounts for added variance in seven of the ten value types, thus confirming
the main prediction. These effects are especially evident in the Self-transcendence-
Self-enhancement values, but also in the Conservation values. The Dark Triad does not
predict Openness values. Furthermore, the beta-coefficients in Table 3 report that
Machiavellianism explains five of the ten value types, narcissism three, and
psychopathy only two.
Figure 3 is the summary of the main research question, reporting the percentage of
Table 3
Accounted variance from the Big Five and the Dark Triad on Schwartz’s values
Value Type Big Five R2 Big Five + DT R2 ΔR2 β Mach β Narc β Psych
Security 31.4 36.6 5.2* -.01 -.03 -.30**

Tradition 29.8 43.1 13.3*** -.42*** -.13 -.02
Conformity 31.6 35.6 4.0 -.19 -.12 -.03
Benevolence 42.0 48.7 6.7*** -.19 -.11 -.15
Universalism 25.8 36.1 10.3*** -.26* -.22* -.07
Self-direction 37.5 37.6 0.01 .05 .00 .00
Stimulation 36.7 40.1 3.4 .10 .04 .17
Hedonism 17.8 25.1 7.3** .29* -.10 .15
Achievement 19.2 42.7 23.5*** .43*** .30** .10
Power 42.9 64.9 22.0*** .28*** .37*** .19*
Note. N = 136. All R2 values are reported in %. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p <.001.
(two-tailed).
0,8
0,6
Mach Narc Psych
0,4
0,2
0
-0,2
-0,4
-0,6
-0,8
Figure 2. Correlations between Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy and

Schwartz’s 10 values. Sinusoidal pattern clearly visible.
variance accounted for by the Dark Triad, in addition to the Big Five. The circumplex
has been slightly modified to represent the values axes, which has proven useful in
furthering research on values (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005). The Dark Triad
demonstrated the most predictive power on Self-enhancement values with over 20%
additional variance, followed by Tradition and Universalism with over 10%, and
Hedonism, Security and Benevolence showing significant results around 5%.
Discussion
The results aligned with previous studies and extend the knowledge of the Dark
Triad (Parks-Leduc et al., 2014; Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The Dark Triad correlates
with three out of four value dimensions (Self-enhancing, Self-transcending, and
Conservation) and adding explanatory variance (10-20%), in addition to the Big Five.
However, the fourth dimension (Openness to change) showed minimal or no relation to
the Dark Triad. Openness to change-items involves mostly non-moral content,
potentially explaining the lack of effect (Schwartz, 2007). Tradition, on the other hand,
SELF-
TRANSCENDENCE
Universalism Benevolence
10.3% 6.7%
Self-direction Conformity
0.01% 4.0%
Stimulation Tradition
OPENNESS 3.4% 13.3%
TO CHANGE CONSERVATION
Hedonism Security
7.3% 5.2%
Achievement Power
23.5% 22.0%
SELF-ENHANCEMENT
Figure 3. Dark Values. Based on R2 coefficients from hierarchical regressions, showing

the added variance from the Dark Triad on Schwartz’s 10 value types (Big Five is
controlled for).
showed a particular impact by the Dark Triad (cf. Figure 3). This effect exemplifies the
high scorer on the Dark Triad, showing disregard for conventions, bordering on
anti-social behavior. The study shows that individuals scoring high on the Dark Triad
share certain value types.
Traits and Values in the Dark Triad Components
Most of the additional variance in universal values was accounted for by
Machiavellianism which indicates that this disposition is not well captured by the Big
Five. As seen in Figure 2, a majority of the effects from Machiavellianism reaches the
medium threshold of r = .20 proposed by Hemphill (2003), while narcissism and
psychopathy shows medium effects in less than half of the value types. Behavioral
genetics report a strong shared-environment component for Machiavellianism, but not
for narcissism and psychopathy (Larsson, Andershed, & Lichtenstein, 2006; Vernon,
Villani, Vickers, & Harris, 2008). Olver and Mooradian (2003) proposed that traits
can be separated from values, through the endogenous characteristics of traits (nature)
versus the learned adaptations of values (nurture).
The results suggest that Machiavellianism is highly value-driven, while narcissism
and psychopathy are more trait-driven. On the item-level in the Machiavellianism
subscale – which includes hiding secrets, making the most of opportunities, using
information for one’s own benefit, and avoiding conflict with others for long-term
benefit – a learned world-view is implied. The narcissism scale, on the other hand,
measures a person’s perceived interaction with others and one’s own intrinsic self-image.
The items concern the influence of the presence of others, people’s opinions, and being
at the center of attention; all implying social interaction. Lastly, the psychopathy scale
is more based on temperaments – such as being out of control and harboring revenge –
which have demonstrated high heritability (Larsson et al., 2006).
The exploratory analysis implies that the Dark Triad is composed by both trait-like
and value-like measurements, thus illuminating the varying relationships with universal
values. This could have potential implications in the construct debate (Fossati, Pincus,
Borroni, Munteanu, & Maffei, 2014).
Dark Values and Morality
The title choice Dark Values suggests that Self-enhancing values such as Power and
Achievement should perhaps not be considered morally neutral (Arvan, 2013). People
generally consider Self-transcending values to contain more morally relevant content
than the other dimensions (Schwartz, 2007). Items in the Short Dark Triad are not very
flattering: “I’ll say anything to get what I want”, “I can be mean to others”, “I like to
get revenge on authorities”, or “I seek out danger” and carry moral implications. The
authors propose that values become a more important moral issue, having been
revealed by Dark Values.
The results that high scorers on the Dark Triad hold values that entail the
exclusion of others and the enhancement of oneself. This supports Rauthmann and
Will’s (2011) results, who found that persons scoring high on Machiavellianism have
low a propensity for including others in their work and tend to view others negatively.
An application of this could be the difficulty of distinguishing the value types of for
instance newly employed or business partners. Using personality tests such as the Big
Five to find people extraordinary low on, for instance, Agreeableness is a start in
prevention of anti-social work behaviors. Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, and Stucke (2001)
report effects such as increased aggression, less helpful behavior, less rational and
intelligent choices in subjects who are excluded socially. Knowing the consequences of
Dark Values helps in working with people.
Conclusion and Future Studies
The Dark Triad predicts universal values to a greater extent than the Big Five. The
opposite, a Bright Triad, the hypothesized measure of a socially inclusive, caring, and
extraordinarily agreeable individual, is not necessarily captured by low scores on the
Dark Triad. Being that values affect behavior when activated (Verplanken & Holland,
2002), a potentially fruitful line of experimental research opens up: it is unknown to
what extent it is possible to manipulate values in highly Machiavellian and callous
individuals. This is unchartered territory, as little is known about value activation in
non-normal distributions.
In conclusion, the authors propose that future studies pertaining to morality and
dark personalities utilize values, which may advance insights into what lies behind
human universal values. Dark Values might bear similarities to the dark matter in the
physical universe, hidden but constantly contributing, in this case to the universal
values of human beings.

Study II
The Role of Empathy and the Dark Triad in Predicting Universal Values
Introduction
The present study progresses from Study I. In this study the relationship between
Dark Triad and personal values are explored. The main hypothesis is that dark traits
are moderated by empathy. As in the previous study, the hypothesis is tested on the
dependent variable personal values. The importance of this question lies in the
well-established idea that individuals with dark personalities profoundly lack empathy
(Jonason & Krause, 2013; Wai & Tiliopoulos, 2012). In order to make potential
interventions, the relationship between empathy and dark personalities needs to be
thoroughly understood.
In attempts to uncover the core of the Dark Triad, candidates such as the
personality traits Agreeableness (Jakobwitz & Egan, 2006) and Honesty-Humility (Lee
& Ashton, 2005) have been proposed, while others have suggested that lack of
empathy is a better candidate (Jones & Paulhus, 2011).
Much research has shown that personality traits are intimately connected with
universal values (Parks & Guay, 2009; Parks-Leduc et al., 2014). Despite this known
relationship, little interest has been directed towards how empathy and callousness
relate to universal human values. To the best of the author’s knowledge, no other
studies on Dark Triad and universal values has been conducted. Thus, very little is
known about which universal values callous people endorse. There are ample reasons
for believing that values are relevant to both callous as well as empathic personalities.
Values are beliefs infused with affect (Schwartz, 2012), and have been shown to be
relevant in moral decision making (Lönnqvist, Walkowitz, Verkasalo, & Wichardt,
2011). Traits are an expression of what people mostly are like, while values are an
expression of what people like. The main question in this study is how these constructs
are linked, in order to further the knowledge about the common element underlying the
Dark Triad.
Like the first study, personality traits (the six-factor model and Dark Triad) are
considered antecedents to values, on the basis of Olver and Mooradian’s (2003)
nature–nurture distinction. Empathy is tested as a moderator between personality and
values. Furthermore, calls have been made suggesting that low Honesty–Humility
represents the core of callousness and can therefore replace the Dark Triad (Lee &
Ashton, 2014). This study will attempt to further the knowledge on personality traits
and its relation to empathy via universal values. Can empathy and the Dark Triad
predict universal values? If so, are empathy and callousness needed in addition to
personality traits to predict universal values, or can they be replaced?
Methods
Participants
An online sample made up of older international participants was deliberately
chosen, in order to get a spread of values in the sample. The sample consisted of 193
participants (105 female, 88 male). Participants ranged in age from 19 to 76 years (M =
38.6, SD = 12.6). Participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
(MTurk), which is an online service that allows data collection against small financial
incentives. MTurk has proven to be a reliable way to acquire data (Buhrmester et al.,
2011). Further, this method of data gathering has been used successfully by previous
researchers on empathy and callousness and is gaining popularity (Buckels et al., 2014;
Jones & Paulhus, 2014). Studies have also shown that MTurk provides a spread of
socio-economic background which is desirable in values research (Casler et al., 2013).

Participants were compensated with $1 doing a task that, on average, lasted 16
minutes. The task was made available for participants from the United States that had
completed at least 5000 previous tasks with an acceptance rate 97% or more. Five
control questions were used in order to sort out disingenuous participants (e.g., “This
questionnaire is about classical economics”, “What is the name of the current president
of the United States of America?”). The collected data was also filtered in terms of
excluding participants that answered > 80% of the items with the same response and by
observing unnatural answering patterns (e.g., a consistent use of only two alternatives).
In total, 14 participants were excluded.
Tables in Appendix C illustrates the reliability of the sample, comparing
correlations from the Study I sample (S1) with the MTurk sample in this study (S2),
matched against a recent meta-analysis on the Big Five, and Schwartz’s value types
(Parks-Leduc et al., 2014).
Instruments
As in the previous study, SD3 was used to gauge levels of DT in MTurk
participants. A newer version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire was used, known as
the PVQ-RR (Cieciuch, Davidov, Vecchione, Beierlein, & Schwartz, 2014; Schwartz
et al., 2012), which consists of 57 items rated on a six-point Likert scale. The items
were rephrased to be gender neutral (e.g., “It is very important to this person to have a
good time”), in order to give all participants the same questionnaire without dividing it
by gender. This goes against Schwartz’s advice, who commented that the strength of
correlations drop when this type of language is used (S. Schwartz, 2014, personal
communication). In contrast to the previous instrument (PVQ-40), the PVQ-RR
measures 19 value categories in comparison to the original 10. Out of the 9 additional
categories, two are known as ”Face” and ”Humility”, the remaining 7 are new
divisions of previous categories. For instance, Universalism is now divided in three
sub-scales known as Nature, Concern, and Tolerance. There are good reasons for the
creation of these additonal distinctions, but for the purpose of this exploratory work on
DT, the four higher-order factors were utilized: Self-enhancement (Power and
Achievement), Self-transcendence (Universalism and Benevolence), Openness to change
(Self-direction, Stimulation, Hedonism), and Conservation (Security, Tradition,
Conformity, Humility, and Face).
The Mini-IPIP6 (Sibley et al., 2011) is a 24-item self-report inventory used to
measure a six-factor model (The Big Five plus the Honesty-Humility domain; Ashton &
Lee, 2009), without including facet scores. It is measured on a 1-7 Likert scale ranging
from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree”. This scale is of particular interest since it
is an extension of the classical Big Five model with Honesty-Humility added, that has
not yet reached popularity. As far as the authors know, no study has shown the relation
between the HH factor and personal values.
Empathy was measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983),
which consists of a total of 28 items. The scale is divisible into four subscales, two
measuring cognitive empathy (Perspective Taking and Fantasy) and two measuring
affective empathy (Personal Distress and Empathic Concern). The scale ranges from 0
(“Does not describe me well”) to 4 (“Describes me very well”). In this article, only
Perspective Taking (IRI-PT) and Empathic Concern (IRI-EC) are utilized, as Fantasy
and Personal Distress has been found to be quite unreliable (Cliffordson, 2002).
Factors are calculated by adding the items into a total score for each scale.
The Short Dark Triad 3 (SD3; Jones & Paulhus, 2014) is a 27 item self-report
questionnaire developed for measuring Dark Triad levels (i.e., Machiavellianism,
narcissism, and psychopathy) in the general population, and is used to gauge the
common core of callousness in this study. The items are measured on a 1-5 Likert-scale
with low scores indicating low levels of callousness and high scores indicating high
levels of callousness.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Four scales were used (Mini-IPIP6, IRI, SD3, and PVQ-RR). Cronbach’s alphas for
Mini-IPIP6 were good, ranging from 0.75-0.86. Descriptive statistics on the personality
traits report Openness (M = 5.47, SD = 1.31), Conscientiousness (M = 5.33, SD = 1.29),
Extraversion (M = 3.37, SD = 1.60), Agreeableness (M = 5.37, SD = 1.35), Neuroticism
(M = 3.01, SD = 1.39), and Honesty-Humility (M = 4.69, SD = 1.63). Reliabilities
varied from acceptable to excellent for the PVQ-RR value types (0.63-0.90), with the
exception of personal security, with a poor value of 0.58. Low alphas are expected on
some value types (cf. Schwartz et al., 2012). Alphas for empathy (IRI) ranged from
0.87-0.91 and callousness (SD3) ranged from 0.75-0.86. Descriptives for PVQ-RR, IRI,
and SD-3 are: Security (M = 4.55 SD = 0.67), Tradition (M = 3.21, SD = 1.35),
Conformity (M = 3.86, SD = 0.94), Humility (M = 4.08, SD = 1.01), Benevolence (M =
4.78, SD = 0.60), Universalism (M = 4.41, SD = 0.76), Self-direction (M = 4.82, SD =
0.71), Stimulation (M = 3.33, SD = 1.02), Hedonism (M = 3.92, SD = 0.89),
Achievement (M = 3.75, SD = 0.87), Power (M = 2.32, SD = 1.03), Face (M = 3.84, SD
= 0.96), IRI-PT (M = 19.24, SD = 5.58), IRI-EC (M = 20.98, SD = 5.71),
Machiavellianism (M = 2.89, SD = 0.72), Narcissism (M = 2.58, SD = 0.74), and

Psychopathy (M = 2.01, SD = 0.62). No anomalous results are to be reported.
Correlation tables have been omitted from the results section but are found in the
Appendices.
Moderating Dark Traits
Using the SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2008), the role of empathy as a
moderator of the Dark Triad was analyzed. The conceptual model is depicted in
Figure 4. A moderation effect is the combined effect of two variables on another, or
what is in statistical terms known as an interaction effect. PROCESS is a SPSS macro
that automatically calculates grand mean centering, and also multiplies the chosen
variables.
First global indices were calculated for empathy and Dark Triad. Empathy was
calculated by adding IRI-PT and IRI-EC to one variable. The Dark Triad index was
calculated by using the mean of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy
variables, in accordance with the respective scale instructions. Next, two moderated
regressions were computed using PROCESS. The dependent variables were
Self-enhancement (Model 1), and Self-transcendence (Model 2) higher-order factors,
because the aggregate categories explain most variance of Dark Traits (cf. Study I). The
X Y
Figure 4. Conceptual model of moderation, from SPSS macro PROCESS (Model 1;

Hayes, 2008).
Table 4
Moderated Regression Analysis
β SE t p
Model 1 (Self-enhancement)
Constant 2.76 [2.67, 2.85] 0.05 58.86 p < .001
Empathy -0.02 [-0.05, 0.01] 0.01 -4.29 p < .001
Dark Triad -0.25 [-0.46, -0.04] 0.01 12.03 p < .001
Empathy × Dark Triad -0.01 [-0.02, 0.00] 0.01 -1.70 p = .090
Model 2 (Self-transcendence)
Constant 3.99 [3.92, 4.07] 0.04 106.73 p < .001
Empathy 0.00 [-0.01, 0.00] 0.00 -2.44 p = .015
Dark Triad -0.49 [-0.61, -0.37] 0.10 -7.67 p < .001
Empathy × Dark Triad 0.04 [-0.06, 0.14] 0.01 0.74 p = .460
Note. N = 182. R2 = .26 for Model 1, and .25 for Model 2.
independent variable was the global Dark Triad index, and the moderating variable
was the global empathy index. These analyses are reported in Table 4.
Based on these results, there are no significant interaction effects on either
Self-enhancement or Self-transcendence values. In Model 1, there is a tendency towards
an interaction effect, but it is small. Because of these results, additional efforts were
made to ascertain the relative contributions of the Big Six in the prediction of values.
The PROCESS analyses do not control for the Big Six, but in this case merely
investigates the relationship between three variables.
Controlling for Big Six and Dark Triad
To further explore the relationship between personality traits and values,
hierarchical multiple regression was utilized. Unlike moderation analysis, hierarchical
multiple regression can be used to see how much variance each variable explains, but it
is not used to detect interaction effects. Analyses were carried out in three steps and are
reported in Table 5. The first column report percentages of accounted variance from
the Big Six. The second column reports Big Six and DT contributions, and the third
column reports Big Six, DT, and empathy (IRI-PT and IRI-EC). The last column
contains R2 -change between steps two and three. The results indicate that IRI does not
significantly contribute to either enhancement or transcendence values. After
controlling for the effects of personality constructs, empathy does not add explanatory
power on the aforementioned values.
Examining the data further, there was a remarkable increase in multicollinearity in
Step 3 between IRI-EC, IRI-PT and Agreeableness, which means that one variable can
be predicted from the other. Specifically, the Variation Inflation Factors (VIFs)
approached four for Agreeableness, while other variables remained steadily around 1.5.
While this doesn’t necessarily make the regression model inaccurate, it does indicate
that Agreeableness and empathy variables are highly correlated. Accordingly, the
Table 5
Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis of Big Six, Dark Triad Components, and IRI
on Value Types
Block 1 Block 2 Block 3

Value Type Big Six DT IRI ΔR2
Self-enhancement 54.6 61.9 64.0 2.2

Self-transcendence 29.6 43.4 44.2 0.8
Openness to change 22.9 33.1 33.2 0.1
Conservation 46.6 48.4 53.1 4.7
Note. All reported R2 values are in %. DT refers to the Dark Triad components, not a
global Dark Triad index. IRI = Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern scales only.
Each step includes the variables from previous steps. ΔR2 refers to the increment of
change between step 2 and step 3. N = 193.
dimension reduction technique Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to
determine to what extent Agreeableness, IRI-EC, and IRI-PT overlap.
Principal Component Analysis
PCA was used to ascertain the underlying structure of Mini-IPIP6-Agreeableness
(MI6-A), IRI-PT, and IRI-EC; accordingly, a total of 18 items were used. The goal is to
reduce the 18 items to see how many components are formed, not to say anything
about latent variables, which is not what PCA is appropriate for (Borsboom, 2006).
First, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy is .94, above the
minimum recommended value of .5, which indicates that factor analysis should provide
compact and reliable factors (Field, 2013). Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant
χ2 (153) = 2242.91, p < .001, which indicates that dimension reduction is possible.
Instead of using the traditional Kaiser criterion, which includes all components where
the Eigenvalue is larger than one, an attempt was made to derive just one component.
This component explained a massive 52.8% of all variance. No rotation was used, as
factors cannot be rotated upon extraction of one component. The factor loading
component matrix is presented in Appendix B, and the scree plot in Figure 5, which
shows how the latent factors contribute to a one-factor model.
Discussion
The results from the present study aligned with Study I and previous studies on
both the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), and the Big Five–Values relationship
(Parks-Leduc et al., 2014). As seen in the Appendix, the results in the two studies were
very similar, despite using slightly different instruments. Thus, the present study serves
the purpose of validating the first study, while further expanding the knowledge on the
10
8
Eigenvalue
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Component Number
Figure 5. Scree plot from PCA depicting the strong influence of one component.
relationships between empathy, dark personalities, and values.
As the results clearly indicate, empathy does not moderate the relationship
between dark personalities and self-enhancing values, at least not in this data set.
Neither does it provide additional variance over and above the Big Six and Dark Triad.
Because these results are surprising, the PCA was conducted to ascertain whether
Agreeableness, and IRI measured the same thing. As the PCA reveals, the overlap
between these variables is very large, with one component explaining over 50% of the
total variance. Practically, this means that the Agreeableness and empathy instruments
measures more or less the same thing. A limitation of these results is that the
personality scale Mini-IPIP6 is a short scale, with the Agreeableness factor being
composed by just four items. To be able to confirm that these results have external
validity, analyses with broader instruments are necessary. To further explore the idea
that empathy moderates the relationship between dark traits and self-enhancing values,
Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) would be an optimal solution for doing so.
General Discussion
Conclusions from Empirical Studies
The first study revealed that some individuals endorse certain sets of values that
justify self-serving behavior, even at the expense of others. This finding is consistent
with the research literature – and appeals to common sense – insofar as disagreeable
people ”ought” to endorse questionable moral positions (cf. Arvan, 2013). Study I also
showed that it is possible to predict someone’s values with personality data. However,
the novel finding is that the Dark Triad also predicts values, especially self-enhancing
values, even when the Big Five is controlled for. The author theorizes that
Machiavellianism is especially value-driven, both on the basis that it was the best
predictor of values, and because other studies have found a strong shared-environment
component in Machiavellianism (Vernon et al., 2008). The connection between the
Dark Triad and self-enhancing values does not necessarily work in reverse. A low
scorer on the Dark Triad does not necessarily endorse self-transcending values. A low
scorer merely has the absence of Dark Triad traits. As such, there is room for a
theoretical ”Bright Triad”, potentially encompassing extraordinary kindness,
inclusiveness, and general agreeableness.
In the second study the attempt was to find a moderating relationship between the
Dark Triad and personal values. The hypothesized moderator was empathy. This
relationship was not uncovered, as there were no significant interaction effects between
neither self-enhancing nor self-transcending values and the Dark Triad. It was also
shown that empathy was not very useful as a predictor of values of any kind, at least
not when used in addition to personality measurements. The nonsuccess in finding a
significant moderation effect led to further analysis utilizing a PCA. It was hypothesized
that the failure to moderate between variables could be because agreeableness and
empathy was not sufficiently discriminant. This hypothesis was confirmed as the
analysis showed that one component explained over 50% variance, and that all 18
items loaded on the same component. Future studies should utilize instruments with
more questions that include facets, in order to allow for better discrimination between
constructs, if such discrimination is indeed possible.
Another limitation needs attention. Self-report questionnaires have proven
predictive power on a range of behavioral outcomes (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991;
Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002, 1999; Poropat, 2009; Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, &
Goldberg, 2007; Steel, Schmidt, & Shultz, 2008). The same cannot necessarily be said
about self-measurement of empathy. Self-report always relies on that the participant
has reliable metacognitive accuracy. If this condition is not satisfied, the external
validity of the test decreases. Surprisingly, metacognitive accuracy in empathy is much
understudied (W. Ickes, personal communication). Using tasks that are as ecologically
valid as possible and correlating that data with self-report questionnaires is necessary in
order to achieve corroborating evidence that the accuracy assumption holds. In the
future, such tasks may be created using virtual reality equipment, but in the current
conditions, it is possible to conduct such studies using computer tasks. Remarkably, the
authors was able to find only one such study (i.e., Kelly & Metcalfe, 2011). In that
study, the correlation between meta-cognitive accuracy and the procedural task was
very low (and non-significant). Although this study potentially stands alone, a
non-significant correlation indicates that the accuracy assumption is unlikely to hold.
It is important to note that scoring high on a procedural empathy test is not
sufficient evidence for determining that someone acts empathic in everyday life, but I
believe that it is an important first step in being able to verify the legitimacy of asking
persons about their empathic capacities. In much the same way that psychologists do
not generally measure IQ by asking participants whether they believe they have high or
low IQs, psychologists and neuroscientists should not ask participants whether they are
empathic. At least not before the relationship has been sufficiently studied and verified.
As Paul Meehl once remarked in relation to the problems of ”soft” psychology: ”A
theory is corroborated to the extent that we have subjected it to such risky tests; the
more dangerous tests it has survived, the better corroborated it is.” (1978, p. 817). In
the current state of affairs, the self-reporting of empathy has not been subjected to
sufficiently risky tests.
Future Directions
The two studies conducted in this thesis were exploratory in nature, as no previous
study had investigated the relation between the Dark Triad and Schwartz’s values. It
should be viewed as a stepping stone towards integrating personality psychology more
closely with cognitive neuroscience. However, at this stage, it is difficult to extrapolate
from the collected data to a neuroscientific framework. Thus, rather than applying
post-hoc theory to collected data a few alternatives for how to integrate these empirical
studies using neuroscientific methodologies in future studies are provided.
To the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has been conducted on personal
values using neuroscientific instruments. However, the absence of such studies may be
caused by the degrees of separation between personality psychology and cognitive

neuroscience, rather than that values are not susceptible to neuroscientific research.
One may reason that values are a higher order construct, much like morality, or some
decision making paradigms. Higher order constructs have been manipulated in
neuroscience. For instance, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) has been used to
manipulate decision making in behavioral economics research (Knoch, Pascual-Leone,
Meyer, Treyer, & Fehr, 2006), in deception and moral cognition (Karim et al., 2010),
and to study the effect of biases on information processing (Franken, Muris, Nijs, &
van Strien, 2008). TMS has also been used to correlate motor cortex excitability and
neuroticism (Wassermann, Greenberg, Nguyen, & Murphy, 2001), and induce
temporary psychopathy by creating virtual lesions (Dutton, 2012).
A question that arises is whether it is possible to change someone’s values by using
TMS? Changing interpersonal values has been argued to be an important step towards
treating personality disorders (Locke, 2000). Currently, the constraints on value
manipulation are unknown, but headway in this area may provide new insights into the
Dark Triad components. For instance, are psychopaths more or less likely to change
values than a non-psychopath? A potential starting point is to use repetitive TMS
(rTMS) on the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has been found to increase
utilitarian moral judgments (Tassy et al., 2011). Utilitarian moral reasoning is also
featured in psychopathy (Koenigs, Kruepke, Zeier, & Newman, 2012), and moral
judgments are intimately connected with self-transcending values (Schwartz, 2007).
Finally, there are meta-scientific concerns pertaining to individual differences to
take into account. Every psychological study ultimately boils down to its participants,
and in some cases it may be more important to know what those participants are like
than is currently acknowledged. The concern being that eventually neuroscience will
progress to a point where it will be necessary to control for various personality traits in
order to properly delineate different experimental groups, or the results will be
confounded. Personality neuroscience is a start in answering that call.

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Appendix A
Table 1
Partial Correlations between Big Five/Six and Dark Triad
Machiavellianism Narcissism Psychopathy
Extraversion1 -.14 .64 .01

Agreeableness1 -.43 .29 -.23
Conscientiousness1 -.02 .05 -.33
Neuroticism1 .21 -.41 -.04
Openness1 -.23 .18 .03
Extraversion2 -.20 .64 .05

Agreeableness2 -.21 .22 -.28
Conscientiousness2 .09 .22 -.27
Neuroticism2 -.13 -.25 .25
Openness2 -.31 .28 .00
Honesty-Humility2 -.31 -.41 -.10
Note. 1 denotes Study I, and 2 denotes Study II. Correlations larger than 0.2 are
significant at p < 0.05 in both studies.
Appendix B
Table 2
Factor Loading Component Matrix based on a Principal Components Analysis for 18

items from MI6-A, IRI-EC, and IRI-PT
Items Component 1
Sympathize with others’ feelings (MI6-A) .856

I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me. .832
(EC)
Feel others’ emotions (MI6-A) .817
Other people’s misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal. (EC) .802
Am not really interested in others (MI6-A) .772
I am often quite touched by things that I see happen. (EC) .751
When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective .738
towards them. (EC)
I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things .733
look from their perspective. (PT)
When I see someone being treated unfairly, I sometimes don’t feel very .733
much pity for them. (EC)
I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the ”other guy’s” point of .721
view. (PT)
Am not interested in other people’s problems. (MI6-A) .710
I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person. (EC) .704
Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in .701
their place. (PT)
Sometimes I don’t feel very sorry for other people when they are having .699
problems. (EC)
When I’m upset at someone, I usually try to ”put myself in his shoes” for .698
a while. (PT)
I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them .653
both. (PT)
I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision. .615
(PT)
If I’m sure I’m right about something, I don’t waste much time listening .460
to other people’s arguments. (PT)
Note. Factor loadings < .3 are suppressed. N = 180.

PERSONALITY NEUROSCIENCE AND DARK VALUES
Appendix C
Extraversion Neuroticism
0.8 0.8
0.6 0.6
Study Study
0.4 0.4
Correlation
Correlation
0.2 Meta 0.2 Meta
0.0 0.0
S1 S1
−0.2 −0.2
−0.4 S2 −0.4 S2
−0.6 −0.6
−0.8 −0.8
SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO
Value Type Value Type
Agreeableness Openness to Experience

0.8 0.8
0.6 0.6
Study Study
0.4 0.4
Correlation
Correlation
0.2 Meta 0.2 Meta
0.0 0.0
S1 S1
−0.2 −0.2
−0.4 S2 −0.4 S2
−0.6 −0.6
−0.8 −0.8
SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO
Figure 1. Comparison between the two studies conducted
Conscientiousness
0.8 in this thesis and a meta-analysis of personality and values
0.6
Study
0.4
(Parks-Leduc et al., 2014). Study I, and Study II use Pear-
Correlation
0.2 Meta
0.0
S1
−0.2 son’s r and the adopted numbers are corrected correlations
−0.4 S2
−0.6
(ρ). Note that the two additional values from Study II (Face
−0.8
92
SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO
Value Type and Humility) are not included because they are not included
in the meta-analysis.
Appendix D
Correlations between DT and Values Study 1 Correlations between DT and Values Study 2
1.00 1.00
0.75 0.75
0.50 0.50
0.25 DT 0.25 DT
Correlation
Correlation
Mach Mach
0.00 0.00
Narc Narc
−0.25 −0.25
Psych Psych
−0.50 −0.50
−0.75 −0.75
−1.00 −1.00
SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO FA SE TR CO HU BE UN SD ST HE AC PO
Figure 2. The graph on the left depicts correlations between DT and PQV-40 (Study I), and
the graph on the right depicts correlations between DT and PVQ-RR (Study II). Note that the
two studies include ten and twelve value types, respectively. The order of the PVQ categories
illustrate that the orthogonal properties derived from the circumplex hold very well in relation
to DT, with the exception of the Benevolence category in Study II.
93
Appendix E
Table 3
Intercorrelations of Personal Values (Study I)
SE TR CO BE UN SD ST HE AC PO
Security 1
Tradition .44 1
Conformity .34 .51 1
Benevolence -.12 .24 .14 1
Universalism .02 .11 -.07 .36 1
Self-direction -.09 -.20 -.37 -.03 .28 1
Stimulation -.62 -.46 -.54 -.12 -.08 .14 1
Hedonism -.34 -.52 -.31 -.34 -.37 -.07 .43 1
Achievement -.25 -.46 -.29 -.42 -.46 -.23 .08 .11 1
Power -.22 -.50 -.30 -.44 -.49 -.20 .05 .20 .57 1
Note. N = 155.
94
Appendix F
Table 4
Pearson correlations between personal values (PVQ-RR) and Big Six (Study II)
SE TR CO HU BE UN SD ST HE AC PO FA
Extraversion -.12 -.02 -.32 -.33 .11 -.03 -.12 .31 .25 .30 .22 -.03
Agreeableness -.15 .04 .12 .24 .35 .50 -.19 -.08 -.10 -.21 -.49 -.24
Conscientiousness .35 .15 .09 .01 .04 -.12 -.04 -.27 -.20 .02 -.06 .04
Neuroticism -.08 -.06 .02 -.08 -.12 -.12 -.03 .11 .07 .06 .15 .14
Openness -.18 -.28 -.20 -.15 .20 .19 .24 .18 .14 .09 -.11 .02
Honesty–Humility .03 .12 .34 .55 .18 .37 .01 -.26 -.29 -.45 -.61 -.33
Note. N = 193. Correlations equal to, or larger than, 0.12 are significant at p = 0.05 level. Bold denotes correlations larger
than 0.3 in accordance with what Hemphill (2003) refers to as a large effect. SE = Security, TR = Tradition, CO = Confor-
mity, HU = Humility, BE = Benevolence, UN = Universalism, SD = Self-direction, ST = Stimulation, HE = Hedonism, AC =
Achievement, PO = Power, FA = Face.
95
Appendix G
Table 5
Pearson correlations between Big Six, Dark Triad, and IRI-EC/PT (Study II)
O C E A N HH MA NA PS EC PT
Openness 1
Conscientiousness .03 1
Extraversion .17 .11 1
Agreeableness .29 .03 .13 1
Neuroticism -.22 -.30 -.20 -.17 1
Honesty–Humility -.11 -.05 -.29 .18 -.12 1
Machiavellianism -.05 -.01 .08 -.36 .08 -.51 1
Narcissism .25 .14 .65 .00 -.15 -.54 .36 1
Psychopathy .03 -.18 .22 -.39 .19 -.45 .60 .41 1
Empathic Concern .16 .10 .10 .81 -.16 .16 -.32 .01 -.34 1
Perspective Taking .35 .14 .18 .69 -.24 .08 -.29 .13 -.30 .61 1
Note. N = 193. Correlations equal to, or larger than, 0.15 are significant at p = 0.05 level. Bold denotes correlations larger
than 0.3 in accordance with what Hemphill (2003) refers to as a large effect.
96

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Personality Neuroscience and Dark Values

Master Degree Project in Cognitive Neuroscience

Supervisor: India Morrison

”...but there is no shelter”

”There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”

The Dark Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Personality: Big Five, and HEXACO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The Biological Basis of Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Schwartz Value Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Dark Triad and Schwartz’s Value Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Traits and Values in the Dark Triad Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Dark Values and Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Conclusion and Future Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Moderating Dark Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Controlling for Big Six and Dark Triad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Principal Component Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

involves the use of neuroscientific methodologies to study individual differences in behav-

in identifying the important dimensions of personality, but relatively little to understand-

relating to the constructs.

Keywords: Personality neuroscience, Dark Triad, Schwartz Universal Values,

Personality Neuroscience and Dark Values

Personality psychology describes how personality traits are expressed in different

neuroscientific methodologies to study individual differences in behavior, motivation,

The integration of personality psychology and neuroscience is not coincidental.

psychiatry as clinical neuroscience, we also accelerate the integration of psychiatry with

disorders. Moreover, psychiatric journals are shifting towards a neurobiological

individual differences in both brain structure and function.

directions and study proposals are considered.

convenient dependent variable, as values have previously been used in research on

personality disorders (Locke, 2000).

The Dark Triad

The Dark Triad is a non-pathological personality construct consisting of three

different components: Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and subclinical

(institutionalized or imprisoned) population. There is often an implicit assumption that

outside: within work and personality psychology.

The concept of Machiavellianism is derived from the writings of the 16th-century

Italian political philosophers, Niccolò Machiavelli. In his treatises, The Prince

accept Machiavelli’s world view was a measurable individual difference variable

(Christie & Geis, 1970).

In the landmark manuscript Studies in Machiavellianism, Christie and Geis (1970)

alleged shortcomings concerning response style, varying reliability, varying factor

structures, insufficient content and construct validity.

succeed in one’s manipulations, a precondition would have to be a refined use of

Gunnthorsdottir et al. (2002) hypothesized that the MACH-IV could be used as an

identifier of cooperativeness. However, they failed to confirm this hypothesis, but

nevertheless found that levels of Machiavellianism predict reciprocity. Using a

study found that schizophrenics have lower ”Machiavellian intelligence” when

expressions when constructed in narratives. The authors interpret this finding as

showing that schizophrenics have poorer mentalizing abilities (Mazza, De Risio,

Tozzini, Roncone, & Casacchia, 2003).

response in Machiavellian individuals. The researchers suggest that Machiavellians may

be more successful at exploiting others (Bereczkei et al., 2013).

In a study on the neurological correlates of Machiavellianism in patients with

Machiavellianism were impaired on tests relating to prefrontal function in contrast to

prefrontal lobe is required in order to maintain prosocial (as opposed to Machiavellian)

personality traits (McNamara et al., 2007).

Verbeke et al. (2011) hypothesized that because Machiavellians are sensitive to

are also involved in many other things.

participants. The results were very interesting, as hierarchical regression analyses

51.3 to 61.67% of the variance in MACH-IV scores could be accounted for by

(Nestor et al., 2012).

DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1980), which transformed clinical

descriptions into a working definition, ultimately yielding assessable criteria