The Antihero in Popular Culture: Life History Theory and the Dark Triad Personality Traits

By P. Jonason, Gregory D. Webster, D. Schmitt, Norman P. Li, Laura C Crysel. 2012

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Dark Triad of personality is composed of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Despite the common belief that these traits are undesirable, the media is awash with characters that embody the Dark Triad. Characters like Gregory House, M.D., Batman (a.k.a. the Dark Knight), and James Bond all embody these traits and are some of the most popular media franchises today. As entertaining as these characters are, they provide us with a window into the dark side of human nature. Instead of treating the dark side of human nature as inherently maladaptive, we provide an alternative view that, despite their costs, traits like these can confer reproductive and survival benefits for the individual. In so doing, we review the research on the Dark Triad traits and provide a theoretical account for how these traits can confer some positive benefits. To facilitate comprehension, we provide examples taken from the media to show how evolutionary psychology and popular culture intersect.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dbd6174158e661d9b5914e90ab95a040e0f1cbbb

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

What Lies Beneath the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen: Varied Relations with the Big Five (2013, background): “…the Dark Triad composite provides more detail about the validify of this measure, which might not be surprising given Jonason and colleagues' tendency to argue the three traits are indicators of the same/similar underlying psychology (Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009; Jonason et al., 2012).”
Unpacking “evil”: Claiming the core of the Dark Triad (2015, background): “One of the suggested models tested above was that the commonality in the Dark Triad is a shared life history strategy, namely one involving the exploitation of others and short term mating effort (Jonason et al., 2012).”
The Dark Triad and Nascent Entrepreneurship: An Examination of Unproductive versus Productive Entrepreneurial Motives (2016, background): “Individuals high in the dark triad are known to adopt a fast-life strategy toward relationships (Carter et al. 2015), and, more generally, a short-term view of the world that influences how they regulate their behavior and allocate resources (Jonason et al. 2012).”
Dominance styles mediate sex differences in Dark Triad traits (2015, background): “Therefore, in order to bolster the general hypothesis advanced by evolutionary psychologists studying the Dark Triad (Jonason et al., 2012; McDonald, Donnellan, & Navarrete, 2012)—that these traits represent a coordinated system of specialized adaptations for exploiting socioecologies—we examine…”
The emotional deficits associated with the Dark Triad traits: Cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and alexithymia (2013, background): “We predict these correlations will be positive for all three traits—although localized to different aspects of alexithymia1—in as much as the Dark Triad traits are imperfect measures of the same or a similar coordinated set of adaptations for exploitation (Jonason et al., 2012).”
The perceived attractiveness and traits of the Dark Triad: Narcissists are perceived as hot, Machiavellians and psychopaths not (2013, background): “These similarities among the Dark Triad traits may reflect an underlying fast life strategy (Jonason et al., 2012).”