The Dark Triad, happiness and subjective well-being

By Vincent Egan, Stephanie Chan, Gillian W. Shorter. Personality and Individual Differences, 2014

161 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Narcissism can be expressed in grandiose or vulnerable forms. We examined whether positive psychological states (defined by the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) and the Diener Satisfaction With Life (SWL) scales) assisted differentiation relative to general personality traits and the “the Dark Triad” (psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, measured by the D12 and Short Dark Triad (SD3) indices) for 840 persons primarily from the UK, USA and Canada. The best fitting structural equation model comprised two latent variables, one of positive mood (comprising total scores on the OHI and SWL scales), and another forming a “dark dyad” of Machiavellianism and psychopathy (predicted by low agreeableness and lower positive mood), with narcissism regarded as a separate construct correlated with the dark dyad. Latent positive mood was primarily predicted by higher emotional stability and extraversion. Narcissism was predicted by lower emotional stability, lower agreeableness, and higher extraversion. Latent profile analysis identified four groups in the data: “unhappy but not narcissistic”, “vulnerable narcissism”, “happy non-narcissism” and “grandiose narcissism”. Our results suggest more problematic narcissism can be identified by reference to measures indexing positive mood states and general personality traits.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eab4b76786ed48d936f9794427755a6ac722abb9

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Agata Błachnio
2. N. Hughes
3. Emma J. Palmer
4. Jan Cieciuch
5. R. Rogoza
6. Vincent Egan
7. Naser Aghababaei

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Agata Błachnio
2. Jan Cieciuch
3. Vincent Egan
4. R. Rogoza
5. Naser Aghababaei

In Social Psychology

1. Agata Błachnio
2. Jan Cieciuch
3. Vincent Egan
4. R. Rogoza
5. Naser Aghababaei

Citations in the corpus

• Well-being and the Dark Triad (2015, background): “While some emerging studies report the relationship of the Dark Triad with SWB (Aghababaei, Mohammadtabar, & Saffarinia, 2014; Egan et al., 2014; Jonason et al., 2015; Ng et al., 2014; Rose, 2002; Sedikides et al., 2004; Zajenkowski & Czarna, 2014), those examining eudaimonic well-being in relation…”
• Moral disengagement, the dark triad, and unethical consumer attitudes (2015, background): “Exemplifying O’Boyle et al.’s observations, Egan, Chan, and Shorter (2014) found Machiavellianism and psychopathy driven by low Agreeableness alone, whereas narcissism presented a much more complex FFM profile.”
• Dark Triad traits and their structure: An empirical approach (2020, result): “This hypothesis found support in different studies, where narcissism was least correlated, excluded from the models, and with different criterion validity (Egan et al. 2014; Kowalski et al. 2016; Petrides et al. 2011; Rogoza and Cieciuch 2017).”