Psychology 101
The Big Five personality traits
Dark Triad Personality: The 3 Traits Explained
The CQ Team · 7 min read ·
What the dark triad is, how narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy differ, how researchers measure them, and what the studies say about the dark triad at work.
The dark triad is a set of three socially aversive personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams named it in 2002. They measured all three in 245 students and found the traits "overlapping but distinct" (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Everyone sits somewhere on each trait. The dark triad describes ordinary people in the normal range, not a diagnosis.
| Trait | Core | Classic measure |
|---|---|---|
| Narcissism | Grandiosity: a sense of being special and entitled to admiration | Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall) |
| Machiavellianism | Strategic manipulation: cool, calculating and focused on long-term self-interest | Mach-IV (Christie & Geis, 1970) |
| Psychopathy | Callousness plus impulsivity: little remorse and a taste for thrills | Self-Report Psychopathy scale (Hare) |
The cores come from the paper that introduced the Short Dark Triad, the most used brief measure (Jones & Paulhus, 2014). Its authors say all three traits share "a common callousness".
In this research, narcissism means the everyday, subclinical kind, not narcissistic personality disorder. Raskin and Hall built their scale to capture a subclinical version of the clinical diagnosis. High scorers feel superior, crave attention and react badly to criticism.
The name comes from Niccolò Machiavelli. Richard Christie built the Mach-IV questionnaire by selecting statements from Machiavelli's books. High scorers see other people as tools, plan their moves and keep their reputation intact while they do it.
Subclinical psychopathy combines low empathy with impulsive, thrill-seeking behaviour. In the 2002 study it was the only one of the three marked out by low neuroticism, the Big Five trait behind anxiety and worry. Unlike Machiavellians, the SD3 authors note, high scorers pay little attention to their reputation.
In Paulhus and Williams' study, the three traits correlated with each other at .25 to .50. That is related but far from identical. Across many studies, a 2012 meta-analysis put the links at .59 for psychopathy and Machiavellianism, .51 for psychopathy and narcissism, and .30 for Machiavellianism and narcissism (O'Boyle et al., 2012).
Their one shared Big Five trait was low agreeableness. In the 2002 study, agreeableness correlated with each trait as follows.
| Trait | Correlation with agreeableness |
|---|---|
| Narcissism | -.36 |
| Machiavellianism | -.47 |
| Psychopathy | -.25 |
The HEXACO model adds a sixth trait to the Big Five, Honesty-Humility. The authors of the Short Dark Triad list it as one proposed explanation of what the three dark traits have in common. Read the trait's description and you can see why. Its authors say people very low on it "will flatter others to get what they want", are "inclined to break rules for personal profit" and "feel a strong sense of self-importance" (HEXACO scale descriptions). Those are the marks of all three dark traits in one scale.
In 2014, Paulhus proposed adding a fourth trait, everyday sadism: enjoying other people's pain. Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism together form the dark tetrad, which he describes as "socially aversive traits in the subclinical range" (Paulhus, 2014).
A 2012 meta-analysis of 245 samples and 43,907 people looked at the dark triad on the job (O'Boyle et al., 2012).
| Trait | Job performance | Counterproductive work behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Machiavellianism | -.07 | .25 |
| Narcissism | -.03 | .43 |
| Psychopathy | -.10 | .07 |
Corrected correlations from the meta-analysis.
Together the three traits explained about 1% of the differences in job performance. Their link with counterproductive behaviour, such as theft and sabotage, was much stronger, and narcissism drove most of it. The dark triad says more about how someone may behave badly at work than about how well they do the job.
There is no percentage, because there is no cut-off. The dark triad is measured as three continuous scores, like height. Most people score in the middle, a few score very high or very low, and the research compares people along the scale rather than sorting them into "dark triad" and "not". Be wary of any quiz that tells you that you are, or are not, a dark triad person.
The Short Dark Triad (SD3) has 27 statements, nine per trait, rated from disagree to agree. Its authors tested it in four studies with 1,063 people in total (Jones & Paulhus, 2014). Researchers also use the longer original scales listed above.
Cerebral Quotient does not have a dark triad test. The closest is our HEXACO test, which scores Honesty-Humility alongside the Big Five traits. It is a short test in the style of the HEXACO model, not the official HEXACO-PI-R. Our Big Five test includes agreeableness, the one Big Five trait all three dark traits share. For the relationship side, read dark triad traits in relationships or how to spot dark triad traits. More on the traits behind these scores is in the Big Five hub.
It is a group of three overlapping but distinct personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Paulhus and Williams named it in 2002, and all three involve a degree of callousness towards others.
No. Researchers study it as normal-range, subclinical traits that everyone has to some degree. It is not a diagnosis, and a high score on a questionnaire does not mean someone has a personality disorder.
There is no fixed percentage. The traits are measured on continuous scales with no cut-off point, so studies compare people's scores rather than counting how many people "have" it.
The dark tetrad adds a fourth trait, everyday sadism, to narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Delroy Paulhus proposed it in 2014.
Low agreeableness. It was the only Big Five trait all three dark traits shared in Paulhus and Williams' 2002 study.
Curious where you sit? The Big Five test is free, takes about 2 minutes, and needs no sign-up.
Take the Big Five test →