engleski

Affectivity of the dark side: Facets of affectivity and the Dark Triad

Trait affectivity can be considered as a general proneness to experiencing positive (e.g., feeling enthusiastic, alert, or active) or negative (e.g., feeling distress and unpleasurable engagement) emotional states. It has been shown that the Dark Triad traits (i.e. Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) differ in their relationship with the basic personality traits and their facets. Although the affective traits are substantively correlated with some of the basic personality traits, the question on the nature of the relationship of the Dark Triad traits with affective traits and their facets arises. The aim of this research was to examine the relationship of the Dark Triad traits with the affective traits and items they are consisted of. A total of 880 participants (age: M= 24.23, SD= 6.52, 176 of them male) fulfilled the Short Dark Triad (SD3) and PANAS scales, and research was carried out online. Bivariate correlations showed that narcissism was significantly positively correlated with all positive affect items, while Machiavellianism and psychopathy were correlated with only some of them and correlations were negative. Psychopathy was significantly positively correlated with all negative affect items, and the other two dark traits only with some of them, with the direction of the relationship being negative for narcissism, and positive for psychopathy. Hierarchical multiple regression of each of the dark traits was carried out, with sex and age entered at the first step, and items of positive and negative affective traits at the second step of analysis. Variance explained by positive and negative affect items, over and above sex and age, was 26.4% for narcissism (∆R2 = .264, F(20, 851) = 15.43, p < .001, Cohen’s f2 = .36), 12.3% for Machiavellianism (∆R2= .123, F(20, 851) = 6.47, p < .001, Cohen’s f2 = .15), and 16.8% for psychopathy (∆R2 = .168, F(20, 851) = 9.70, p < .001, Cohen’s f2 = .23). Dark traits also differed in patterns of the predictive values of positive and negative affect items. Effect size of dark traits variance explained by affectivity was medium to large, and largest in case of narcissism, indicating that affectivity is more pronounced in narcissism than in the other two dark traits. In sum, the obtained results reflect theoretically meaningful relations between the affectivity and Dark Triad, but also highlight affective specificities of each of the Dark Triad traits.

personality, Dark Triad, positive and negative affectivity

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