How are dark triad traits associated with emotional functioning?

A study of ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia suggests that psychopathy and narcissism are the key traits connecting the Dark Triad with aspects of emotional functioning. Individuals high in psychopathy tended to be less emotionally reactive and showed deficits in both trait-based and ability-based emotional functioning. Those high in narcissism, on the other hand, were more likely to report using emotions to facilitate performance, but showed reduced ability to recognize negative emotional states in others. The study was published in the International Journal of Psychology.

The Dark Triad refers to a cluster of three socially aversive personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Narcissism is marked by grandiosity, entitlement, and a need for admiration. Machiavellianism is defined by manipulation, cynicism, and strategic self-interest. Psychopathy includes traits such as impulsivity, emotional detachment, and a lack of empathy.

Although these traits are distinct, they overlap in their propensity for interpersonal exploitation. High levels of Dark Triad traits have been linked to aggression, unethical behavior, and relationship difficulties. Some studies suggest that these traits also involve the manipulation of others’ emotions, indicating possible links between dark traits and emotional processing skills.

Study author Beata Grabovac and her colleagues sought to examine how the Dark Triad traits relate to specific domains of emotional functioning. They hypothesized that individuals high in psychopathy and Machiavellianism would exhibit lower emotional intelligence and reduced ability-based cognitive empathy, and that all three traits would be associated with lower affective empathy.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, understand, regulate, and use emotions effectively. Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person’s mental and emotional perspective, while affective empathy is the capacity to emotionally resonate with others’ feelings.

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The sample included 359 ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia, with an average age of 25 years. About 46% were women, and approximately 40% were university students, while 52% had a high school education or lower. All participants completed assessments in Hungarian.

Participants completed several measures: the Short Dark Triad (to assess narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (to measure ability-based cognitive empathy), the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, and the Empathy Quotient, which includes trait-based subscales of empathy and social skills.

The results showed that psychopathy was associated with reduced emotional reactivity and impaired recognition of others’ emotions, especially positive emotions. These findings point to both self-reported and performance-based emotional deficits.

Narcissism was linked to a greater tendency to use emotions to facilitate goal-directed behavior. Narcissistic individuals also reported better social skills and cognitive empathy. However, they were less able to recognize negative emotional states in others and tended to be slightly less emotionally reactive, suggesting a disconnect between their self-perception and actual emotional abilities.

Machiavellianism was weakly related to emotional functioning overall but showed small positive associations with cognitive empathy and the use of emotions to enhance performance. However, individuals high in Machiavellianism did not perform better on tasks that required accurately identifying emotional states, suggesting a possible gap between perceived and actual emotional skill.

“This study offers an important insight into the affective world of dark individuals and gives parallel information about how individuals see themselves and how they actually perform in the context of emotional functioning. It also gives a more detailed picture about the unique affective style of the specific dark traits and about the variability in their success in emotion recognition using a task that is more difficult than just reading emotions from whole faces, because of fewer visual cues (e.g., only the eye regions are presented without the mouth). Our results have shown that there are pervasive difficulties for the Dark Triad across various emotion categories, and that they manifest diverse and specific patterns in impaired emotional functioning,” study authors concluded.

The results shed light on the links between the Dark Triad traits and the way individuals process and use emotions. However, it should be noted that all data were based on self-reports, leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results. Additionally, all study participants were Hungarians. Results on other ethnic and cultural groups might differ.

The paper, “A Network Analysis of the Associations Between the Dark Triad Traits and Domains of Emotional Functioning,” was authored by Beata Grabovac, Bojana M. Dinić, Aleksandar Tomašević, Grace Carroll, and Tom Burke.