Dysfunctional personality, Dark Triad and moral disengagement in incarcerated offenders: implications for recidivism and violence

Abstract

It is particularly important to study the underlying processes of the dysfunctional personality patterns and of antisocial behaviour in the prison population, to identify them and to analyse the functioning of the psychological mechanisms involved in these constructs. The main goal of this study was to analyse dysfunctional personality patterns, Dark Triad, moral disengagement mechanisms and their relationship with violence and recidivism. Participants were 63 incarcerated offenders in two prisons. The study found a higher degree of moral disengagement in the participants convicted for crimes involving the use of violence. The results indicated that antisocial and aggressive-sadistic tendencies were the dysfunctional personality traits most strongly associated with moral disengagement. The binary logistic regression analysis showed that the variables, which influenced recidivism in criminal behaviour, were the use of violence in the crime committed, antisocial personality traits, and advantageous comparison and dehumanisation as mechanisms of moral disengagement.

Key words:

• Dark Triad
• dysfunctional personality
• moral disengagement
• violence and recidivism

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Glòria Brugués Català has declared no conflicts of interest.

Beatriz Caparrós Caparrós has declared no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Penitentiary Services of the Department of Justice of the Government of Catalonia, Rehabilitation Service on 12/02/2018, with record number 0310/836/2018) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.