Does the Dark Triad Predict Prejudice?: The Role of Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism in Explaining Negativity Toward Asylum Seekers

Abstract

Objective

Personality has a long history of being linked to attitudes toward various social groups, but little research has explored how darker aspects of personality might contribute to social attitudes. In this article, we explore the role of the ominous personality traits in the Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) in accounting for prejudice, in the specific case of antipathy toward asylum seekers.

Method

A community sample of 173 Australians (M_age = 23.37-years, SD = 7.88; 74% females) responded to measures of classical and modern explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes toward this group. This study used a correlational research design.

Results

The sample reported neutral explicit attitudes (both classical and modern) but implicit attitudes were negative. Classical attitudes were less negative than modern attitudes. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed political conservatism and psychopathy predicted modern explicit attitudes while political conservatism and Machiavellianism predicted classical attitudes. Narcissism was unrelated to all attitudes, and none of the Dark Triad personality traits were related to implicit attitudes.

Conclusion

The implications of the relationships between sub‐clinical personality traits and social attitudes are discussed in reference to intervening with punitive attitudes towards this vulnerable social group. This article presents new evidence that Machiavellianism is related to classic attitudes, and provides more evidence that psychopathy is related to modern attitudes. Finally, this article adds to the scarce literature on implicit attitudes towards asylum seekers.

Key words:

• asylum seekers
• Dark Triad
• Machiavellianism
• narcissism
• psychopathy
• refugee

Acknowledgement

This research was conducted without financial grants or other funding.

Notes

1. We excluded individuals who were born outside of Australia, because at very least they hold migrant status, and potentially have now or previously claimed asylum in Australia. As we did not collect more data on this, we erred on the side of caution and excluded all to avoid potential in‐group bias confounds.

2. As per Hodson et al. (2009), we conducted a principal components factor analysis on the 12 items of the Dirty Dozen to determine that the items could indeed be distinguished psychometrically. We found three components, each with eigenvalues > 1, the each item loading onto the relevant factor.

3. The scoring of the GNAT results in a higher score representing positive implicit attitudes, while the scoring of the classical and modern attitude measure results in a higher score representing negative explicit attitudes; thus, a negative correlation paradoxically represents findings that explicit and implicit attitudes towards asylum seekers are related in the same direction.

4. Regression analyses were conducted on transformed variables, due to this analysis being sensitive to non‐normal distributions. As such, care should be taken when interpreting the coefficients presented in Tables 2 and 3—raw data available from the first author upon request.