Exploring The Relationships Among Dark Personality And Basic Affective Traits

This study aimed to explore the associations between a broad range of dark personality and affective traits with the intention of further developing the affective properties of dark personality. Seeing as most studies have focused on unitary trait measures of dark personality or higher order feelings, there was room for improvement in developing their affective nomological network. Specifically, the study examined relationships among psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism, and spite in conjunction with basic affective traits derived from the affective neuroscience personality scales (Davis & Panksepp, 2011). An evolutionary perspective was used to develop clarity for the emotional language present and as a general starting point for emotional understanding. The methodology consisted entirely of self-report typical in personality research. Controlling for sex differences, correlations between the dark personality traits and affective traits showed that angry and caring feelings were most consistently associated with dark personality. Overall, this advanced the literature by giving a detailed account of how a broad range of basic feelings are related to socially aversive temperaments.