The Dark Triad, emotional expressivity and appropriateness of emotional response: Fear and sadness when one should be happy?

Situational and Dispositional Factors in Rape Cognitions: The Roles of Social Media and the Dark Triad Traits

Previous research has established the importance of socially aversive personality traits (i.e., the Dark Triad) in rape cognitions (operationalized here as rape-supportive attitudes, rape victim empathy, and hostile masculinity). However, less is known about how sexist social media content influences attitudes toward rape cognitions depending on the personality of the individual. In an online experiment, after completing the Short Dark Triad-3 questionnaire, participants (N = 180) were primed with either sexist or neutral tweets, rating them for acceptability, humor, rudeness, and ignorance. Participants then completed scales for rape-supportive attitudes, victim empathy, and hostile masculinity. Sexist tweets were rated as significantly less acceptable and humorous, and more rude and ignorant than neutral tweets. However, those high in the Dark Triad found the sexist tweets as funny and acceptable. Overall, exposure to the sexist tweets did not increase rape cognitions. Moreover, the Dark Triad traits had similar significant, positive correlations with rape-supportive attitudes, victim blame, and hostile masculinity in both sexist and neutral tweet conditions. Multiple regression analyses (controlling for gender) revealed that psychopathy was the strongest positive predictor for increased rape cognitions. Findings suggest that short exposure to sexist social media content may not influence rape cognitions, but that dispositional factors such as psychopathy are more important.

Dark Triad Traits and Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Those high on Dark Triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, primary and secondary psychopathy) are more likely to engage in sexual harassment and less likely to empathize with others. Few studies have, however, considered the impact of Dark Triad traits on perceptions of sexually aggressive behavior performed by others. The present study investigated the relationship between Dark Triad traits and perceptions of sexual harassment. Heterosexual women (N = 142) aged 18 to 50 years (M = 20.86, SD = 5.62) completed the NPI-16 (Narcissistic Personality Inventory), Mach IV, Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, and Sexual Harassment Attitudes Questionnaire. Standard multiple regressions were conducted to investigate the extent to which Dark Triad traits predicted victim and perpetrator blame and attitudes toward victim responses to sexual harassment. Primary psychopathy was the only significant individual predictor such that women with higher levels of the trait were more likely to blame the victim and less likely to blame the perpetrator. In addition, primary psychopathy was related to higher endorsement of victim compliance, and lower likelihood of supporting confrontation of the perpetrator.