Dark personality traits, political values, and prejudice: Testing a dual process model of prejudice towards refugees

There are two classes of explanations of prejudice: situational and personality. In a sample of Polish community members (n = 394), we tried to understand individual differences in prejudice towards refugees (i.e., classical and modern prejudice along with social distance) by considering the role of individual differences in the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism), collective narcissism (i.e., agentic and communal), social dominance, and authoritarianism. Both the Dark Triad traits and collective narcissism were associated with prejudice towards refugees among Poles, but the association for the former was fully mediated by social dominance—an effect that was stronger in men—whereas the association for the latter was partially mediated by authoritarianism—an effect that was stronger in women. We discuss our findings referring to a dual process model of prejudice.