A Dark Web of Personality: Network Analyses of Dark Personality Features and Pathological Personality Traits

Network analysis offers an opportunity to gain a more nuanced view of the connections between the darker aspects of personality by examining the interrelationships between the components that make up these constructs. We examined the associations that five dark personality dispositions (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness) had with pathological personality traits (i.e., antagonism, disinhibition, detachment, negative affectivity, and psychoticism) via network analysis. These dark personality networks were examined in four studies (N = 1800), wherein the second study attempted to replicate the network from the first study, while the last two studies incorporated more specific and independent measures of dark personality features (e.g., grandiose and vulnerable narcissism). Although there were differences across network structures in these studies, the pathological personality trait of antagonism consistently evinced high expected influence centrality (i.e., it was the most strongly connected and possibly influential trait in each network). Our discussion focuses on the implications of these results for the understanding of the connections between the darker aspects of personality.