The Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy as personality traits, and what research shows

The Dark Triad is a research term for three personality traits taken together: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. It comes from a 2002 paper by Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams, psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Canada. They picked out three of the “offensive yet non-pathological” personalities in the literature as especially prominent, Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy, and used data from 245 students to test whether the three were one and the same (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). In other words, the concept was built to study personality differences among ordinary people, not to sort people into kinds.

The short answer comes in three parts. First, the three traits are not diagnoses but continuous traits that vary by degree in the general population. Paulhus defines these “dark personalities” as traits in the subclinical range, not extreme enough to draw clinical or forensic attention, and notes that people high in them can get along, and even flourish, at work, at school and in the wider community (Paulhus, 2014). Second, the three overlap but are not identical. The 2002 study concluded that they are “overlapping but distinct” (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), and since then researchers have kept debating whether they really are three separate traits and what common core ties them together (Vize et al., 2018; Moshagen et al., 2018). Third, their links with outcomes such as work behaviour and partner violence are correlations at the group level, and in the studies we read they were weak to moderate in size (O’Boyle et al., 2012; White et al., 2024). They are not numbers that tell you how any one person will behave.

mind.io does not offer a Dark Triad test. Research scales exist, but this guide prints none of their items or score thresholds and does not judge any particular person to be “Dark Triad”, because a few short questions are easily used as a tool for sorting people. Narcissism alongside narcissistic personality disorder is covered in the narcissism guide, and how the words psychopath and sociopath relate to antisocial personality disorder in the psychopath and sociopath guide. This guide goes through what each trait is, how it is measured and where the measures fall short, the common core of the three and the D factor, the Dark Tetrad, the links with work, dating and life satisfaction, differences by sex and age, and what to consider before putting the label on a person.

Machiavellianism is, in a phrase, the manipulative personality. The name comes from Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince in the sixteenth century (Park et al., 2021), and the psychological concept began with a scale Richard Christie built from statements he selected from Machiavelli’s writings. Christie showed that people differ reliably in how much they agree with these statements, and later research found that those who agreed more tended to behave in a colder, more manipulative way in the laboratory and in real-world settings (Christie & Geis, 1970, cited in Paulhus & Williams, 2002). In the first study to compare the three traits together, people high in Machiavellianism, unlike those high in narcissism, did not overrate their own intelligence, which the authors read as consistent with earlier evidence that Machiavellians see themselves more realistically (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).

The other two are “subclinical” versions of clinical concepts. Subclinical narcissism grew out of an attempt to carry the DSM’s narcissistic personality disorder over to ordinary people, and the facets kept from the clinical syndrome are grandiosity, entitlement, dominance and superiority. The central elements of subclinical psychopathy are high impulsivity and thrill-seeking along with low empathy and low anxiety, and the self-report scale that measures it was built from items that separated clinically diagnosed psychopaths from others and was then validated in samples without criminal records. The authors summed up that, to varying degrees, all three share a socially malevolent character that leans towards self-promotion, emotional coldness, duplicity and aggressiveness (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Narcissistic personality disorder and the two faces of narcissism (grandiose and vulnerable) are in the narcissism guide, and how psychopathy differs from the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, and how research measures it, in the psychopathy guide. In this guide, narcissism and psychopathy mean differences in personality among ordinary people, not diagnoses or clinical-level concepts.

The 2002 study gave 245 students (65% women) the three standard scales, a Big Five personality inventory, an intelligence test and other measures. The correlations between the three scales were all positive and ranged from .25 to .50. Even after correcting for measurement error, the highest correlation (psychopathy with narcissism) reached only .61, so the authors concluded that the three cannot be treated as the same thing. The only Big Five trait all three shared was low agreeableness (narcissism −.36, Machiavellianism −.47, psychopathy −.25); Machiavellianism and psychopathy were also low in conscientiousness (−.34 and −.24), and only psychopathy was low in neuroticism (−.34). Rating one’s own intelligence above one’s actual score was clearest for narcissism (.24), followed by psychopathy (.14). The authors saw disagreeableness as the common core of the three, and added their view that no personality trait is always adaptive or always maladaptive (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Keep in mind that this is one student sample from one university.

At first, each trait was measured with its own long scale. The 2002 study used a 40-item scale for narcissism, a 20-item scale for Machiavellianism and a 31-item scale for psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Shorter scales followed. The Dirty Dozen measures all three traits with 12 items; it was examined for structure, validity and test-retest reliability in four studies with 1,085 participants, and cut the item count by 87%, from 91 to 12 (Jonason & Webster, 2010). The Short Dark Triad (SD3) has 27 items; it was developed in four studies with 1,063 participants from community and student samples and was also checked against ratings by people who knew the participants (Jones & Paulhus, 2014). In Korea, two studies of 250 adults each, aged from their twenties to their sixties and older and drawn from a survey company’s panel, examined a Korean version of the SD3. They found not the original three factors but two, “narcissism” and “Machiavellianism-psychopathy”, and settled on a two-factor scale of 17 items (SD-2) (Park et al., 2021).

Short scales come at a cost. In a study of 789 students and 75 male prisoners, the Dirty Dozen’s psychopathy subscale (four items) correlated significantly with established measures, but less strongly than the established scales correlated with each other, and it missed an important part related to interpersonal antagonism and disinhibition. The authors advised caution in using it as a measure of psychopathy (Miller et al., 2012). A study comparing the two short scales in an online community sample of 287 people reported that SD3 scores agreed better with longer, established measures, while noting a difference: the SD3’s narcissism scale mainly taps the grandiose side, whereas the Dirty Dozen captures both grandiose and vulnerable features (Maples et al., 2014). The authors of a combined meta-analysis and review pointed to a more basic limit: most research in this area uses self-reports collected at a single time point, and current measures are too simple to capture the malevolent sides of personality. They recommended combining reports from several informants and following people over time (Muris et al., 2017).

So a score from an online “Dark Triad test” is neither a diagnosis nor a verdict. Even the scales used in research are short questionnaires that people fill in about themselves, and, as above, what exactly they measure and how well is still being studied. That is also why mind.io does not reproduce them. If you are curious about your broad traits, the Big Five personality test shows your agreeableness and conscientiousness, since low agreeableness was the trait all three shared in the 2002 study (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The Big Five test is not a Dark Triad test, though, and low agreeableness does not mean someone is “Dark Triad”.

Whether the three are really separate is itself debated. A meta-analysis of Dark Triad research (k = 156 for the correlations among the three, k = 159 for comparing their networks of related variables) reported that the networks of psychopathy and Machiavellianism overlap substantially while narcissism shows a different pattern, and argued that current research on Machiavellianism may be better understood as “a secondary psychopathy literature” (Vize et al., 2018). In studies of 393 online participants and 341 students, Machiavellianism and psychopathy scores also showed nearly identical empirical profiles, and Machiavellianism was related to impulsivity-related traits that in theory should be its opposite, leading the authors to conclude that the two scales appear to measure the same construct (Miller et al., 2017). The Korean SD3 studies above, in which the two traits formed a single factor, point the same way (Park et al., 2021). There is also the opposite conclusion. A meta-analysis of 245 independent workplace samples concluded that the three are positively related but distinct enough to be separated in theory and in data (O’Boyle et al., 2012), and the researchers who coined the term also judged them distinct enough to measure separately (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).

So what is the common core that ties them together? The authors of a combined meta-analysis and review summed up that the three relate mainly to agreeableness in the Big Five and to honesty-humility in the HEXACO model of personality (Muris et al., 2017). Honesty-humility is a factor that covers facets such as sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance and modesty (Kaufman et al., 2019). In a study with a preregistered analysis plan and two samples of 627 and 628 people, agreeableness measured with the IPIP-NEO-120, honesty-humility, and the “callous affect” and “interpersonal manipulation” subscales of a self-report psychopathy scale accounted for all or nearly all of the variance the three traits share. Agreeableness measured with the shorter BFI scales accounted for notably less in most cases, and the authors argued that the most parsimonious explanation is that all these traits fall under the umbrella of antagonism (Vize et al., 2020). Whether the common core of the three is in effect the same as low honesty-humility is also debated. A study of 677 people recruited through social media (551 of them women) replicated earlier findings of a nearly perfect latent relationship between the Dark Triad’s common core and honesty-humility, yet, citing some evidence that their construct validity differs, concluded that claims of complete convergence may be premature (Stefanek et al., 2025). mind.io does not offer a HEXACO test, so honesty-humility appears here only as a research concept.

Some researchers have proposed a broader answer. They call the common core of many dark traits the D factor (Dark Factor of Personality), defined as “the tendency to maximize one’s individual utility—disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others—accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications”. In four studies with more than 2,500 participants, a range of dark traits could be understood as specific manifestations of D, and D predicted many kinds of ethically, morally and socially questionable behaviour, including behaviour with real consequences and incentives at stake (Moshagen et al., 2018). The concept is defined by analogy with the general factor (g) of intelligence (Hartung et al., 2022). Item sets of 70, 35 and 16 items that measure D directly were later built from seven samples totalling more than 165,000 people (Moshagen et al., 2020).

Adding a fourth trait gives the Dark Tetrad. In 2013, researchers tested everyday sadism, a taste for cruelty, with two laboratory procedures. The first used a bug-killing task, and people high in sadism volunteered to kill bugs at higher rates. In the second, when aggression was easy, both sadism and Dark Triad measures predicted unprovoked aggression, but only those high in sadism were willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person (Buckels et al., 2013). Paulhus argued that because the four overlap, they should be studied together (Paulhus, 2014). How the Dark Tetrad traits relate to finding gaslighting tactics acceptable in couples is covered in the gaslighting guide.

Start with work. In a meta-analysis of 245 independent samples (43,907 people) published from 1951 to 2011, lower quality of job performance was consistently associated with higher Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) was associated with all three traits. These links varied with contextual factors such as authority and culture, though, and when the three were analysed together, the Dark Triad explained moderate amounts of the variance in counterproductive behaviour but not in job performance (O’Boyle et al., 2012). Results also point the other way. In a study of 793 early-career employees in Germany’s private sector, representative of age and education, after controlling for gender, age, job tenure, organisation size, education and working hours, narcissism was positively related to salary, Machiavellianism to holding a leadership position and to career satisfaction, and psychopathy was negatively related to every outcome analysed (Spurk et al., 2016). So it is neither “bad guys get ahead” nor “bad guys always fall behind”: it depends on the trait and the outcome. Research on psychopathy in leaders is covered in the psychopathy guide.

In dating, links with short-term relationships have been reported. In a survey of 224 people, Dark Triad traits correlated with various dimensions of short-term mating but not with long-term mating; the link was stronger for men than for women, and the Dark Triad partially mediated the sex difference in short-term mating behaviour. The authors read this as consistent with an evolutionary view that the Dark Triad facilitates an exploitative, short-term mating strategy in men (Jonason et al., 2009). That reading is the authors’, and the data come from a one-time survey. What about violence in close relationships? In a meta-analysis of 19 studies (9,464 people) on Machiavellianism and perpetrating intimate partner violence, the overall correlation was r = .16, a weak positive relationship. Machiavellianism had weak positive relationships with cyber (r = .25), psychological (r = .20) and sexual violence (r = .10), no significant relationship with physical violence, and the size of the relationship did not differ significantly between women and men. The authors noted as limits that the measures were self-reports, the studies were heterogeneous, and the cross-sectional designs leave the causal pathways unknown (White et al., 2024). An r of .16 does not mean that most people high in Machiavellianism are violent, and it is no basis for deciding whether a particular person is dangerous. The link between narcissism and aggression is covered in the narcissism guide. Whatever the trait is called, though, if a partner threatens, controls or hurts you, safety comes first. In immediate danger, call your local emergency number. US: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 · UK: National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247.

The link with life satisfaction was weak. One study developed a Light Triad scale with four online samples from the US, the UK and Ireland (1,518 people in all). In the samples where life satisfaction was measured, the Dark Triad measured with the SD3 showed a weak negative correlation with it (r = −0.11), which was no longer significant once facets of agreeableness and honesty-humility were controlled for. The Light Triad is a loving and beneficent orientation towards others, treating people as ends in themselves, valuing the dignity and worth of each individual and believing in the basic goodness of people, and the authors offered their scale as a first draft. The Light and Dark Triads correlated at r = −0.48, a moderate size, which the authors read as showing that one is not simply the opposite of the other. Judged by the difference between the two scores, the average participant leaned more towards the Light Triad than the Dark Triad (Kaufman et al., 2019). These results, too, are correlations measured at one point in time.

On average, men score higher. In the 2002 student study, men scored significantly higher on all three traits, with correlations with sex of .11 for narcissism, .21 for Machiavellianism and .40 for psychopathy, largest for psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). A meta-analysis and review likewise summed up the three traits as “somewhat more prevalent among men than women” (Muris et al., 2017). In data from 12,501 people (5,982 women and 6,519 men) who took part in 2019 on the D factor researchers’ website in return for feedback on their own score, the standardised mean difference in the D factor was 0.42 standard deviations, with men higher. Men scored higher at every age analysed, from the early twenties to the early fifties, and of the five themes that make up D (callousness, deceitfulness, narcissistic entitlement, sadism and vindictiveness), the sex difference was smallest for narcissistic entitlement. The items were also shown to work the same way for women and men (Hartung et al., 2022). This sample, however, consisted of online volunteers who came after media coverage, so it was not drawn to represent the population. The sex difference from a meta-analysis of narcissism alone is in the narcissism guide.

These numbers are differences between averages. A difference in averages does not mean the score distributions of women and men sit apart, so sex is no basis for guessing an individual’s traits. In the 2002 study, the patterns of correlations with other variables were very similar within each sex, so the authors pooled the data (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), and the link between Machiavellianism and perpetrating partner violence did not differ significantly in size between women and men (White et al., 2024). Nor is it settled why the difference exists. The authors of the 12,501-person study pointed to earlier research consistently showing women scoring higher than men in agreeableness and honesty-humility by about d = 0.40, and discussed evolutionary accounts as well as social roles and hormonal changes, yet left the causes as a question for future research (Hartung et al., 2022).

Negative links with age are reported again and again. In the same data from 12,501 people, the averages for D and all five themes were lower at older ages, by about 0.2 standard deviations for every ten years. This was cross-sectional data comparing age groups at one point in time, though, so the authors called for longitudinal studies that follow the same people (Hartung et al., 2022). Such studies exist. In a longitudinal study that measured 926 German university students aged 18 to 30 (74% women) four times over two years, the rank-order stability of the four traits studied (Machiavellianism, psychopathy and two aspects of narcissism) was very high, from .74 to .81, yet the averages for Machiavellianism (d = −0.18) and psychopathy (d = −0.12) declined in a straight line, while the findings for narcissism were inconclusive. Changes in Machiavellianism moved opposite to changes in life satisfaction (r = −.39), which, the authors wrote, makes the average decline in Machiavellianism appear adaptive (Wolff & Wetzel, 2023). In short, people’s relative ranking stays fairly stable, while the averages drift slightly lower with age.

Lists of “Dark Triad traits” or “how to spot a Machiavellian” are easy to find online, but the research itself shows why they make a poor tool for judging the people around you. First, these traits are not diagnostic categories but continuous differences within the subclinical range (Paulhus, 2014). Research treats scores as differences of degree, and there is nothing like a diagnostic threshold for where a “Dark Triad person” begins. Second, the research scales are short questionnaires that people answer about themselves, and what exactly they measure, and how well, is still debated (Miller et al., 2012; Muris et al., 2017). Guessing from a few of someone’s behaviours how that person would answer such a questionnaire is less certain still. Third, the links with outcomes are correlations in group averages, weak to moderate in size. As the r of .16 between Machiavellianism and perpetrating partner violence shows (White et al., 2024), the behaviour of people with high and low scores overlaps a great deal. Fourth, from the outside we see only part of what a person does, and we cannot see their motives or inner life.

So it is more useful to look at behaviour than to put a name on a person. What follows is general advice, not a method proven in research. If a colleague keeps taking credit for your work or going back on what was agreed, rather than concluding “that person is a Machiavellian”, write down what happened and when, put agreements in writing, and use your organisation’s formal procedures if needed. In a close relationship, if your partner makes you doubt your own memory and judgement or controls your contacts, money or friendships, that is not a question of personality labels but of abuse. The gaslighting guide covers that pattern and what helps, and the narcissism guide what helps in a relationship with someone high in narcissism. Your local domestic abuse helpline and your family doctor are good first ports of call. In immediate danger, call your local emergency number. US: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 · UK: National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247. If the relationship feels like too much to carry, or you have thoughts of hurting yourself, reach out first to a crisis line: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

You may instead be worried that you are “that kind of person”. A high score on a short self-report scale is not a verdict, and the averages for these traits tend to drift slightly lower with age (Hartung et al., 2022; Wolff & Wetzel, 2023). Worrying about it at all also means you are thinking about how your behaviour affects others. For understanding yourself, your agreeableness and conscientiousness scores on the Big Five personality test and, for how you respond to other people’s feelings, the empathy and emotion style test may help, but neither is a Dark Triad test. Ways to build empathy are in the empathy skills guide. If you feel you harm others without remorse, or that lying and using people have become habits, that is something a psychiatrist, a psychologist or your family doctor can work on with you. If this worry weighs heavily on you, or you have thoughts of hurting yourself, reach out first to a crisis line: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

Q. Is there a Dark Triad test? A. mind.io does not offer a Dark Triad test. Research uses self-report scales such as the 12-item Dirty Dozen (Jonason & Webster, 2010), the 27-item SD3 (Jones & Paulhus, 2014) and item sets of 70, 35 and 16 items for the D factor (Moshagen et al., 2020), and the SD3 has been studied in Korean as well (Park et al., 2021). These are research tools for looking at tendencies in groups, though, and short scales have been criticised for not fully measuring some traits (Miller et al., 2012). This guide prints none of their items or score thresholds. You can see your broad personality traits with the Big Five personality test, but it is not a Dark Triad test.

Q. What does Machiavellianism mean? A. It is a personality trait describing a tendency to manipulate others. The name comes from Machiavelli, author of The Prince (Park et al., 2021), and the psychological scale measured the trait by how much people agree with statements selected from Machiavelli’s writings (Christie & Geis, 1970, cited in Paulhus & Williams, 2002). In the 2002 study, Machiavellianism had the strongest negative correlation with agreeableness of the three traits (−.47) and was also low in conscientiousness, but it did not go with overrating one’s own intelligence (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Later studies point out, however, that current Machiavellianism scales are hard to tell apart from psychopathy (Vize et al., 2018; Miller et al., 2017).

Q. What is the Dark Tetrad? A. The Dark Triad plus everyday sadism, four traits in all. In two experiments, sadism scores independently predicted behaviour reflecting a taste for cruelty, and only those high in sadism were willing to work for the chance to hurt an innocent person (Buckels et al., 2013). Paulhus held that because the four overlap, they should be studied together (Paulhus, 2014).

Q. What is the D factor (dark factor of personality)? A. A concept that treats what many dark traits share as a single underlying tendency. Its authors defined it as the tendency to maximise one’s own utility while disregarding, accepting or malevolently provoking harm to others, accompanied by beliefs that justify it, and in four studies with more than 2,500 participants D predicted many ethically and socially questionable behaviours (Moshagen et al., 2018). Findings that the common core of dark traits almost coincides with low honesty-humility keep being replicated, yet one study concluded that treating the two as identical is premature (Stefanek et al., 2025).

Q. Do people high in the Dark Triad succeed? A. It depends on the trait and the outcome. In a study of 793 early-career employees in Germany, narcissism was positively related to salary, Machiavellianism to holding a leadership position and to career satisfaction, and psychopathy negatively to every outcome analysed (Spurk et al., 2016). In a meta-analysis of 245 samples, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were related to poorer job performance, and all three traits to counterproductive work behaviour (O’Boyle et al., 2012). These are all correlations, so they do not show that the traits cause success or failure.

Q. Do men score higher? A. On average, yes. In the 2002 student study, men scored higher on all three traits (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), and in online data from 12,501 people, the average difference in the D factor was 0.42 standard deviations (Hartung et al., 2022). A difference in averages does not mean the distributions of women and men sit apart, though, so sex is no basis for judging an individual. The causes of the difference are not yet known either.

Q. My partner or a colleague seems “Dark Triad”. A. Rather than settling on a label, look at the behaviour that keeps happening. The research scales are questionnaires people answer about themselves, and the links with outcomes are weak to moderate correlations (O’Boyle et al., 2012; White et al., 2024), so it is hard to guess someone’s personality scores from a few behaviours. If there are threats, control or violence, it is abuse, whatever name you give the person. In immediate danger, call your local emergency number. US: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 · UK: National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247. If things feel like too much, or you have thoughts of hurting yourself, reach out first to a crisis line: call or text 988 in the US and Canada, call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or find a line at findahelpline.com elsewhere. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

Q. I’m worried I might be “Dark Triad”. A. These traits are not a diagnosis but differences of degree within the subclinical range (Paulhus, 2014), and on average they drift slightly lower with age (Hartung et al., 2022; Wolff & Wetzel, 2023). If you feel you keep doing things that hurt others, you can talk it through with a psychiatrist, a psychologist or your family doctor. For understanding yourself, the Big Five personality test and the empathy and emotion style test can help, but neither is a Dark Triad test.

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