On the Dark Triad and wrongness admission: An exploration of associations in scenarios,hypotheticals,and daily life

Abstract

The Dark Triad of personality (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism) has been associated with low levels of general and intellectual humility. In the present research, we explore the unique relationships between Dark Triad traits and the public facing mechanism of intellectual humility: wrongness admission. We analyzed data from three different studies that investigated self-reported hypotheticals and current behavior using both cross-sectional reports and longitudinal daily diary methodologies. We found distinctive patterns across the Dark Triad traits and admitting wrongness. Those higher in Narcissism were more willing to engage in wrongness admission, whereas those higher in psychopathy were both less willing to engage in wrongness admission and did so less. Those high in Machiavellianism seemed particularly concerned with the reputational concerns.

Plain language summary

People don't like to admit when they are wrong, especially not in public. This type of behavior is part of what is known as intellectual humility. We were interested in whether willingness to admit being wrong was at all related to specific types of people, especially those with what we call “dark personalities” (such as psychopaths and narcissists). People with dark personalities are usually not humble, but there has not been any research on whether they admit being wrong. We collected data from three different studies to explore this further. In these studies, we asked people generally how willing they are to admit being wrong, we gave them hypothetical situations and asked whether they thought they would admit to being wrong, and we asked them to record their behaviors every day for two weeks to look at daily reports of being wrong and/or admitting to it. Across all of these studies, we found some interesting and unique patterns based on the dark personality trait. People who were higher on a measure of narcissism reported being more willing to admit they were wrong, but didn't actually admit to being wrong more than anyone else. People who were higher on a measure of psychopathy reported being less willing to admit being wrong, and did so less. People who were higher on a measure of Machiavellianism, the third major dark personality trait, were most concerned about what would happen to their public reputation if they admitted to being wrong.