Short CommunicationA person-centered view of prejudice: The Big Five, Dark Triad, and prejudice
Introduction
Race-based prejudice has been a topic of interest in social and personality psychology for decades (Sherif, 1966). Social psychologists tend to focus on context-centered effects whereas personality psychologists tend to focus on person-centered effects. In particular, person-centered effects reveal the importance of the Big Five (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) traits in accounting for variance in prejudicial attitudes (Hodson & Dhont, 2015). However, far less work has examined the role of the Dark Triad traits. Here we examine the contribution of both taxonomies to understand prejudice and determine how much incremental variance the Dark Triad traits have over the Big Five traits in explaining prejudice.
There is already evidence that the Dark Triad traits predict prejudicial attitudes. For example, Jones (2013) showed that psychopathy and Machiavellianism predict membership in white supremacy groups. Alternatively, Jonason (2015) found that the Dark Triad traits predicted prejudice towards people of middle-eastern ethnicity among those from a European ancestry in an Australian context. And last, Hodson, Hogg, and MacInnis (2009) found that the Dark Triad traits were associated with prejudice, measured with inter-group threat (Avery, Bird, Johnstone, Sullivan, & Thalhammer, 1992) and the modern racism scale (McConahay, Hardee, & Batts, 1981). While examining the incremental validity of the Dark Triad traits above the Big Five has been undertaken previously, residual components of the traits are often overlooked (c.f. Hodson et al., 2009). In this study, we use the Quick Discrimination Index (Ponterotto et al., 1995) to capture individual differences in prejudice in the form of both cognitive and affective components. The cognitive subscale measures beliefs and attitudes towards multicultural issues, whereas the affect subscale measures emotional feelings about intimate interactions with others of a different race.
In this study, we extend what is known about individual differences in prejudice by an analysis of the independent and combined role of eight personality traits using the aforementioned scale to assess individual differences in cognitive and affective prejudice. It is essential to separate the distinct kinds of prejudice as they may have discrete underlying correlates. In relation to the Big Five traits, we expect low openness and agreeableness to predict prejudicial attitudes because the former is related to a political conservatism (Jonason, 2014) which may be related to holding such attitudes (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008) and the latter may orient people towards holding negative views of others including race-based discrimination (Ekehammar & Akrami, 2003). In relation to the Dark Triad traits, we expect all three traits to be related to prejudicial attitudes given their antisocial nature (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). We expect to replicate Hodson et al. (2009) that the Dark Triad traits will account for a significant amount of additional variance above the Big Five traits in individual differences in cognitive prejudice (Hodson et al., 2009). And last, as the Dark Triad traits facilitate a short-term mating strategy (Jonason, Valentine, Li, & Harbeson, 2011), possessing relaxed interpersonal sentiments implies those individuals will be unlikely to rebuff others. Therefore, we expect the Dark Triad traits to add little variance above the Big Five traits in individual differences in affective prejudice.
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
Americans (N = 473; 261 women), aged 18–71 years (M = 28.45, SD = 12.08) were recruited via MTurk (n = 262; US$0.75; 55%) and a public university in Alabama (n = 211; course credit; 45%). Participants identified themselves as White (66%), Black (24%), Asian (4%), Hispanic or Latino (4%), Native American (1%), or Pacific Islander (1%). Participants were informed of the nature of the study, completed self-report measures, provided demographic details, and were debriefed. We aimed to recruit about
Results
As seen in Table 1, men scored higher than women did in psychopathy (t(471) = 5.86, p < .001, Cohen's d = 0.55), whereas, women scored higher than men in extraversion (t(471) = −2.02, p < .05, d = 0.19), neuroticism (t(471) = −4.49, p < .001, d = 0.41), and agreeableness (t(471) = −5.74, p < .001, d = 0.54). There were no sex differences in either form of prejudice. Overall, cognitive prejudice was associated with Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, less openness, and less agreeableness.
Discussion
Prejudice and racism are major societal issues and, therefore, understanding how and why prejudice occurs is an important task of science. In this study, we have attempted to understand individual differences in prejudice from the perspective of personality psychology. While prior studies have examined the role of the Dark Triad traits in accounting for prejudice (Hodson et al., 2009; Jonason, 2015; Jones, 2013), they were limited to specific operationalizations of prejudice, treating prejudice
References (19)
- et al.
The role of “dark personalities” (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy), Big Five personality factors, and ideology in explaining prejudice
Journal of Research in Personality
(2009) Personality and politics
Personality and Individual Differences
(2014)How “dark” personality traits and perceptions come together to predict racism in Australia
Personality and Individual Differences
(2015)- et al.
Mate-selection and the Dark Triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy and creating a volatile environment
Personality and Individual Differences
(2011) - et al.
The dark triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
Journal of Research in Personality
(2002) - et al.
Exploring political tolerance with adolescents
Theory & Research in Social Education
(1992) - et al.
The Mini-IPIP Scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five Factors of Personality
Psychological Assessment
(2006) - et al.
The relation between personality and prejudice: A variable- and a person-centred approach
European Journal of Personality
(2003) - et al.
The person-based nature of prejudice: Individual difference predictors of intergroup negativity
European Review of Social Psychology
(2015)
Cited by (22)
The relationship between the Dark Triad and attitudes towards feminism
2023, Personality and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :For example, with regards to the SD3, narcissism mostly reflects grandiosity and superiority rather than vulnerability – an important facet of the construct (Maples et al., 2014). There is considerable overlap among the traits, however each predict diverse outcomes and are distinct constructs (Koehn et al., 2019). It is believed that the various scales do not sufficiently tap into female manifestations of the personality.
Looking beyond the Big Five: A selective review of alternatives to the Big Five model of personality
2021, Personality and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :Some studies show unsatisfactory evidence of incremental validity (e.g., Carton & Egan, 2017). While the Dark Triad does incrementally predict cognitive prejudice, the same is not true for affective prejudice (Koehn, Jonason, & Davis, 2019). Regarding rape attitudes, Dark Triad traits (especially psychopathy) accounted for incremental variance in rape myth acceptance, victim empathy, and to a lesser extent perpetrator empathy (Jonason, Girgis, & Milne-Home, 2017).
Understanding prejudice in terms of approach tendencies: The Dark Triad traits, sex differences, and political personality traits
2020, Personality and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :In this study we took a person-centered approach to understand individual differences in two modern prejudices based in race and sex (Swim et al., 1995). In contrast to prior work (Jones, 2013; Koehn. et al., 2019a), we assessed both prejudices simultaneously using an approach-avoidance method, examined the interplay of the Dark Triad traits and political personality traits, and developed mediation models to account for sex differences and personality effects on prejudice. We found (1) evidence of a general source for prejudice (Akrami et al., 2011; Navarrete et al., 2010), (2) unique kinds of prejudice for the Dark Triad traits (Rauthmann, 2012), (3) sex differences in the Dark Triad traits (Jonason et al., 2017), social dominance (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), and prejudice, and (4) mediation effects for sex differences in prejudice by the Dark Triad traits and social dominance.
Personality traits as identity threat cues: Stigmatized perceivers infer prejudice from disagreeableness
2024, Journal of PersonalitySelf-Worth and Politics: The Distinctive Roles of Self-Esteem and Narcissism
2024, Political Psychology