Looking under the hood: The psychogenic motivational foundations of the Dark Triad

The Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, & Machiavellianism) have become a popular topic in personality psychology and in the media and may have important evolutionary significance. To provide new insight into the Dark Triad traits, we present four studies (N = 2506) with two measures of the Dark Triad traits, in two volunteer, one mTurk, and one American undergraduate sample using three frameworks of individual differences in psychogenic motives (i.e., achievement, power, and, affiliation). Although results were not fully robust to method and sampling variance, all three traits were associated with motivations towards trying to be dominant and powerful, but only narcissism was motivated by affiliation or intimacy needs. Sex differences in the Dark Triad traits were often accounted for by individual differences in the intimacy and power motives. The Discussion highlights the utility of evolutionary models to improve our understanding of the motivational systems “under the hood” of those characterized by the Dark Triad traits.