Personality, the Dark Triad and violence

• Machiavellianism, psychopathy and violence load on a single personality dimension.
• Low Agreeableness and low Honesty–Humility underlie the ‘Dark Dyad’ formulation.
• Narcissism is distinct construct, unrelated to antisocial tendencies.
• Low Agreeableness is the sole significant predictor of violence.
• Agreeableness is central to the dark behaviours the Dark Triad constructs predicts.

Aggression involves using force to dominate a situation, whereas violence uses force to do intentional harm. Previous research suggests the Dark Triad underlies much anti-social behaviour, and is associated with aggression. We extend this work to examine whether Dark Triad constructs predict self-reported violence. The Dark Triad, measured using the SD3, was examined in relation to normal personality traits as indexed by the HEXACO, which comprises a general Big Five structure with the addition of an Honest–Humility dimension. We also measured impulsivity using the I-7. A sample of 159 adults completed the measures. Principal Components Analysis revealed Machiavellianism, psychopathy and violence loaded on the same factor, which also had negative loadings for HEXACO domains of Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness. Narcissism loaded on a separate factor which was also defined by Extraversion. Hierarchical regression analyses found Agreeableness a more powerful predictor of violence than psychopathy or Machiavellianism, both of which showed a trend to this association; narcissism had no effect. Agreeableness emerged as the strongest negative predictor of violence, and exclusively explained the majority of variance in violence scores. Findings are discussed regarding the centrality of low agreeableness as a driving force behind the Dark Triad and the constructs it predicts.