The Dark Triad and sexual harassment proclivity

Recent research concerning sexual harassment has highlighted important individual differences in the tendency to engage in these behaviors. The present studies extend these findings by examining the connections between the Dark Triad of personality traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and sexual harassment proclivity. Study 1 (N = 642 Israeli community members) revealed that the Dark Triad traits had unique positive associations with sexual harassment tendencies. Similar results emerged for Study 2 (N = 1909 Israeli community members) such that each of the Dark Triad traits had a unique positive association with the proclivity to engage in sexual harassment. In addition, Study 2 revealed differences in the connections that the Dark Triad traits had with perceived likelihood estimates concerning whether targets would be victims or perpetrators of sexual harassment. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the links between Dark Triad personality traits and sexual harassment.