Untangling the concurrent influences of the Dark Triad, personality and mating effort on violence

•We examined the associations between the dark triad (DT), mating effort, and violence.•Uncorrected for personality, mating effort and the DT are associated with violence.•When personality is taken into account, only psychopathy and low agreeableness correlate with violence.•Mating effort's relationship with violence is due to concurrent personality influences.•Psychopathy is associated with unprovoked violence.

The Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy; DT) and mating effort are associated with anti-social behaviour, but these associations may build on underlying personality traits not specific to violence. The DT (measured using the SD3), the HEXACO personality scale, and a measure of mating effort were regressed onto a measure of self-reported violence as defined by an adapted version of the MacArthur Community Violence Screening Instrument in 305 adults recruited via an online survey. While simple correlation analyses found violence and mating effort both systematically associated with most personality and DT measures, regression suggested overall violence was specifically associated with younger age, lower agreeableness, and greater psychopathy (R2 = 0.32, 95% confidence interval = 0.24 to 0.40); unprovoked violence was associated with greater psychopathy. These results suggest that when personality, the DT, and mating effort are considered simultaneously, antisocial personality variance falls out of mating effort and narcissism constructs, leaving a more parsimonious set of associates for aggression and violence. This study reiterates the importance of concurrently measuring basic disposition when examining factors genuinely underlying violence and aggression, and the centrality of psychopathy and low agreeableness to such behaviour.