Interpersonal Guilt and the Dark Triad

Research on the Dark Triad of personality has supported the notion that Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy represent distinct but related traits. This study investigated the relation between each of the Dark Triad traits and scores on the Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire (IGQ: O’Connor, Berry, Weiss, Bush, & Sampson, 1997). Each of the Dark Triad traits was found to have significant negative associations with survival and omnipotent responsibility guilt. Interestingly, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were found to be positively associated with self-hate guilt, while narcissism was negatively correlated with self-hate. Rumination was found to mediate the relation between Machiavellianism and self-hate, whereas the relation between psychopathy and self-hate was only partially mediated by rumination. Multiple regression analyses revealed that narcissism, psychopathy, and rumination each significantly added to the prediction of self-hate guilt, Machiavellianism and narcissism added to the prediction of survival guilt, and psychopathy and rumination added to the prediction of omnipotent responsibility guilt. These results provide further support for the distinct but related nature of the Dark Triad. They also offer greater insight into the behaviours associated with these subclinical antisocial tendencies.