Abstract
Keywords Narcissism; Psychopathy; Machiavellianism; Dark Triad; Cross-cultural; Sex differences Highlights * Conducted a secondary analysis on details about the Dark Triad traits * Paired the traits with country-level indicators from three past time points * Adult narcissism/psychopathy linked to stable and harsh conditions in one's past. * Childhood modernity/stability linked to adult Machiavellianism. * Sex differences in the traits grew with unemployment and homicide rates. Most research on the development of personality traits like the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) focuses on local effects like parenting style or attachment, but people live in a larger society that may set the stage for any local effects. Here we paired nation-level data on the traits from 49 nations with several milieu indicators (e.g., life expectancy, homicide rates) from three timepoints (and change among them) where the average participant ([almost equal to] 22yo) would have been a child ([almost equal to] 6yo), a pre-teen ([almost equal to] 11yo), and a teenager ([almost equal to] 16yo). Congruent with previous research, variance in narcissism was far more sensitive to variance in milieu conditions in general and across all three time points than variance in Machiavellianism or psychopathy. The milieu conditions differentiated the traits somewhat with income and education revealing negative correlations with narcissism, positive correlations with Machiavellianism, and null correlations with psychopathy. Sex differences in Machiavellianism and narcissism were correlated with homicide rates across the three timepoints. The evidence that changes in milieu conditions in ones' past predicts the traits was erratic, but larger sex differences in the traits were associated with decreased life expectancies and homicide rates between childhood and pre-teens. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Padua, Italy (b) University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Poland (c) University of Gdansk, Poland (d) Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades, Peru (e) Monash University, Australia (f) University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands (g) University of Johannesburg, South Africa (h) Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia (i) University of Oradea, Romania (j) National University of Singapore, Singapore (k) Thammasat University, Thailand (l) Al Azhar University-Gaza, Palestine (m) University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria (n) University Josip Juraj Strossmayer, Croatia (o) International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (p) Tallinn University, Estonia (q) University of Leicester, UK (r) University "Mother Teresa"-Skopje, Macedonia (s) University of Waikato, New Zealand (t) Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Ecuador (u) NUCB Business School, Japan (v) Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Poland (w) M. Narikbayev Kazguu University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (x) Université d'Oran 2, Algeria (y) Research Institute for Child Psychology and Pathopsychology, Slovakia (z) College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria (aa) Utrecht University, Netherlands (ab) Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS-IUL, Lisboa, Portugal (ac) Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile (ad) Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine (ae) University of Southampton, UK * Corresponding author at: University of Padua, Department of General Psychology, Via Venezia, 12, 35131 Padua, PD, Italy. Article History: Received 2 May 2022; Revised 25 May 2022; Accepted 21 June 2022 (footnote)1 The first and second authors were partially and fully funded, respectively, by a grant from the National Science Centre of Poland (2019/35/B/HS6/00682). Byline: Peter K. Jonason [peterkarl.jonason@unipd.it] (a,b,*,1), Stanislaw K. Czerwinski (c,1), Francesca Tobaldo (a), Jano Ramos-Diaz (d), Mladen Adamovic (e), Byron G. Adams (f,g), Rahkman Ardi (h), Sergiu BalÈatescu (i), Yeow Siah Cha (j), Phatthanakit Chobthamkit (k), Sofián El-Astal (l), Katherine Gundolf (m), Tomislav Jukic (n), Emil Knezovic (o), Kadi Liik (p), John Maltby (q), Agim Mamuti (r), Taciano L. Milfont (s), Rodrigo Moreta-Herrera (t), Joonha Park (u), Jaroslaw Piotrowski (v), Adil Samekin (w), Habib Tiliouine (x), Robert Tomsik (y), Charles Umeh (z), Kees van den Bos (aa), Christin-Melanie Vauclair (ab), Anna Wlodarczyk (ac), Illia Yahiiaiev (ad), Magdalena Zemojtel-Piotrowska (v), Constantine Sedikides (ae)