A Network of Dark Personality Traits: What Lies at the Heart of Darkness?

Abstract The question of whether there is a common element at the core of the various dark personality traits (e.g., psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, spitefulness, aggressiveness) has been the subject of debate. Callousness, manipulativeness, and disagreeableness have all been nominated as possibly serving as the core of these dark traits. Network analysis, which graphically and quantitatively describes the centrality of various related traits, provides a novel technique for examining this issue. We estimated an association network and an Adaptive Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator network for two large samples, one college student sample (N = 2831) and one mixed college student and Mechanical Turk sample (N = 844). Interpersonal manipulation and callousness were the traits that were central to the networks.