Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are weakly associated to creativity; the strongest links are between the traits and scientific creativity

Creativity and the Dark Triad: A Meta-Analysis. Izabela Lebud, Bernadetta Figur, Maciej Karwowski. Journal of Research in Personality, March 21 2021, 104088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104088

Highlights

• A meta-analysis of the links between creativity and the Dark Triad of personality.

• Significant, weak relations between creativity and narcissism and Machiavellianism.

• Dark Triad is mainly related to creativity when it was measured with self-report.

• The strongest links between Dark Triad traits and scientific creativity.

Abstract: This paper presents a meta-analysis of the relationships between creativity (creative potential, activities, and achievement) and the Dark Triad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Multilevel meta-analytic models demonstrated a small but significant positive association between creativity and narcissism (r = .15 [.10, .29]) and Machiavellianism (r = .06 [.02, .09]), but not with psychopathy (r = .03 [-.02, .07]). Creativity measures (self-report-vs.-performance), aspects (self-perception, creative activity, creative abilities, creative achievements), and domains (general, art, science, and everyday creativity) moderated the links with the Dark Triad. We discuss the possible mechanism of associations between Dark Triad traits and creativity and highlight future research directions.

Keywords: The Dark Triadcreativitymeta-analysispersonality