Dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism & psychopathy are strongly associated with anti-natalist views; depression is found to be standing independently in a relationship with anti-natalist views

Philipp Schönegger (2021): What’s up with anti-natalists? An observational study on the relationship between dark triad personality traits and anti-natalist views, Philosophical Psychology, Jul 1 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2021.1946026

Abstract: In the past decade, research on the dark triad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has demonstrated a strong relationship to a number of socially aversive moral judgments such as sacrificial utilitarian decisions in moral dilemmas. This study widens the scope of this research program and investigates the association between dark triad personality traits and anti-natalist views, i.e., views holding that procreation is morally wrong. The results of this study indicate that the dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy are strongly associated with anti-natalist views. Further, depression is found to be both standing independently in a relationship with anti-natalist views as well as functioning as a mediator in the relationships between Machiavellianism/psychopathy and anti-natalist views. This pattern was replicated in a follow-up study. These findings add to the literature on dark triad personality traits and their relationship to moral judgments, suggesting that personality and mood play a substantive part in variation in anti-natalist  views in a lay population.

4. Discussion

This study aimed at empirically investigating a potential relationship of dark triad personality traits and views concerning the ethics of procreation, specifically anti-natalism. The data allow for the broad conclusion that there exists a strong relationship between endorsement of anti-natalist views and dark triad personality traits, especially for Machiavellianism (r = .490) and psychopathy (r = .621), less so for narcissism. Moreover, the follow-up study allowed for a replication of this general result, further strengthening the evidentiary basis for these findings. Further, the presence of a mediating role of depression in the relationships between Machiavellianism/psychopathy and anti-natalist views sheds further light on the findings while also making further plausible the claim that narcissism does not play a substantive role in this association. We take these findings to suggest a picture in which lay anti-natalist views stand in a significant relationship to dark triad personality traits and depressive mood.

Concerning the null hypotheses outlined earlier, for the main study, Null Hypothesis 1 and 2 could be rejected soundly (cf. Table 2; Table 3), as dark triad personality traits and depression were found to be standing in a remarkably strong positive relationship with agreement with anti-natalism while playing a mediating role in the main relationships. Null Hypothesis 3 could not be rejected (cf. Table 3), as both self-regarding and other-regarding risk-aversion did not stand in a relationship to either the anti-natalist aggregate measure or any individual items and also played no mediating role.

Overall, these findings present evidence that variation in lay agreement with anti-natalist views that procreation is morally wrong is, at least in part, explained by individual differences in personality and depressive mood. One main finding is that Machiavellianism and psychopathy stand in a strong relationship that is robust even in the follow-up, further strengthening the evidentiary basis for this claim. Narcissism’s relationship, however, both does not replicate in the follow-up and is not mediated by depressive scores, further indicating that narcissism falls outside the realm of explanatory capabilities of the picture proposed here and may be best explained by a different set of hypotheses and factors. This suggests that the picture is one of a ‘dark dyad’, i.e., of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, that explains a good deal of variation in anti-natalist views in a lay population respectively. This is consistent with a set of recent findings that suggest more generally that narcissism and the ‘dark dyad’ (i.e. Machiavellianism and psychopathy) are indeed two distinct constructs (Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2020).

The fact that narcissism only shows a weak or non-existent relationship suggests that the relevant personality features of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, for example, their tendency to low empathy and cynicism toward common-sense morality as well as reduced ability to feel pleasure (Treadway & Zald, 2011), are most closely associated with anti-natalist views and must thus play a part in the explanation as opposed to any factettes of narcissism. On this line of thinking, depression fits into this picture by drawing on depressive individuals’ devaluation of life and bleak outlook on the future. In other words, the results here suggest that those scoring high on Machiavellianism and psychopathy as well as depression (which mediates the main relationship), are more likely to feel negatively about life, common moral standards, and others more generally. That is, one is more likely to agree with the anti-natalist arguments that procreation is a moral wrong because of one’s own propensity to disvalue life, be it present or future.,24,25

As such, the role of depression is also crucial to understanding the present data. This is because the higher one scores on the depression scale, the more likely one might be to regard one’s own life as not worth living, possibly extending this sentiment and overgeneralizing to the claim that lives generally are not worth living and that bringing new lives into existence is a moral wrong because of this. Generally, however, there are two types of explanations about how the impact of depression might intersect with views about anti-natalism. First, one may refer to depressive realism, i.e., the claim that depressed individuals better perceive reality (Moore & Fresco, 2012) and are thus better equipped to judge the anti-natalist arguments. Conversely, one might also think that depressed individuals’ thinking inhabits certain flaws, making them liable to underestimate the goodness and value of life. This would be consistent with a rationalization explanation: One’s affect directly influences what one believes about the world, e.g., about the value of a life. The present data do not allow for a disambiguation between the depressive realist interpretation from the rationalization claim and further research is needed to shed light on this specific question.

The follow-up replication study aimed at testing whether the same pattern of results could be replicated and whether the pandemic overall influenced views on anti-natalism. Null Hypothesis 4 could not be rejected, as the follow-up found that there was no significantly higher or lower aggregate agreement with anti-natalist arguments and statements. Both on aggregate measures and on the majority of individual measures, participants reported insignificantly different agreement. Only on the topic of Misanthropic Anti-Natalism did participants show a change, however their agreement with this formulation of anti-natalism was reduced (contra the expected directionality of an increase). Specifically, they reported lower agreement with the claim that because humans cause such a substantial amount of harm to other humans, animals, and the environment, that it is wrong to procreate.

The data from the follow-up study also showed that the relationship between narcissism and anti-natalism weakened significantly, from a small to moderate effect in the main study, r = .293, p < .001, to virtually no relationship at all, r = −.001, p = .994. The relationships for Machiavellianism and psychopathy remained at moderate to strong levels. As such, this follow-up study shows that the results that Machiavellianism and psychopathy stand in a strong relationship to anti-natalism are robust. It also ought to diminish our certainty in the claim that narcissism is part of the picture in such a way that, given these data, one ought to be highly skeptical as to whether narcissism plays any role in any relationship to anti-natalism at all, which is in line with those arguing for the dark dyad and narcissism being distinct constructs (Rogoza & Cieciuch, 2020).

Overall, these findings strengthen the claim that at least some dark triad personality traits stand in remarkably strong relationships to anti-natalist views. Some potential reasons for this change in results from the main sstudy to the follow-up is non-random attrition, in that the follow-up sample was not a random draw from the initial sample. Irrespective of the actual reason, we take this follow-up to increase the evidentiary status of the findings that Machiavellianism and psychopathy strand in a strong relationship to anti-natalist views. Recall also that narcissism already showed the weakest association, and taken together with the follow-up, one might want to explicitly exclude it from any full picture going forward. Further, given that depression played an important mediating the main relationships, the fact that the follow-up did not find an effect for narcissism is further compatible with previous research that found that comorbidities of depression and dark triad traits are typically only found with regard to Machiavellianism and psychopathy, not narcissism (Gómez-Leal et al., 2019) and again suggests that the picture is one of the dark dyad being associated with anti-natalist views. As such, the data gathered in the follow-up make the overall picture more consistent with previous findings and may thus increase the plausibility of the findings.

The main interpretative challenge of the data gathered in this paper relevant to philosophical theorizing and broad understanding of the public discourse on the topic is this: Does the observed relationship between dark triad personality traits/depression and anti-natalism give us reason to reduce or increase our credence in anti-natalism? For one, one might think that higher psychopathy scores and the presence of (mild) depression might give one reason to doubt the judgments about anti-natalism made by the lay population. After all, is it rational to rely on the judgments of individuals whose personality profile differs substantially from the norm and who are more depressed than the mean person? Specifically, the Machiavellian (but also the psychopathic) personality trait is often associated with emotional detachment in those who also suffer from depression (Demenescu et al., 2010) as well as an inability to feel pleasure in some contexts (Gómez-Leal et al., 2019, p. 10; Cairncross et al., 2013). This would give one reason to believe that the lay evaluation of the quality-of-life argument central to Benatar’s formulation of anti-natalism (2006) might be subject to individual variation if these come with emotional detachment and the inability to feel pleasure. After all, emotional attachment and the ability to feel pleasure are central to our evaluation of life as good and as such tie directly into Benatar’s quality of life argument.26

Conversely, one might also think that depression and its hypothesized more realistic outlook on life and the disregard for common-sense morality present in dark triad personality traits might lead to the reverse conclusion, i.e., that because of the presence of this relationship, one ought to have higher credence in the truth of anti-natalism.27 However, the evidence that depression does indeed lead to a more realistic outlook on life is relatively restricted in methodological scope28 and generally shows relatively small effect sizes (Moore & Fresco, 2012, p. 505).29 Moreover, there is the additional challenge of evaluating a realist effect on purely evaluative topics such as anti-natalism. Given that no objective baseline can be established here (under plausible assumptions), we claim that one ought not be overly confident in the line of depressive realist argumentation with regard to anti-natalism and depressive mood.

For the purposes of this paper, we will not decisively argue one way or another. This is because the data presented here are the first in this line of research and can only explain a part of the picture. Further, arguing either way presupposes assuming a number of propositions that we are not prepared or able to make in a paper with this scope, eg., whether anti-natalist views are the type of views that depressed individuals or those high on dark triad personality traits are especially well or especially poorly equipped to judge. However, given the data obtained and the background literature referred to above, one might be more inclined to favor the former interpretative claim, i.e., that those high on dark triad personality traits and depression are less well-equipped to judge the truth of arguments about anti-natalism. In order to confidently answer those questions as well as further interpretative challenges, e.g., concerning the role of empathy in this relationship, however, more research has to be conducted. Specifically, further research should include a general expansion of the present data base on the psychosocial correlates of anti-natalist views, as well as a scientific analysis of expert populations such as professional philosophers. However, the data present here may be taken as indicative of moral reasoning in public discourse on anti-natalism as it does explain variations in lay views on anti-natalism.

Overall, we take the main philosophical value of these studies to be that they add to the literature on the relationship between personality traits and moral judgments as well as philosophical intuitions more broadly. It has been a goal of experimental philosophy generally to establish an empirically informed picture of folk morality, and the present data directly add to this project. In the same way that, for example, research on the role of culture, demographics, and reflection on lay philosophical judgments generally has contributed to the philosophical enterprise of identifying some of the sources and mechanisms which may drive certain judgments, this may also hold for questions relating to anti-natalism. We draw the tentative conclusions that the data present here, coupled with additional novel studies on additional populations, might go some way to provide a philosophically interesting picture of anti-natalist views that can then lead to an increase or reduction of our credence in anti-natalism. As outlined before, we believe that due to the high importance of figuring out whether anti-natalism is true or not, continuing this research (either by conducting further studies or by expanding the arguments relating to what we ought to draw from the data collected) is incredibly important under the possibility of humanity’s long potential future and the resultant significant moral risk.

4.1 Limitations

This study relied exclusively on an online sample of US residents drawn from MTurk. As such, cross-cultural conclusions should not be drawn lightly and any associations found here may be the artifact of cultural-linguistic circumstances. Moreover, the consistently strong intercorrelations between anti-natalism and dark dyad personality traits might also point toward the fact that both scales measure a similar underlying factor, such as a disaffirmation of life. However, this is both a potential problem and a possible upside. On the one hand, this might mean that the finding does not properly represent the relationship between two independent concepts, but rather measures closeness of related concepts. On the other hand, though, because anti-natalist views have not yet been associated with dark triad traits, even if this was true, the findings presented here would still represent novel empirical insight into the study of personality and folk moral judgment and may directly lead to further research projects.

The main limitation of the follow-up is nonrandom attrition. As this follow-up study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems plausible that the follow-up sample was not a sample randomly drawn from the previous population, but rather that the attrition rate might be connected to the experiences during the pandemic. For example, those hardest hit by the pandemic might not have had the time and energy to participate in an online study. As such, the results of the follow-up concerning the impact of the pandemic ought to be taken into account with a certain level of caution, though the purely replicatory function of the follow-up may be immune from this limitation to a certain degree. Further, because the follow-up was not planned at the time of the first study, no individual identifiers were collected that would have enabled proper within-subject analyses between the main study and the follow-up, further weakening the evidentiary status of the follow-up.