Overcoming agreeableness: Sociosexuality and the Dark Triad expanded and revisited. Lennart Freyth, Peter K.Jonason. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 203, March 2023, 112009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112009
Highlights
• The Dark Triad traits outperform agreeableness and the dark core on sexual outcomes.
• Machiavellian men and psychopathy women report more sex partners.
• Machiavellians have more unprotected sex partners and rather accept infidelity.
Abstract: We replicated and extended (N = 495) what is known about the relationships between the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and a wider range (than previously reported) of sociosexuality including risky sexual behaviors (e.g., lack of condom use) and sexuality in relation to dating applications like Tinder, in general, in men and women, and above agreeableness. Machiavellianism and psychopathy were linked to most sociosexual behaviors and attitudes. In men, Machiavellianism was linked to various sociosexual outcomes, in women those outcomes were associated with psychopathy instead. Agreeableness was hardly correlated with sociosexual outcomes. The Dark Triad traits were more strongly correlated with the studied outcomes even after controlling for agreeableness or for the dark core. Unexpectedly, men who were Machiavellian and agreeable reported the most sex partners in different contexts, but not psychopaths. In contrast, women who were psychopathic not only had more sex partners in general, but they also engaged in more unprotected sex, and one-night stands than men did. These findings build on prior research on the Dark Triad traits and their associations with sociosexuality and help to draw a more nuanced and modern picture of those relationships.
Keywords: Sexual behaviorsAgreeablenessDark TriadSociosexualityUnprotected sexDark Core
4. Discussion
We replicated and extended what is known about the Dark Triad traits regarding sociosexuality. We did this by investigating a wider, modern range of sociosexual outcomes than previous, traditional research which was limited to either sociosexuality or specific types of relationships (Adams et al., 2014; Jonason et al., 2009). In our study, the Dark Triad traits were related to almost all sociosexual outcomes independently of agreeableness and offer contributions beyond the dark core. Differences were indicated in 36 % overall correlations, in 55 % among men, and 39 % of tests among women; and in 24 % of tests sex moderations were found. The Dark Triad traits' correlations towards sociosexual outcomes showed differences for sociosexual desires and the acceptance of infidelity in eight tests, and in five out of eleven tests for sociosexual attitudes. This indicates substantial differences in the correlations and supports the claim, that the Dark Triad traits are more than just disagreeableness or the Dark Triad's core (Sleep et al., 2017). We summarize our findings in three domains. First, replicating Dark Triad traits' correlates with sociosexuality and expanding the outcomes by updating aspects of modern sex research. Second, we demonstrated sex differences covering various aspects at once providing a multi-faceted picture of men's and women's sexual behavior and attitudes in a diverse range of sociosexual phenomena. Third, we tested whether the Dark Triad traits' correlations were independent of agreeableness and of a dark core, and if agreeableness could provide incremental variance for sociosexual outcomes on top of the Dark Triad traits.
First, we replicated links between the Dark Triad traits and agreeableness with sociosexual outcomes and expanded these finding by including less investigated manifestations like the number of oral sex partners, of the number of sex partners via dating apps partners in total and unprotected, the total number of one-night stands, the active experience of prostitution, and the acceptance of infidelity (Flesia et al., 2021). Especially Machiavellianism and psychopathy were linked to almost all sociosexual phenomena, while agreeableness was of minor importance as was narcissism, which was linked to attitudinal outcomes only. Interestingly, Machiavellianism correlated positively with the acceptance of infidelity, matching previous findings that Machiavellian cheaters do not report relationship dissolution, while psychopathic cheaters did (Jones & Weiser, 2014). Agreeable individuals reported more one-night stands and less acceptance of infidelity. In general, linking the Dark Triad traits with sociosexuality (i.e., short-term mating) is in line studies spanning at least two decades (Horsten et al., 2022; Jonason et al., 2009) and investigating different behaviors of modern sex life instead of just relying on unidimensional sociosexuality provided a more nuanced picture.
Second, examining the associations between personality traits and sociosexuality in both sexes showed that agreeableness was associated with more sex partners among several conditions in men but not in women, and more strongly with sex partners via dating applications in men than in women. Among men, Machiavellianism was related to most sexual outcomes, and more strongly associated with sociosexual desires and behaviors compared to women. Observing no psychopathy-sociosexuality link among men, challenges the view of exploitative men (e.g., Jonason et al., 2009) along with adaptationist accounts (Jonason et al., 2017). Surprisingly, psychopathic men even reported fewer sexual partners, general and unprotected, than women. As undesirable personality traits are a “dealbreaker” for women, callous-psychopathic men might be undesirable mates even in short-term mating contexts (Blanchard et al., 2021). Alternatively, younger and charming men might be able to compensate for this, but our sample was too old on average to test such things. In women, psychopathy was associated with most sexuality measures and in three behavioral cases even more strongly than in men. Psychopathy manifests itself rather violently in men, while the borderline-like manifestations (i.e., emotional dysregulation, impersonal sexual attitudes) in women are favored for long- and short-term mating by men (Blanchard et al., 2021). Conceivably, impulsive, sexually motivated, psychopathic women play an active role in sex, supported by our findings. These behavioral sex-specific associations might be specific “flavored” manifestations of the individual trait on top of the underlying disposition of the dark core (Bader et al., 2022). Evidently, the Dark Triad traits are different mating strategies with different mechanism in men and women, which lead to short-term sex and are not limited to young samples (Carter et al., 2014). The outcomes of the Dark Triad traits show variation by sex (Jonason et al., 2017), particularly impulsivity (i.e., psychopathy) and outcomes such as sociosexual desire, which leads us to the assumption that contradicting studies (Carter et al., 2014) may be based on statistical and/or observed artifacts. Taken together, the Dark Triad traits are associated with different sexual outcomes in men and women, and additionally the strength of the correlations depends on the sexual variable considered.
Third, agreeableness was not only associated with few sexual outcomes but based on Steiger's z-tests and regressions, we showed just how unimportant it is. For instance, the models where the Dark Triad traits were in Step 1 of hierarchical regressions could not be improved by adding agreeableness in Step 2 overall and in both sexes which may mean that the Dark Triad traits account for variance above agreeableness and their supposed dark core (Sleep et al., 2017). Furthermore, the associations with different outcomes (Jones & Weiser, 2014) of Machiavellianism (e.g., total number of sexual partners) and psychopathy (e.g., number of one-night stand partners) assessed in this study, or regarding different outcomes associated with both traits in terms of behaviors and preferences compared to other studies (Adams et al., 2014), support the distinctiveness of the two characteristics (e.g., impulse control, sensitivity to punishment; Jones & Mueller, 2022), which some researchers doubt (Miller et al., 2017). This difference is particularly visible when men and women are compared.
Taken together, men's sexual behaviors appear agreeable and tactical (i.e., Machiavellian), their cognitions self-centered. Women's sexual behaviors seem more psychopathic and partly tactical. The Dark Triad traits were correlated with almost all investigated outcomes and remained so after controlling for either agreeableness or the dark core (mostly). The dark core outperforming disagreeableness supports voices (Moshagen et al., 2020), which contradict the claim that both are the same (Vize et al., 2021). Whether Machiavellianism should be interpreted as agentic tactics or deceitfulness, and how agreeableness is best operationalized be answered by subsequent, facet-level research.
4.1. Limitations and conclusions
Despite the methodological strength and a large adult sample who reported a wide range of rarely investigated sociosexual behaviors, our study is not free of limitations: the cross-sectional design, a small subsample for sex partners via dating applications (Flesia et al., 2021), and relying on reported behaviors and not on reported preferences (Adams et al., 2014). However, we want to focus on two concerns future researchers should address. Shorter scales may measure the trait's main components but not all potential characteristics, as is true for agreeableness, which we captured with a scale (BFI-S) based on the Big Five Inventory instead of the NEO-PI or Five-Factor-Model (Vize et al., 2021). The BFI-S is repeatedly used in German samples after being improved for a German population (Schupp & Gerlitz, 2008), was repeatedly validated (also for the NEO-PI-R; Hahn et al., 2012), and built with the intention to measure the trait and not its facets (John et al., 2008). Therefore, we consider the BFI-S a useful measure for our study, particularly regarding the partialization of agreeableness. Therefore, we suggest working on a unidimensional construct of disagreeableness to differentiate it from low agreeableness, an approach used in the Big Five tradition (John et al., 2008). As sociosexuality correlated with psychopathy in women but not in men, interpretations could be tempered because we used a different measure of the Dark Triad traits than previous studies (Jonason et al., 2009) and we sampled Germans, as opposed to North Americans who are common in this area of research given the three most cited researchers in the field are American and Canadian (i.e., Jonason, Jones, & Paulhus). In addition, sex differences in sociosexuality are smaller in Germany compared to America (Schmitt, 2005); German men might be less assertive “hunters” or German women are more agentically promiscuous than North American women. Moreover, more equality among men and women in more sociosexually unrestricted societies (Lippa, 2009), might lead to more active sexual strategies in women. Future research should investigate further sociosexual outcomes, particularly on the different patterns of dating app-related outcomes between the sexes. Especially women's strategies must be studied and compared in younger and older women with long- and short-term dating orientations. Research should also examine whether the use of dating apps, as an expanded “hunting ground”, or as a necessary alternative for nice guys, also results in mating success.
We replicated and expanded the relationships between the Dark Triad traits and agreeableness with sociosexuality. We drew a more nuanced picture of particularly Machiavellian men and psychopathic women engaging in more casual sex, while agreeableness was weakly and only occasionally and minimally correlated to sociosexual outcomes and not associated with any sexual behaviors in women. The Dark Triad traits account for sociosexual outcomes beyond agreeableness and the dark core, so we reject the hypotheses offered in the podcast. By replicating some, but not all, previous links between the Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality while revealing new ones, more work is clearly needed on this topic.
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