Dark Triad - Personality Traits and Subclinical Dimensions Vs. Disorders

Personality Traits and Subclinical Dimensions Vs. Disorders

Two of the Dark Triad traits, narcissism and psychopathy, were first proposed as explanations for observed clinical disorders. Narcissism is debatably the oldest, tracing back to the writings of Sigmund Freud. Psychopathy as an observed syndrome was addressed in the early writings of Hervey Cleckley in 1941 with the publication of The Mask of Sanity.

With respect to empirical research, psychopathy was not formally studied until the 1960s and 1970s with the pioneering efforts of Robert Hare, in his Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and its revision (PCL-R). Hare notes in his book, "Without Conscience" that asking psychopaths to self-report on psychologically important matters does not necessarily provide accurate or unbiased data.

However, recent efforts have been made to study psychopathy in the dimensional realm using self-reported instruments, as with the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales, The Psychopathic Personality Inventory, and the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale.

Similarly, narcissism lacked a means of assessing the disorder outside of clinical interviews, until the popular "Narcissistic Personality Inventory" was created by Raskin and Hall in 1979. Since the NPI, several other measures have emerged which attempt to provide self-report alternatives for personality disorder assessment. In addition, new instruments have been developed to study "pathological" narcissism as opposed to "grandiose" narcissism, which is what many argue the NPI measures.

Given the dimensional model of narcissism and psychopathy, complemented by self-report assessments that are appropriate for the general population, these traits can now be studied at the subclinical level. Although some argue that the term "subclinical" simply means that the characteristic is a less severe version of the syndrome, others have argued that "subclinical" means that the characteristic does not interfere with day-to-day life in a way that would warrant diagnosis or intervention, e.g. treatment or imprisonment.

Machiavellianism has never been referenced in any version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) for psychological disorders . It has been treated as strictly a personality construct. The original published versions of the Mach-IV and Mach-V scales are still the most widely used in empirical research.