Everyday sadism, dark triad, personality and disgust sensitivity

Meere, Myrthe; Egan, Vincent

Abstract

Research into dark personalities has advocated for the addition of sadism due to its close relationship with other dark traits (Book et al., 2016). Lower disgust for atavistic and animalistic tendencies may provide an objective marker of the greater predatory tendencies and desire for power represented by everyday sadism. In the present study, we explored self-reported personality and disgust traits underlying non-sexual ‘everyday’ sadism (Buckels, Jones & Paulhus, 2013). In line with previous research, it was predicted sadism would be negatively correlated with the honesty-humility, agreeableness and emotionality dimensions of the HEXACO, and positively correlated with psychopathy and Machiavellianism from the Dark Triad. As an added dimension, the study also investigated disgust sensitivity’s relationship to sadism. A total of 235 participants (66.4% female, 31.1% male; mean age 31.35 years (SD = 13.97 years)) completed an online survey comprising a series of psychometric measures. Results indicated that extraversion, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and animal reminder disgust were significant predictors of sadism scores. Future studies may want to include a measure of disgust sensitivity (including behavioral indices) to investigate its relationship with sadism and the DT.

Citation

Meere, M., & Egan, V. (2017). Everyday sadism, dark triad, personality and disgust sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.056

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 24, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Mar 10, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2019
• Journal: Personality and Individual Differences
• Print ISSN: 0191-8869
• Electronic ISSN: 0191-8869
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 112
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.056
• Keywords: sadism, Dark Triad, Dark Tetrad, HEXACO, personality, disgust sensitivity
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/869707
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917301459