A Surprising Way to Reduce Dark Triad Traits

Is there anything about your personality you’d like to change? Work on the Big Five personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism (low neuroticism is equivalent to "emotional stability"), agreeableness, and openness to experience shows that when asked, the majority of people (over 85 percent) would like to change one or more traits for the better, according to Nathan Hudson in the Journal of Personality (2022).

This shows a level of insight and desire to change present in most of us. In fact, research has found that when people pick traits they want to change, and practice behaviors aligned with those traits on a regular basis¹, they show statistically significant progress over the course of a four-month study.

However, the Big Five personality model does not account for the Dark Triad of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, although there is a correlation between higher agreeableness and reduced Dark Traits overall.

It is expected that people higher on the Dark Triad will not want to change, in spite of the many negatives associated with these traits, because, by definition, the triad involves reduced empathy plus a lack of awareness that there is a problem (anosognosia), combined with a sense of superiority over and separateness from other, lesser beings. "Why would I want to change that?" often covers up insecurity, shame, and an impaired sense of self.

Acknowledging a desire or need to change—acknowledging that there is a problem—is not easy with that mindset. Often, however, people are forced to change, either because of failed relationships, health problems, or professional demands, as they encounter obstacles to growth that can no longer be attributed to external factors.

How Could Being Less Darkly Triadic Help People?

Rationally, there are many reasons to want to reduce Dark Triadism, despite the emotional and psychological benefits of avoiding recognition of the effect of those traits on oneself and others.

The Dark Triad, Hudson observes, is associated with a slew of hazards, including negative workplace behavior such as reduced productivity and impaired professional relationships, academic cheating, increased criminal activity, sexual deviance and increased violence with intimate partners, reduced emotional regulation, reduced well-being, and personal relationship problems—along with the attendant consequences.

The Hudson study (2022) looked at the Dark Triad alongside Big Five personality, to see whether 1) people higher on Dark Triad traits do want to change, 2) whether they can change, and 3) whether changing Big Five traits, especially agreeableness, would temper the Dark Triad.

Over 460 students, with an average age of 20, were recruited to participate over the course of 16 weeks. At the outset, they completed measures of Big Five and Dark Triad traits and of change goals for both Big Five and Dark Triad traits.

Weekly, they completed ratings of Dark Triad and Big Five traits and were provided with standard practices to identify behaviors to work on each week associated with their goals. The next week they assessed how successful they were at completing the assigned tasks. How effective they’d been was then used to increase the level of challenge for the next week’s goals¹.

As expected, participants wanted to change most of the Big Five traits if they had lower levels of desirable² traits, with the exception of openness to experience, for which desire to change was not correlated with levels of that trait. When asked which Big Five traits they wanted to increase, 60 percent picked extraversion, 22 percent agreeableness, 47 percent conscientiousness, 59 percent emotional stability, and 31 percent openness to experience.

In contrast, individuals high on Dark Triad traits did not want to change narcissism or psychopathy—they actually wanted to increase Machiavellianism. Rather than connecting personality with negative outcomes and suffering, participants with dark traits tended to view deviant, destructive qualities as positive, seeming numb or blind to the harm caused to themselves and others.

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Non-Dark Triad participants wanted to decrease Machiavellianism but increase narcissism and psychopathy—perhaps because items on that scale, such as becoming a “natural leader” or being someone others are “afraid to mess with”, may be useful at lower levels and problematic only when overdone.

Overall, irrespective of Dark Triad traits, participants who wanted to increase emotional stability, agreeableness, or extraversion were able to do so by following the study procedure.

Change Without Insight or Motivation?

Can Dark Triad traits be changed indirectly? Participants high in Dark Triad who wanted to become more agreeable were able to do so. Furthermore, they were more likely to want to become more agreeable even though they did not want to change the Dark Triad traits.

Most importantly, for people higher on Dark Triad traits, agreeableness led to reductions in Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism, even though overtly they wanted to increase Machiavellianism. It may be that the desire to become more agreeable superficially aligns with Machiavellian designs to enhance one's ability to take advantage of others—but may backfire by actually reducing Dark Triad traits after all. Replicating and understanding this effect will be an important focus for future research.

These early results are intriguing, suggesting that even in the absence of conscious motivation, people high on the Dark Triad may be able to access help (for themselves and others) via the desire to be more agreeable.

Absent connecting adverse personality traits with negative life outcomes and reduced well-being, people who are more Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic may be able to change, a finding potentially helpful for those close to them personally and in the workplace. Such individuals may inadvertently seek to become more agreeable as a means to an end, unwittingly becoming more compassionate and prosocial in the process.

Future research can delve deeper into these early findings. For example, is there a subset of people high on Dark Triad traits (e.g. the “Dark Empath”) who are more amenable to direct change? Can approaches such as motivational interviewing–which encourages individuals to identify the need to change–help shift people high in Dark Triad traits from lack of insight to increased insight and amplify motivation to change?

If so, targeting agreeableness could be a useful developmental lever. In addition, it would be helpful to broaden the study population to include a greater age and professional range, look at a longer span than 16 weeks, include measures of compassion and empathy to see whether they overlap with Dark Triad and Big Five traits, and test new methods to provide information to guide the design of future interventions.

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