The Dark Side of Politics: Participation and the Dark Triad
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| Author | Julie Blais,Scott Pruysers,Philip Chen |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720911566 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720911566
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(3) 577 –601
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720911566
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The Dark Side of Politics:
Participation and the Dark
Triad
Philip Chen1, Scott Pruysers2
and Julie Blais3
Abstract
Personality traits are one piece in the larger puzzle of political participation, but most studies focus
on the Five-Factor Model of personality. We argue that the normative implications of the influence
of personality on politics are increased when the personality traits being studied correlate with
negative social behaviors. We investigate the role of the Dark Triad on political participation
as mediated through political beliefs such as interest and knowledge. We find that Psychopathy
and Narcissism are positively associated with political interest, but Narcissism is also negatively
associated with political knowledge. In addition, both Psychopathy and Narcissism exert a direct,
positive influence on participation. Our results imply that individuals exhibiting higher levels of
Narcissism are not only less knowledgeable but also more interested in politics and more likely to
participate when given the opportunity.
Keywords
personality, political behavior, participation
Accepted: 16 February 2020
Introduction
Widespread electoral participation is fundamental to the functioning and legitimacy of a
democratic system (Barber, 1984; Dryzek and List, 2003; Putnam, 2000), yet a focus on
understanding what predicts participation can lead scholars to avoid normative questions
about the quality of that participation. Nowhere is this deficit more obvious than in the
study of personality and politics (see, for example, Gerber et al., 2011b; Mondak, 2010).
While numerous scholars have documented the general personality traits that predict
political behavior, little work has been done to determine whether reliance on certain
traits is ultimately beneficial to democracy.
1Department of Political Science, Beloit College, Beloit, WI, USA
2Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
3Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Corresponding author:
Philip Chen, Department of Political Science, Beloit College, 700 College Street, Beloit, WI 53511, USA.
Email: chenp@beloit.edu
911566PSX0010.1177/0032321720911566Political StudiesChen et al.
research-article2020
Article
578 Political Studies 69(3)
A significant reason for this omission rests on the dominant personality structure
currently used in political science, the Big Five traits of Openness to Experience,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (Goldberg, 1990;
McCrae and Costa, 2003). While the labels used for the tails of these personality traits
(Extraversion vs Introversion, for example) carry affective judgment, the underlying
psychological traits are generally seen by academics as normatively equivalent. That is,
while the general public may prefer to see themselves as extraverted rather than intro-
verted, the academic literature tends to treat these as normatively equivalent personality
traits.1
While we are sympathetic to these approaches to the study of personality and politics,
we believe the next steps in our field must address questions about the quality of political
participation. Some work on the Big Five has begun this quest, finding, for example, that
the effects of the Big Five traits on group-based policy positions are mediated both
through party identification and stereotyping behavior (Chen and Palmer, 2018). We take
a different approach in this article, however, and examine a set of personality traits that
often convey certain negative interpersonal behaviors.2
In this study, we turn our attention to the Dark Triad of Machiavellianism,
Psychopathy, and Narcissism (Paulhus and Williams, 2002). We stress here that while
both the Big Five and Dark Triad have preferred endpoints in the general public (e.g.
people would rather see themselves as conscientious instead of not, just as they would
rather not see themselves as narcissistic), our argument rests on the political conse-
quences of certain individuals participating in politics, rather than the social labels
attached to these personality traits. In this sense, the focus on the Big Five in most of
the personality and politics literature misses an opportunity to examine the darker, less
socially desirable traits (the Dark Triad) that may alter political outcomes in a norma-
tively undesirable way.
In particular, we assess whether these three traits influence political participation and,
if so, whether the effect is mediated through commonly known pathways such as political
knowledge or interest. We demonstrate that the Dark Triad, and the trait of Narcissism in
particular, presents a normatively troubling portrait of political participation. Interestingly,
while Psychopathy and Machiavellianism exhibit few participatory effects, Narcissism is
associated with higher levels of political interest and is also associated with lower levels
of political knowledge. Thus, individuals scoring higher in Narcissism are not only more
likely to be interested and involved in politics, but they are also less knowledgeable about
politics in general. At times, the effect of Narcissism is mediated through interest, while
at other times, the trait exerts a direct effect on participation.
Given these results, we are likely to see individuals higher in Narcissism be overrep-
resented among the most active participants in politics. While we may be less concerned
if extraverted individuals are more likely to participate than introverted individuals, we
should be somewhat more concerned about these darker traits. Thinking about the Dark
Triad, if individuals higher in Narcissism participate at higher rates, we are likely to see
downstream effects on who gets elected. As Hart et al. (2018) note, individuals who
score higher on the Dark Triad traits are more likely to support candidates who share
these same traits. Thus, if these individuals are participating at higher rates, we are likely
to see individuals higher in Narcissism overrepresented in the voting public and, by
extension, in the ranks of elected officials. While research shows both positive and nega-
tive effects of narcissism in political leaders (Furtner et al., 2017; Wilhelm et al., 2013),
Watts et al. (2013) highlight negative outcomes of narcissistic leaders in the United
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