Sexism and the Dark Side of Personality

Sex differences in the Dark Triad on display.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The “Dark Triad” of personality represents socially aversive traits that are related to selfish and antisocial attitudes and behaviors. The members of this triad are psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, which encompasses callous disregard for the rights of others, a cynical, manipulative approach to social interaction, and a grandiose sense of one’s own superiority to others and feelings of entitlement to special treatment, respectively.

Many studies have found that, on average, men tend to be higher in the Dark Triad than women. Various explanations have been proposed, with some emphasizing evolutionary and biological perspectives, while others emphasize learned social roles.

A recent study (Gluck, Heesacker, & Choi, 2019) proposed that sex differences in the Dark Triad were partly related to sexist attitudes and suggested that Dark Triad traits might result from sexist ideologies that support unearned male power and privilege. However, cross-cultural evidence indicates that this is unlikely to be true.

Dark Triad traits are associated with a host of problematic behaviors, such as deception, guile, exploitation of others, and violence. In terms of general personality, the Dark Triad traits share a common core of low agreeableness, which is a broad trait related to concern and consideration for others (O’Boyle, Forsyth, Banks, Story, & White, 2015). People high in agreeableness tend to be kind and sympathetic, whereas those low in agreeableness tend to be self-centered and ruthless. Evolutionary theorists have suggested that the Dark Triad represents an antagonistic social strategy that aims to extract resources from other people at minimal cost to the self, as opposed to a mutualistic strategy that emphasizes cooperation with other people for mutual benefit (Book, Visser, & Volk, 2015).

One theory proposes that the Dark Triad facilitates short-term mating, and these traits might be more prominent in men than women because of men’s generally greater interest in casual sex (Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009). On the other hand, social role explanations propose that traditional, patriarchal societies reinforce Dark Triad behaviors as part of a system of “hegemonic masculinity,” in which men’s interests are dominant over those of women.

The authors (Gluck et al., 2019) of the new study linking the Dark Triad to sexism are on board with this explanation. They argue that sex differences in the Dark Triad are at least partially a product of a sexist environment, and therefore the sex difference might be reduced by social engineering. These arguments go far beyond the data provided by their study, however.

The study was conducted online with 164 participants, who completed two brief Dark Triad measures, the Short Dark Triad, and the Dirty Dozen, as well as measures of hostile and benevolent sexism. Hostile sexism refers to a cynical endorsement of negative stereotypes of women, e.g., “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men.” Benevolent sexism refers to an idealized, if potentially patronizing, view of women, e.g., “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man.”

Even though these sound like opposites, the two forms of sexism are moderately positively correlated so that people who are high in one tend to be high in the other as well. Although measures of the Dark Triad assess three different traits, the overall Dark Triad scores were used in this study. (The authors also conducted an analysis using the three specific dark traits and found similar results, though.)

As expected, men in the study scored higher on Dark Triad measures and on both hostile and benevolent sexism. Also, in line with expectations, both Dark Triad measures had substantial positive correlations with hostile sexism, but only weak correlations with benevolent sexism. Additionally, when the results were measured separately by gender, they found that in both men and women, high Dark Triad scores were associated with high scores on hostile sexism.

Unexpectedly, though, in men, benevolent sexism had a weak negative relationship with the Short Dark Triad scale, whereas, in women, benevolent sexism had a stronger positive relationship with the Short Dark Triad scale. (The Dirty Dozen scale was unrelated to benevolent sexism in either men or women.) This indicates that women high in the Short Dark Triad also tended to endorse benevolent sexism as well, whereas in men, there was a weak trend to do the opposite.

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The authors performed additional analyses to test their proposal that sex differences in sexism could account for differences in the Dark Triad. They found that when controlling for differences in hostile sexism, the sex difference in both measures of the Dark Triad was somewhat reduced, although a substantial gap between men and women remained. On the other hand, when controlling for differences in benevolent sexism, the sex difference in the two Dark Triad measures was only slightly reduced, leaving a much more substantial gender gap. Thus, the results partially supported their hypothesis and showed that sex differences in the Dark Triad could partially but not completely be related to differences in hostile sexism in particular.

To their credit, the authors acknowledge that a major limitation of their study was that it could not establish a causal relationship between sexism and the Dark Triad. Although the authors’ preferred explanation is that “these malevolent traits [i.e., the Dark Triad] are partly learned by growing up in sexist cultures,” the study design cannot address this. An alternative view is that malevolent traits developmentally precede sexist attitudes, so that people with hostile tendencies are dispositionally inclined to adopt hostile beliefs, such as sexist attitudes.

Additionally, the authors make what I consider an odd argument about the connection between personality and beliefs: “Conceptualizing Dark-Triad behaviors as simply reflecting personality traits, like any other set of traits, ignores the substantial overlap between sexism beliefs and these traits.” This seems like a straw man argument to me.

For a start, no one has argued that any behavior “simply reflects personality traits.” Psychologists have long recognized that behavior is multiply determined, and that personality traits are only partly responsible for how people behave. Additionally, there is plenty of evidence that personality traits are related to a range of ideological beliefs, such as right-wing authoritarianism (Akrami & Ekehammar, 2006), and that Dark Triad traits, as well as low agreeableness and low openness to experience, are related to prejudice in general (Hodson, Hogg, & MacInnis, 2009; Sibley & Duckitt, 2008), not just sexism. These findings suggest that personality traits may be related to a range of beliefs, perhaps because traits are dispositional tendencies that color the way a person views their world.

Although Gluck and colleagues admit that their study cannot address whether the Dark Triad is a product of sexism rather than the other way around, this does not stop them from speculating about ways to mitigate the adverse impact of these traits on society: “If scholars can demonstrate that these malevolent traits are partly learned by growing up in sexist cultures, agents of personal and social change can help people recognize, understand, alter, and replace these malevolent aspects of humanity.”

This idea of altering these malevolent aspects of humanity through social change sounds very hopeful but may turn out to be misguided. If it were true that sex differences in Dark Triad traits are the product of a society that promotes “hegemonic masculinity,” then it would be reasonable to expect that sex differences in such traits would diminish as societies become more gender-equal.

Cross-cultural studies on personality can shed some light on this question. Although cross-cultural differences in Dark Triad traits specifically have not been tested, there have been such studies on agreeableness. As I noted earlier, the Dark Triad is known to be inversely associated with agreeableness, so examining sex differences in agreeableness between cultures would be highly relevant.

Several international studies have examined sex differences in personality traits, including agreeableness, in different countries. The most recent one (Lippa, 2010) was an international survey conducted by the BBC that sampled 53 nations and over 172 thousand individuals. The study found substantial average sex differences in agreeableness in all 53 countries, with women averaging higher than men in each one.

Additionally, Lippa examined the relationships between sex differences in agreeableness and levels of gender equality, as assessed by UN indices of gender-related development and gender empowerment. Economic development was also assessed with measures of per capita income and life expectancy. Confirming previous findings, gender equality was very strongly related to economic development, so that in countries where women have more rights, people are generally wealthier and live longer.

More relevant to the present topic, Lippa found that sex differences in agreeableness were negatively correlated with gender-related development, gender empowerment, and life expectancy. That is, sex differences in agreeableness were actually larger in countries with greater gender equality than in more traditional, patriarchal societies with less equality. This, of course, is the opposite of what is predicted by social role and “hegemonic masculinity” theories.

Remember that according to the hegemonic masculinity account, sex differences in personality are related to a society that accords men greater power and privilege than women. On the contrary, improvements in women’s rights seem to have amplified such sex differences in personality, not diminished them. Lippa notes, however, that the moderating effect of culture on these sex differences was relatively small compared to the direct effect of sex itself.

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

That is, the differences between men and women were rather robust across cultures, with cultural differences exerting only a modest effect. Lippa concluded that the sex difference is so strong and universal that the findings are more consistent with a biologically based explanation than a socialization-based one. Furthermore, “the power of cultural and social structural factors to moderate sex differences in personality may be limited.”

Considering these cross-cultural findings on sex differences in agreeableness, it seems unlikely that sex differences in the Dark Triad are a product of a sexist society or that efforts to eliminate such differences through social engineering are likely to be very successful.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.