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Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study

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Abstract

This study examined correlations between moral value judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), and participant scores on the Short-D3 “Dark Triad” Personality Inventory—a measure of three related “dark and socially destructive” personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. Five hundred sixty-seven participants (302 male, 257 female, 2 transgendered; median age 28) were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk and Yale Experiment Month web advertisements. Different responses to MIS items were initially hypothesized to be “conservative” or “liberal” in line with traditional public divides. Our demographic data confirmed all of these hypothesized categorizations. We then tested two broad, exploratory hypotheses: (H1) the hypothesis that there would be “many” significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad, and (H2) the hypothesis that there would be no significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Machiavellianism or Psychopathy, but “some” significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Narcissism. Because our hypotheses were exploratory and we ran a large number of statistical tests (62 total), we utilized a Bonferroni Correction to set a very high threshold for significance (p = .0008). Our results broadly supported our two hypotheses. We found eleven significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad—all at significance level of p < .00001—but no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and liberal MIS judgments. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments.

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Notes

  1. This is only meant as a prima facie claim. Further research is necessary to determine whether, or to what extent, moral reasoning styles comprise bona fide personality traits.

  2. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point.

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Acknowledgements

This study was conducted by Yale Cognitive Science as a part of the Yale Experiment Month initiative, a program financially sponsored by the American Philosophical Association for the purpose of encouraging experimental research by philosophers. The author(s) would like to thank Joshua Knobe, Mark Phelan, Adam Feltz, and the Experiment Month staff for their support and assistance. The author(s) would also to thank Rognvaldur Ingthorrson and an anonymous reviewer from Neuroethics for their very helpful comments.

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Correspondence to Marcus Arvan.

Appendix

Appendix

Short D3 Personality Inventory

Table 6 Please rate the degree to which you agree with the following statements. You can be honest because your name will not be attached to the answers

Short D3 Scoring

Items 2, 11, 16, 20, and 26 should be reverse scored. Then calculate the mean of the items within each subscale: Machiavellianism (items 1–9); Narcissism (items 10–18); Psychopathy (items 19–27).

Moral Intuition Survey

Table 7 Please rate the following statements following the scale below. You can be honest because your name will not be attached to the answers

Demographic Information Survey

  1. 1.

    My age is: [fill in the blank].

  2. 2.

    My gender is: [select from: male, female, transgendered (identify male), transgendered (identify female).

  3. 3.

    My marital status is: [select from: single, permanently partnered, married, divorced, widowed].

  4. 4.

    My highest level of formal education is: [select from: non-high-school graduate, high-school graduate, some undergraduate education, undergraduate degree completed, some graduate education (i.e. some Masters or PhD work), completed Masters (fill in area of study), completed PhD (fill in area of study).

  5. 5.

    My political party affiliation is best described as (United States citizens only): [select from the following: Democrat, Republican, Independent, Tea Party].

  6. 6.

    I consider myself to be a: [select from scale 1–7, where 1 = fiscal/economic conservative, 4 = fiscal/economic moderate, 7 = fiscal/economic liberal].

  7. 7.

    I consider myself to be a: [select from scale 1–7, where 1 = social conservative, 4 = social moderate, 7 = social liberal].

  8. 8.

    I consider myself to be: [select from scale 1–7, where 1 = very religious, 4 = uncommitted/neither religious nor anti-religious, 7 = anti-religious/atheist].

  9. 9.

    Ethnicity: [select from: Black, Latino, Chinese, Filipino, Indian (far east), Japanese, Korean, Caucasian/white, Native American, Pacific Islander, other Asian, Other (if Other, fill in the blank)].

  10. 10.

    Select your country of residence: [fill in the blank].

  11. 11.

    I have taken how many philosophy classes: [select from: one to five, completed undergraduate philosophy major, completed Masters in Philosophy, completed Phd/DPhil in Philosophy].

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Arvan, M. Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study. Neuroethics 6, 307–318 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-011-9140-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-011-9140-6

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