Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid The association between Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality with mating and parenting efforts: A cross-cultural study Jaroslava Varella Valentova a, ⁎ , Francisco Paulo Moraes Junior a , Zuzana Štěrbová b,c , Marco Antonio Correa Varella a , Maryanne L. Fisher d a Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil b National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic c Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic d Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Personality Sexuality Life history Evolutionary Psychology ABSTRACT Life History Theory has been proposed as a trade-off between allocation of resources into growth or re- production. Within the reproductive domain, individuals are theorized to mostly invest either in mating or parenting. We tested effects of sociosexuality and Dark Triad traits on both mating and parenting efforts. In total, 1,110 heterosexual Middle European (Czech) and Latin American (Brazilian) men and women participated in an online study. Regression models were conducted with parenting/mating effort as dependent variables and so- ciosexuality and Dark Triad traits as independent variables. All sociosexuality dimensions, Machiavellianism, and narcissism predicted positively mating effort, while parenting effort was negatively predicted by sociosexual attitude and psychopathy. Focus on mating is thus higher among self-centric individuals pursuing interpersonal manipulation, while individuals endorsing sexual commitment with higher empathy and affinity with children pursue a parenting strategy. These results applied to both sexes and both countries. Finally, both unrestricted sociosexuality and Dark Triad traits were the highest in individuals with High-Mating/Low-Parenting profile, and the lowest in individuals with Low-Mating/High-Parenting profile. Individuals with High-Mating/High- Parenting and Low-Mating/Low-Parenting profile scored in between. Thus, the relationship among Dark Triad traits, sociosexuality and mating and parenting efforts holds across-cultures, and mating and parenting are not exclusive, but rather complementary variables. 1. Introduction The Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, subclinical psychopathy and narcissism) are considered socially undesirable due to potentially harmful, manipulative and deceiving behaviors, lack of empathy, im- pulsivity, coldness and aggressiveness (Jonason, Li, Webster & Schmitt, 2009; Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Machiavellianism is a tendency to exploit others, accompanied by deceit, affective coldness, and beha- vioral flexibility in shifting from one emotional context to another (Bereczkei, 2018). Narcissism is associated with entitlement, arrogance, grandiosity, admiration seeking, dominance, and exploitation of others to bolster oneself. Psychopathy is a combination of impulsivity and antisocial tendencies, accompanied by a lack of empathy and low levels of fear and remorse (e.g., Jonason et al., 2009; Lyons, 2019). However, these personality traits can also have some advantages, such as lower neuroticism in individuals with higher subclinical psychopathy (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), or higher number of offspring in narcis- sistic individuals (Carter, Lyons & Brewer, 2018) and in individuals with higher interpersonal characteristics of psychopathy (Međedović, 2018). Research systematically shows that Dark Triad traits are positively related to short-term mating (Jonason & Buss, 2012; Jonason et al., 2009; Jonason, Luevano & Adams, 2012; Koladich & Atkinson, 2016; Stolarski, Czarna, Malesza & Szymańska, 2017), presumably because in such relationships individuals acquire resources and pleasure without the costs of investing in long-term relationships (Jonason, Koenig & Tost, 2010). Short-term mating is, under certain conditions, considered adaptive because it may have increased individual reproductive success ancestrally, either by increasing the quantity and/or genetic variability of offspring (Buss & Schmitt, 2019; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). Short- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109613 Received 5 July 2019; Received in revised form 9 September 2019; Accepted 10 September 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, Avenida Professor Mello de Morais, 1721 - Butantã, São Paulo, SP, 05508-030, Brazil. E-mail address: jaroslava@usp.br (J.V. Valentova). Personality and Individual Differences xxx (xxxx) xxxx 0191-8869/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Jaroslava Varella Valentova, et al., Personality and Individual Differences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109613