Briefreport TheDarkTriadofpersonality:Narcissism, Machiavellianism,andpsychopathy DelroyL.Paulhus * andKevinM.Williams Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada Abstract Oftheoffensiveyetnon-pathologicalpersonalitiesintheliterature,threearees- pecially prominent: Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and subclinical psy- chopathy. We evaluated the recent contention that, in normal samples, this ÔDark TriadÕ ofconstructsareoneandthesame.Inasampleof245students,wemeasured the three constructs with standard measures and examined a variety of laboratory and self-report correlates. The measures were moderately inter-correlated, but cer- tainly were not equivalent. Their only common Big Five correlate was disagree- ableness. Subclinical psychopaths were distinguished by low neuroticism; Machiavellians,andpsychopathswerelowinconscientiousness;narcissismshowed smallpositiveassociationswithcognitiveability.Narcissistsand,toalesserextent, psychopathsexhibitedself-enhancementontwoobjectivelyscoredindexes.Wecon- clude that the Dark Triad of personalities, as currently measured, are overlapping butdistinctconstructs. Ó 2002ElsevierScience(USA).Allrightsreserved. 1. Introduction AmongthesociallyaversivepersonalitiescitedinKowalski(2001),three have attracted the most empirical attention: Machiavellianism, narcissism, andpsychopathy.TheconstructofMachiavellianism—inshort,themanip- ulative personality—emerged from Richard ChristieÕs selection of state- ments from MachiavelliÕs original books (see Christie & Geis, 1970). JournalofResearchinPersonality36(2002)556–563 www.academicpress.com JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY * Correspondingauthor. 0092-6566/02/$-seefrontmatter Ó 2002ElsevierScience(USA).Allrightsreserved. PII:S0092-6566(02)00505-6