Beyond good and evil: Exploring the mediating role of mental toughness on the Dark Triad of personality traits

Kostas A. Papageorgiou; Ben Wong; Peter J. Clough

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.06.031

Beyond good and evil: Exploring the mediating role of mental toughness on the Dark Triad of personality traits

Kostas A. Papageorgiou, Ben Wong, Peter J. Clough

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The Dark Triad (DT) involves three closely related personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Mental toughness (MT) is a multi-facet trait that entails positive psychological resources, which are important across a range of achievement contexts. Research that examined the association between MT and the DT returned mixed findings. The present study aimed at: (1) exploring the association between MT and the DT using a considerable larger sample in comparison to previous studies; (2) investigating whether MT mediates the association between narcissism with psychopathy and Machiavellianism. The mediation model revealed that narcissism exerts significant negative indirect effects on both psychopathy and Machiavellianism, through MT. The implications of these findings for reducing socially undesirable outcomes, often linked to the DT, are discussed.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	19-23
Number of pages	5
Journal	Personality and Individual Differences
Volume	119
Early online date	24 Jun 2017
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.06.031
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2017

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http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/32992/Licence: CC BY-NC-ND
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Cite this

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abstract = "The Dark Triad (DT) involves three closely related personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Mental toughness (MT) is a multi-facet trait that entails positive psychological resources, which are important across a range of achievement contexts. Research that examined the association between MT and the DT returned mixed findings. The present study aimed at: (1) exploring the association between MT and the DT using a considerable larger sample in comparison to previous studies; (2) investigating whether MT mediates the association between narcissism with psychopathy and Machiavellianism. The mediation model revealed that narcissism exerts significant negative indirect effects on both psychopathy and Machiavellianism, through MT. The implications of these findings for reducing socially undesirable outcomes, often linked to the DT, are discussed.",

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T2 - Exploring the mediating role of mental toughness on the Dark Triad of personality traits

AU - Papageorgiou, Kostas A.

AU - Wong, Ben

AU - Clough, Peter J.

N1 - Not OA compliant; AAM deposited in ePrints 4 months after online publication date.

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Beyond good and evil: Exploring the mediating role of mental toughness on the Dark Triad of personality traits

Abstract

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