Mate-selection and the Dark Triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy and creating a volatile environment

Abstract

The current study (N = 242) seeks to establish the relationship between traits known collectively as the Dark Triad – narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism – and mating standards and preferences. Using a budget-allocation task, we correlated scores on the Dark Triad traits with mate preferences for a long-term and short-term mate. Men scoring high on the Dark Triad may be more indiscriminate than most when selecting for short-term mates in order to widen their prospects. Furthermore, those high on the Dark Triad – psychopathy in particular – tend to select for mates based on self-interest, assortative mating, or a predilection for volatile environments. We assessed these correlations when controlling for the Big Five and the sex of the participant. We also tested for moderation by the sex of the participant and mating context. Ramifications and future directions are considered.

Introduction

Recent work on the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002) has revealed that this constellation of three traits – narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism – linked by a core of disagreeableness (Jakobwitz and Egan, 2006, Paulhus and Williams, 2002), may not be as maladaptive as traditionally considered (Kowalski, 2001) and are even heritable (Vernon, Villani, Vickers, & Harris, 2008). The Dark Triad seems to constitute an impulsive, aggressive, and opportunistic social style that may facilitate an exploitative – yet effective – short-term mating strategy (Jonason et al., 2009, Jones and Paulhus, 2010). Indeed, being high on the Dark Triad traits is, especially for men, associated with being sociosexually unrestricted, having had more sex partners, currently seeking short-term mates (Foster et al., 2006, Jonason et al., 2009), and being apt to poach those already in relationships (Jonason, Li, & Buss, 2010b). Despite these insights, nothing is known yet about the mating standards and mate preferences of such individuals.

A key dynamic in short-term mating is that women tend to be more reluctant than men are to engage in this type of behavior. For instance, from zero-acquaintance all the way up until 5 years of acquaintance, men are significantly more willing to engage in sexual relations than women are (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Around the world, men report being more sociosexually unrestricted than women do (Schmitt, 2005). In a classic field study, an opposite-sex stranger approached students on campus and propositioned them for a sexual encounter. Although over 70% of men agreed, not one woman consented (Clark & Hatfield, 1989).

Given women’s reluctance towards casual sex and that both sexes prioritize physical attractiveness over other traits in casual sex partners (Li & Kenrick, 2006), men who successfully pursue a short-term mating strategy may need to be either especially physically attractive or have relatively low mating standards. Indeed, men tend to have lower overall standards than women do for casual sexual partners (Kenrick, Groth, Trost, & Sadalla, 1993). To the extent the Dark Triad traits are centered on short-term mating irrespective of individuals’ physical attractiveness, we may expect men who are high on Dark Triad traits to have lower standards for short-term mates than men who are not high on Dark Triad traits. By having low standards, those high on the Dark Triad may create a target-rich mating environment.

Women, however, tend to be similarly selective for both long- and short-term mates (Kenrick et al., 1993, Li and Kenrick, 2006). As a function of the fact that men tend to be eager for casual sex, women do not have to lower their standards in order to attract a short-term mate (Symons, 1979). Thus, the same distinction would not apply for high-Dark Triad versus low-Dark Triad women. Therefore, we predict men who are high on the Dark Triad will have particularly low standards in their short-term mates; and we predict this pattern to hold up across all three of the Dark Triad traits given the near-uniform correlations between the Dark Triad traits and numerous measures of short-term mating (Jonason et al., 2009).

People’s personalities allow them to create or “select” the environments in which they engage (Buss, 1984a, Buss, 1987). Individuals may actively structure their environment through mate-choice; mate-choice being an important selection-domain (Buss, 1984a, Buss, 1987, Hamilton, 1964). A common effect in mate selection is assortative mating – people tend to match themselves up with others on specific characteristics (Buss and Barnes, 1986, Kenrick et al., 1993) like the Big Five (Buss, 1984b). The Dark Triad traits are correlated with disagreeableness (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), aggressiveness (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998), criminality (Hare, 1996), and manipulativeness (Christie & Geis, 1970) – qualities, we would argue, are directly opposite to kindness. In addition, these individuals have a high need for stimulation (Jones & Paulhus, 2010) and risk-taking (Jonason et al., 2010a, Jonason and Tost, 2010); they may actually not place a high premium on kindness because they wish to create a volatile environment to stimulate themselves. Therefore, we predict scores on the Dark Triad traits would be negatively correlated with preferences for kindness in mates. However, given that psychopathy is correlated with risk-taking above the other traits (Jonason et al., 2010a), we expect this correlation to be localized to psychopathy when we control for variability in the other two.

Mate selection is not a new topic in social-personality psychology. We know that both the Big Five and the sex of the participant are important variables in understanding mate preferences and selection. The Dark Triad tends to be correlated with all parts of the Big Five (Jakobwitz and Egan, 2006, Paulhus and Williams, 2002), and men tend to score higher on the three traits than women do (Jonason and Kavanagh, 2010, Jonason and Webster, 2010, Jonason et al., 2009). In order to avoid the “jangle fallacy”¹ we checked our results by partialling the variance associated with the sex of the participant in explaining mate preferences, and then partialling the variance associated with the Big Five in explaining mate preferences in line with prior work (Jonason et al., 2009).

The Dark Triad traits tend not to be correlated with interest in long-term relationships (Jonason and Webster, 2010, Jonason et al., 2009). However, human societies are characterized by long-term mateships, and monogamy is held out as a socially desirable state and is socially enforced to some degree (Kanazawa and Still, 1999, McDonald, 1995). In response to such socioecological conditions, individuals who score high on the Dark Triad may still engage in medium- or long-term pair-bonding (Campbell & Foster, 2002). In accordance with prior work (Jonason and Kavanagh, 2010, Jonason et al., 2009, Jonason et al., 2010b), we examined the manner in which the Dark Triad traits operate in both short-term and long-term contexts. Based on past research on mate preferences and recent studies that implicate the Dark Triad as aligned with a short-term mating strategy, we expected standards for short-term mates to be lowest for men scoring highest on the Dark Triad. We also investigated how these traits lead individuals to structure their environment to be consistent with their personality traits in both mating contexts.