Dark Triad of Personality: A Theoretical Review of the Concept

Dark triad of personality has been into limelight of research since early twentieth century. Initially the research in this area was limited to delinquent and criminal population but lately the focus shifted onto the normal population. Dark triad of personality is a group of three personality traits that are narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. All these traits are interpersonally aversive There has always been controversy over the empirical overlap between the members of dark triad, this research paper tries to explain dark triad of personality and prove that though there is empirical overlap between the members of dark triad still all the three are distinct constructs and different research work pertaining to this has been compiled in this paper. The paper also throws light on how the dark triad of personality lie on other personality scales such as big five and HEXACO model. Moreover the issue of potential interest in this paper is that negative traits are part and parcel of normal personality profile.