Gucci Little Piggy

Kicking. Squealing.

Dark Triad and Attractiveness

13 Comments Posted by on 10/23/2012

A paper on the association between the Dark Triad personality traits and physical attractiveness (h/t Richard Harper):

Which personality traits are associated with physical attractiveness? Recent findings suggest that people high in some dark personality traits, such as narcissism and psychopathy, can be physically attractive. But what makes them attractive? Studies have confounded the more enduring qualities that impact attractiveness (i.e., unadorned attractiveness) and the effects of easily manipulated qualities such as clothing (i.e., effective adornment). In this multimethod study, we disentangle these components of attractiveness, collect self-reports and peer reports of eight major personality traits, and reveal the personality profile of people who adorn themselves effectively. Consistent with findings that dark personalities actively create positive first impressions, we found that the composite of the Dark Triad—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—correlates with effective adornment. This effect was also evident for psychopathy measured alone. This study provides the first experimental evidence that dark personalities construct appearances that act as social lures—possibly facilitating their cunning social strategies.

From the same researcher, Nicholas Holtzman, a paper on the association between narcissism and attractiveness.

About these ads
Uncategorized

13 Responses to Dark Triad and Attractiveness

  1. stonerwithaboner 10/23/2012 at 12:14 pm

    hahahahaha,

    all the feminasties whine and cry about teh evillllle Nice Guys ™ who are ruining the universe….

    this kinda contradicts that, you’ve made Mr. Manboobz vewy vewy angreeeee……

  2. Ulysses 10/23/2012 at 1:38 pm

    The girls Manboobz orbits, or is this a reverse case in which he has orbiters because physics?, keep promising him that if he just keeps up with the disinformation campaign they’ll eventually grant him an under the shirt, but not under the bra, single hand cup.

  3. OhioStater 10/23/2012 at 4:36 pm

    What’s most likely is…

    …good looking people have a dark-triad ancestor.

    If dark triad traits lead to success, and success leads to beautiful women (nice guys finish last), then attractive people should have a greater allotment of dark triad genetic precursors than less attractive people. It may actually matter if an individual or famiily is descended from a king or aristocracy.

  4. atywy 10/23/2012 at 9:59 pm

    Chuck, have you ever thought about writing about immigration in Europe? Intra-European immigration hasn’t caused any major concerns (duh), but Europe has been swallowing up North Africans and Middle Easterners (mostly Muslim) like hotcakes. This has led to strain on European social safety nets, diminished social capital, and plenty of crime, including hilarious statistics like 40%-of-boardroom-positions-must-be-female-Sweden having the highest rape rate in all of Europe.

  5. Laguna Beach Fogey 10/23/2012 at 11:33 pm

    Thanks for this.

    It explains a lot.

  6. Pingback: Lightning Round – 2012/10/24 « Free Northerner

  7. Sixpan 10/24/2012 at 1:03 am

    If this shit comes full circle, we’re gonna be right back at phrenology.

  8. NPD ST 10/24/2012 at 5:34 pm

    Thanks I’ve often wondered about the connection between attractiveness and the cluster B disorders, as well as psychopathy. Interesting stuff.

  9. gwood 10/24/2012 at 7:49 pm

    Gore Vidal defined a narcissist as someone better looking than you are.

  10. NPD ST 10/24/2012 at 7:52 pm

    gwood, that’s clever, but the problem is couldn’t a narcissist also be someone who thinks there is nobody better looking than them? :)

  11. nazgulnarsil 10/24/2012 at 8:03 pm

    I agree with Ohio starter. This can easily be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

  12. gwood 10/24/2012 at 11:26 pm

    I didn’t say it, Gore Vidal did.

  13. Pingback: LIGFY: The End Of October And UMan | Society of Amateur Gentlemen

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: