The dark tetrad

Personality types

• narcissism: egocentrism and need for admiration
• psychopathy: lacking empathy in regard to ethics
• sadism: desire to hurt others
• Machiavellianism: entitled manipulation

Signs

1. selfish
2. uncaring
3. vengeful
4. entitled
5. manipulative
6. sadistic
7. unethical

Personality as predictor

A sample of 664 participants (55.8% men, 40.3% women) with an average age of 28.84 years (SD = 9.60) were recruited via social media and completed an anonymous online questionnaire which comprised measures of personality and catfishing behaviours. Combined, the variables explained 62.6% of variance in catfishing perpetration. Results partially supported the hypotheses, with only psychopathy, sadism, and narcissism emerging as positive predictors of catfishing perpetration. (LauderMarch 2023)

Machiavellianism?

. . .

As the items on the Catfishing Questionnaire created in the current study did not specifically indicate that the acts were performed for personal gain, it is possible that those with high Machiavellianism were unlikely to perpetrate these behaviours. (LauderMarch 2023)

we employed the Two-Dimensional Machiavellianism Scale [TDMS] … in the current study the TDMS had an [Cronbach’s] alpha of .68. Given this lower than acceptable internal consistency, we recommend that future researchers employ an alternative measure of Machiavellianism (e.g., MACH-IV) when exploring the trait and catfishing. (LauderMarch 2023)

Lastly, the traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy are considered to overlap (Jonason et al., 2014), and psychopathy may subsume variance explained by Machiavellianism when exploring deceptive mating strategies (Durand, 2016). (LauderMarch 2023)

Thoughts? 🎲

“Do you love me?”

• N=200 victims, N=10,723 non-victims
• victims tend to be middle aged (35-54);
• table 2 shows significant associations:
  • urgency (quick to act),
  • sensation-seeking (fantastical stories)
  • addictive (hard to pull away)
  • less kind (weaker social networks)
  • more trustworthy
  • higher education (perhaps over-confident) (Whitty 2018)
  • NOT: greed, trusting, locus of control, lack of perseverance

Thoughts? 🎲

Sarah?

. . .

• Sarah: “quirky and weird”; looking for friendship but became romantic with John
• appreciated attention, “kind of addicted”
• still has “a little hope” and continued to talk to John
• embarrassed, doesn’t feel she did anything wrong or has anything to hide
• using “feetfinder” for income
• wants closure; difficult to admit she got played by “somebody that is that cruel”

John?

. . .

• an attractive man
• addresses Sarah as “babe”, “my love”, “my queen”
• love bombing and gifts (that often bounce)
• trapped overseas with significant requests
• (stole images from someone’s social media profile)

Brian?

. . .

• lied to about $60K in lost investments; “didn’t know details”
• wants to support Sarah “in any way I could”
• “just money” no matter how much

Mechanisms?

. . .

• Sarah doxed herself (emails, accounts, and PINs)
• she sent gift cards numbers and shared credit cards
• she was a money mule, converting others’ “gifts” on Paxful at 80% into bitcoin, then sent that to John’s crypto wallets using Cash app

Why?

Thoughts? 🎲

What’s going on here?

Wrap up

• Write a simple multiple choice question for one of the following:
  • dark tetrad
  • signs of dark tetrad
  • psychological features of victims

What was your MCQ for:

• dark tetrad relationship to psychology of scammers
• signs of dark tetrad
• psychology of victims

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