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When dark meets blue: The relations between dark triad personality and depression symptoms

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Abstract

Prior research on the effects of personality on depression has focused heavily on the Five Factor Model (FFM). However, the FFM has recently been criticized for that it does not capture the “dark side” of personality. To address this research gap, a field study consisting of two waves of survey was conducted to explore the relationships between the Dark Triad (DT) personality traits and depressive symptoms. Results of a path analysis on data collected from a sample of 228 full-time employees from diverse industries in Taiwan showed that Machiavellianism and psychopathy were positively associated with the interpersonal and cognitive dimensions of depressive symptoms, respectively. Narcissism was found to be the strongest predictor of depressive symptoms among the DT traits — It was found to be associated with all four dimensions of depressive symptoms and the relationships were all negative. Overall, these findings provide evidences for the effects of the dark side personality traits on depression, while the pattern of relationships between each DT trait and depressive symptoms were different.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyses during the current study are not publicly available since individual privacy could be compromised but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my special thanks and gratitude to my supervisors (Chi-Cheng Wu and Shin-I Shih) as well as the head of the human resource management department (Nai-Wen Chi) who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic (When the dark meets blue: The Relations Between Dark Triad Personality and Depression Symptoms). I came to know about so many new things through my research and for this I am very thankful to them.

Secondly I would also like to thank my family and my friend, Gareth Lewis who helped me a lot in finalizing this paper within the limited time frame.

Funding

Shin-I Shih’s work on this article was supported in part by research grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (106-2410-H-110-002-SSS and 106-2410-H-110 -058 –SSS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, 70, Lienhai Road, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan

    Shin-I Shih, Chi-Cheng Wu & Shao-Ying Wang

  2. Institute of Human Resource Management, National Sun Yat-sen University, 70, Lienhai Road, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan

    Nai-Wen Chi

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  1. Shin-I Shih
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Correspondence to Shao-Ying Wang.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants involved in the study.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee (National Cheng Kung University Human Research Ethics Committee + Approval No. NCKU HREC-E-106-024-2) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Shih, SI., Chi, NW., Wu, CC. et al. When dark meets blue: The relations between dark triad personality and depression symptoms. Curr Psychol 40, 6110–6117 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00549-7

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