Definition
The Dark Character Cube (Garcia and Rosenberg 2016) is a model of malevolent character theoretically based on Cloninger’s biopsychosocial model of personality (Cloninger 2004) and in the assumption of a ternary structure of malevolent character (Paulhus and Williams 2002). In short, personality is a complex adaptive biopsychosocial system and malevolent character is suggested as a Dark Triad, thus, the Dark Character Cube is composed of eight possible malevolent character profiles based on people’s high/low levels in Machiavellianism (M for high, m for low), narcissism (N for high, n for low), and psychopathy (P for high, p for low): MNP “maleficent,” MNp “manipulative narcissistic,” MnP “antisocial,” Mnp “Machiavellian,” mNP “psychopathic narcissistic,” mNp “narcissistic,” mnP “psychopathic,” and mnp “benevolent”Footnote 1 (see Fig. 1).
The Dark Cube as an analogy to Cloninger’s character...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
In an earlier version of the Dark Cube (Garcia and Rosenberg 2016), the mnp profile was labeled “agreeable.” After a well asserted commentary in a peer review, the label was changed to “benevolent” as recommended by the reviewer, which is in perfect contrast to the MNP or “maleficent” profile (see Láng 2017).
- 2.
The psyche here refers to the spiritual part of the human being. I see it as appropriate here, despite the fact that the term spirituality is not common in medical or psychological research. After all, the Greek word Psyche found in psychology and psychiatry stands for “life, soul, or spirit”, which is distinct from soma, which refers to the “body” (Cloninger 2004).
References
Apostel, L. (1960). Towards the formal study of models in the non-formal sciences. Synthese, 12, 125–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485092.
Bergman, L. R., & Magnusson, D. (1997). A person-oriented approach in research on developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 291–319. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457949700206X.
Bergman, L. R., & Wångby, M. (2014). The person-oriented approach: A short theoretical and practical guide. Eesti Haridusteaduste Ajakiri, 2, 29–49. https://doi.org/10.12697/eha.2014.21.02b.
Cloninger, C. R. (2004). Feeling good: The science of well-being. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, N. M., & Svrakic, D. M. (1997). Role of personality self-organization in development of mental order and disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 881–906. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457949700148X.
Garcia, D., & González Moraga, F. R. (2017). The Dark Cube: Dark character profiles and OCEAN. PeerJ, 5, e3845. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3845.
Garcia, D., & Rosenberg, P. (2016). The Dark Cube: Dark and light character profiles. PeerJ, 4, e1675. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1675.
Garcia, D., Adrianson, L., Archer, T., & Rosenberg, P. (2015a). The dark side of the affective profiles: Differences and similarities in psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Sage Open, 5, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015615167.
Garcia, D., MacDonald, S., & Archer, T. (2015b). Two different approaches to the affective profiles model: Median splits (variable-oriented) and cluster analysis (person- oriented). PeerJ, 3, e1380. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1380.
Garcia, D., Nima, A. A., Lindskär, E., Jimmefors, A., Archer, T., MacDonald, S. (2016). Questions of Self-regulation and Affect: Affectivity, Locomotion, Assessment, and Psychological Well-Being. Asian Journal of Health Psychology, 1, 35–48.
Garcia, D., Schütz, E., MacDonald, S., & Archer, T. (2016). Differences in Happiness-Increasing Strategies Between and Within Affective Profiles. Clinical and Experimental Psychology, 2, 3. https://doi.org/10.4172/2471-2701.1000139.
Garcia, D., & MacDonald, S. (2017). Dark Personality Profiles: Estimating the Cluster Structure of the Dark Triad. PsyCh Journal, 6, 239–240. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.175.
Garcia, D., MacDonald, S., & Rapp-Ricciardi, M. (2017). Factor Analysis of the Swedish Version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen. PsyCh Journal, 2, 166–167. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.168.
Iacobucci, D., Posavac, S. S., Kardes, F. R., Schneider, M. J., & Popovich, D. L. (2015a). Toward a more nuanced understanding of the statistical properties of a median split. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 652–665. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2014.12.002.
Iacobucci, D., Posavac, S. S., Kardes, F. R., Schneider, M. J., & Popovich, D. L. (2015b). The median split: Robust, refined, and revived. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 690–704. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.014.
Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personality traits. Assessment, 21, 28–41.
Kajonius, P. J., Persson, B. N., Rosenberg, P., & Garcia, D. (2016). The (mis)measurement of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen: Exploitation at the core of the scale. PeerJ, 4, e1748. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1748.
Láng, A. (2017). Peer Review #2 of “The Dark Cube: Dark character profiles and OCEAN (v0.1).” PeerJ. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.3845v0.1/reviews/2.
Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00505-6.
Paulhus, D. L., (2014). Toward a taxonomy of dark personalities. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 421–426. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414547737.
Persson, B. N., Kajonius, P. J., & Garcia, D. (2017a). Revisiting the structure of the Short Dark Triad. Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1177/107391117701192.
Persson, B., Kajonius, P., & Garcia, D. (2017b). Testing construct independence in the Short Dark Triad using item response theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 117, 74–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.05.025.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Garcia, D. (2018). Dark Cube. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2302-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2302-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences