The Dark Triad Test

Have you ever heard of a personality test titled "The Dark Triad"? Sounds a bit evil, right?

When people take personality tests, the results are typically positive or neutral. There is nothing particularly disappointing about your Myers-Briggs score; “thinkers” or “perceivers,” for example, are relatively neutral terms. However, not all traits are positive. Some traits are negative and are generally attributed to people who do negative things.

The Dark Triad looks at these negative traits. Psychologists have developed tests to determine whether or not these traits exist and potentially spot dangerous people.

What is the Dark Triad Test?

The Dark Triad is a relatively new concept in the world of psychology. The term was created in 2012 by two psychologists, Paulhus and Williams. In their research, Paulhus and Williams identified three personality traits that were most prominent in dangerous people who are more likely to commit crimes. The Dark Triad is a collection of these 3 traits.

Like most personality traits, The Dark Triad exists in all people to certain degrees. Everyone has some of these nasty and 'evil' qualities. Researchers show that some degrees of these traits indicate a potentially good business leader or bright person. But the people who are more “dark” than others are more likely to act in ways that hurt others.

The 3 Infamous Traits

So what are these scary Dark Triad traits? They are Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Each trait has a raw score of 0-4, which is usually measured with a percentile. For example, if you get a narcissism score of 40, that means that 60 people are more narcissistic than you.

by Andrew English, PhD, Practical Psychology |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

[ed. Apparently now being used to train and assess GPT AI models (see here), along with The Big Five. Full test can be found at the Open-Source Psychometrics Project:]

"Introduction: The dark triad personality traits are three closely related yet independent personality traits that all have a somewhat malevolent connotation. The three traits are machiavellianism (a manipulative attitude), narcissism (excessive self-love), and psychopathy (lack of empathy). The dark triad has traditionally been assessed with three tests different tests, each of which had been developed individually. Most commonly, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was used as the measure of narcissism, the MACH-IV for machiavellianism and the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP) for psychopathy. Format differences between these (multiple choice versus scale rating) complicated administration and analysis. The Short Dark Triad was developed in 2011 by Delroy Paulhus and Daniel Jones to provide a more uniform assessment and also to trim down the total length.Test procedure

Test Procedure: The test consists of twenty seven statements that must be rated on how much you agree with them. The median time to complete is 2 minutes 27 seconds. Results are free.Participation

Participation: Your use of this assessment must be strictly for educational purposes. It can not be taken as psychological advice of any kind. If you are interested in anything more than learning about the dark triad of personality and how it is assessed, do not take this test. Your answers will be recorded and possibly used for research and/or otherwise distributed in an anonymous fashion."