In Search of the Prosocial Personality

Original Article In Search of the Prosocial Personality

Personality Traits as Predictors of Prosociality and Prosocial Behavior

Anja Wertag1 and Denis Bratko2

1Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb, Croatia 2Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract: Prosocial behavior is intended to benefit others rather than oneself and is positively linked to personality traits such as Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility, and usually negatively to the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy). However, a significant proportion of the research in this area is conducted solely on self-report measures of prosocial behavior. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between prosociality and the basic (i.e., HEXACO) and dark personality traits, comparing their contribution in predicting both self-reported prosociality and prosocial behavior. Results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that the Dark Triad traits explain prosociality and prosocial behavior above and beyond the HEXACO traits, emphasizing the importance of the Dark Triad in the personality space.

Keywords: personality, prosociality, prosocial behavior, Dark Triad, HEXACO

Prosocial behavior covers a broad range of actions that are details, see Ashton & Lee, 2007). Namely, while three intended to benefit others rather than oneself, such as dimensions of the HEXACO model are close analogues cooperating, sharing, giving, helping, and comforting others (i.e., Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to (Batson & Powell, 2003). In order to organize research Experience) and the other two dimensions roughly corre- related to prosocial behavior, Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, spond to rotated variants of their Big Five counterparts and Schroeder (2005) proposed a multilevel perspective (i.e., Emotionality and Agreeableness), the biggest novelty of analyzing and understanding prosocial behavior. The of the HEXACO model is the sixth dimension of Honesty- meso level refers to studying helper–recipient dyads in Humility. Honesty-Humility “represents the tendency specific situations and providing information on different to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense forms of prosocial behavior as well as some circumstantial of cooperating with others even when one might exploit and situational factors that have an impact on the occur- them without suffering retaliation” (Ashton & Lee, 2007, rence of prosocial behavior. The macro level focuses on p. 156), while in this model, Agreeableness “represents prosocial actions within the context of groups, while the the tendency to be forgiving and tolerant to others, in the micro level is primarily concerned with origins of prosocial sense of cooperating with others even when one might be tendencies and etiology of individual differences in these suffering from exploitation” (Ashton & Lee, 2007,p.156). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the

This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. tendencies. If prosociality is observed within the personality Although Honesty-Humility explicitly contrasts prosocial space, “among the major dimensions of the Big Five, and antisocial tendencies, Ashton and Lee (2007) propose Agreeableness is the single best predictor of prosocial ten- that the general altruistic versus general antagonistic orien- dencies and behavior” (Graziano & Habashi, 2015, pp. tation is located between Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, 214–242), which is not surprising, given that it encompasses and Emotionality factors. More specifically, Emotionality is characteristics such as forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, related to kin altruism (being related to attachment and and sympathy. However, Agreeableness is not a universal empathy toward close others), while Honesty-Humility predictor of all forms of prosocial tendencies (Graziano & and Agreeableness are related to different forms of recipro- Habashi, 2015), and the empirical evidence concerning cal altruism: Honesty-Humility to active, and Agreeable- relations between these two is somewhat mixed. ness to reactive cooperation (Ashton & Lee, 2007;Hilbig, The recently developed HEXACO model accommodates Zettler, Leist, & Heydasch, 2013). important constructs that are beyond the space of the Big On the other hand, there are some personality traits that Five model, including different forms of altruism (for are linked to being less likely to engage in helping behavior,

Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000276 56 A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality

such as the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcis- review, see Zhao & Smillie, 2015), the significant propor- sism, and subclinical psychopathy; Bereczkei, Birkas, & tion of research in this area is conducted solely on self- Kerekes, 2010; Berger & Palacios, 2014; Lannin, Guyll, Kri- report measures of prosocial behavior, and research that zan, Madon, & Cornish, 2014; White, 2014), which are combines self-report measures with other measures is still linked to callousness, deception, exploitation, and manipu- scarce (but for exception, see Böckler, Tusche, & Singer, lation, as well as antisocial behavior (Furnham, Richards, & 2016; Hubbard, Harbaugh, Srivastava, Degras, & Mayr, Paulhus 2013). However, relations between antisocial and 2016). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to deter- prosocial behavior are complex, and not always inverse mine which personality traits contribute best in predicting (McGinley & Carlo, 2006), and Hawley (2003; 2006)sug- actual prosocial behavior, hypothesizing that the relations gested that both prosocial and aggressive behaviors can of personality traits and prosociality observed with the coexist in the same individual. Finally, although prosocial self-report measure will be consistent with the behavioral behavior can be motivated by altruistic reasons, there are measure. other egoistic reasons for prosocial behavior such as to receive praise or attention, to reduce uncomfortable feel- ings such as guilt, or to receive something in return (Batson, 2011). In line with that, previous research suggests that Methods there is a positive relationship between the dark traits and, at least, some forms of prosocial behavior, such as Participants and Procedure self-reported (Kauten & Barry, 2016; Zuo, Wang, Xu, Wang, &Zhao,2016), public (Konrath, Ho, & Zarins, 2016; White, A total of 680 students (80% females), aged 18–39 years 2014), and opportunistic prosocial behavior (Eberly-Lewis (M = 22.04, SD = 2.95), were recruited from various univer- & Coetzee, 2015). sities in Croatia to participate in a larger online survey. The While the relationship between prosociality and the basic invitation to participate in the study together with the link personality traits (i.e., Agreeableness and Honesty-Humi- to the questionnaire was announced on the faculties’ web lity) has been well established, this is not the case with pages, student mailing lists, and social networks. Partici- the dark traits. Namely, the relationship between prosocial- pants responded to the survey once they ticked the consent ity and the Dark Triad traits, when assessed, is usually only box. The approval of the ethical review board was obtained with one or two of the dark traits (e.g., Bereczkei & Czibor, for all aspects of the study. 2014; Berger, Batanova, & Cance, 2015;Böckler,Sharifi, Out of the initial sample, 336 students (83% female; 22 09 3 72 Kanske, Dziobek, & Singer, 2017; Curry, Chesters, & Vid- Mage = . , SD = . ) gave their consent in the first part ing, 2011; Eberly-Lewis & Coetzee, 2015), or relies solely of the study for participating in future studies. These stu- on self-reports (e.g., Aghababaeia, Mohammadtabara, & dents were contacted by the researcher’s assistant approx- Saffariniab, 2014; Zuo et al., 2016). Therefore, the aim of imately 1 month later with a kind request to fill in the this study was to investigate the relationship between survey again, as something went wrong with the collected prosociality and the basic (i.e., HEXACO) and the dark data and it became unusable. The researcher’s assistant traits, expecting the relationship to be positive in the case emphasized that their help is crucial for the completion of of the basic traits, and negative in the case of the dark traits. the project and that his/her job depended upon it. The More precisely, we expect a positive relationship between average time for completing the whole online survey was prosociality and Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and 33 min (SD = 15.8,range:15–75), and the repeated comple- This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the Emotionality traits that accommodate a general altruistic tion of the survey was conceptualized as the measure of This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. orientation (Ashton & Lee, 2007). Moreover, the aim of this prosocial behavior. study was to explore the contributions of both basic and the dark traits in prediction of prosociality, which represents a unique contribution to the field of prosociality research. Measures GiventhatthecommoncoreoftheDarkTriadhasasub- stantial overlap with Honesty-Humility (Lee et al., 2013), Apart from the above-described measure of prosocial we wanted to explore whether the Dark Triad would have behavior, all other variables were assessed via self-report an incremental predictive validity over the HEXACO traits measures, where the participants estimated to which extent in predicting prosociality, or are the basic personality traits they agree or disagree with every item on a 5-point sufficient for prediction of prosociality. Finally, although Likert scale (1 = totally disagree; 5 = totally agree)orhow there are some findings on relations between personality often they performed a certain behavior (1 = never, 5 =very traits and prosocial behavior in economic games (for often).

Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality 57

The Prosocial Personality Battery Results The 30-item Prosocial Personality Battery (PSB; Penner, Fritzsche, Craiger, & Freifeld, 1995) was used to assess Correlation Analysis prosocial tendencies. The PSB consists of seven subscales: 1 Social Responsibility, Empathic Concern, Perspective Tak- The correlation matrix (Table ) indicated that zero-order ing, Personal Distress, Mutual Moral Reasoning, Other- correlations between prosocial tendencies and personality oriented Reasoning, and Self-reported Altruism, and the were positive for HEXACO and negative for the Dark total result was calculated in accordance with the author’s Triad. As the correlations between Honesty-Humility and recommendations, with higher scores indicating more pro- the Dark Triad indicated a substantial overlap, partial corre- nounced prosocial tendencies. Cronbach’s α coefficient of lations of these traits with PSB were calculated: when con- the PSB in the current study was .78. trolling for Honesty-Humility, partial correlations between À 33 PSB was translated into Croatian by two independent prosocial tendencies and the Dark Triad were . (p < 001 À 01 75 À 35 001 translators. After reaching the consensus on all items, they . ), . (p =. ), and . (p <. ) for Machiavellian- were translated back to English. Several minor inconsisten- ism, narcissism, and psychopathy, respectively, while the cies were amended through a discussion between the trans- partial correlation (controlling for the Dark Triad) between 19 lators and the backtranslator. prosocial tendencies and Honesty-Humility was . (p < .001).

Short Dark Triad Scale The 27-item Short Dark Triad scale (SD3;Jones&Paulhus, 2014; for the Croatian version, see Wertag, Vrselja, & Hierarchical Regression Analyses Tomić, 2011) was used to measure Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The total score is calculated for A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted each of the traits by summing up referring items, with to determine contributions of the basic and dark personality higher scores indicating more pronounced traits. Cron- traits in predicting prosocial tendencies. Given that the dark bach’s α coefficients in the current study were .77,.66, traits are more pronounced in men (Jonason, Li, Webster, & 2009 and .73 for Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, Schmitt, ) and that there is a trend of increase in these respectively. traits among newer cohorts (Gunnthorsdottir, McCabe, & Smith 2002;Twenge&Foster,2010; Twenge et al., 2010), gender and age were entered into the hierarchical The HEXACO Personality Inventory regression analyses as the control variables in the first step. The HEXACO factors (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, In the second step, HEXACO personality traits were Extraversion, Agreeableness, Consciousness, and Openness entered, and in the third step, the Dark Triad traits (all VIFs to Experience) were measured using the 60-item HEXACO were lower than 1.83). Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-60;Ashton& Results showed that, after controlling for demographi- Lee, 2009; for the Croatian version, see Babarović & cal variables, HEXACO dimensions explained 31%of Šverko, 2013). Cronbach’s α coefficient in the current study prosocial tendencies variance, F(6, 671)=54.32, p <.001, ranged from .75 to .81. while the Dark Triad explained an additional 5%ofthe variance, F(3, 668)=17.10, p <.001. In the final model, all personality variables except narcissism (β =.04, p = This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the .26) contributed significantly in explaining prosocial ten- This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. Statistical Analyses dencies (Table 2). The relationship between prosociality and personality traits was investigated through zero-order and partial correlations. The contribution of personality traits in the prediction Hierarchical Logistic Regression Analysis of prosociality was explored through hierarchical multiple regression analysis in the case of self-report prosociality Before exploring the contribution of the basic and dark per- and hierarchical binary logistic regression analysis in the sonality traits in predicting prosocial behavior, we exam- case of behavioral measure of prosociality (as it was con- ined whether there were some differences in these traits ceptualized as a dichotomous variable of either the pres- between participants who gave their consent in the first part ence or absence of prosocial behavior), which enabled of the study for participating in future studies and those the investigation of incremental predictive validity of the who did not: the differences were found only on Honesty- Dark Triad over the HEXACO traits in predicting Humility (t = À3.23, p <.001; d = À0.40) and Machiavel- prosociality. lianism (t = 2.13, p =.03; d = 0.16), with those who gave

Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 58 A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality

Table 1. Summary of means, SDs, and Pearson’s correlations among measured variables Gender Age PSB H E X A C O M N P Age .10** PSB À.15** .18** (.78) H À.12** .03 .40** (.77) E À.46** À.02 .17** À.02 (.81) X .00 .07 .18** .08* À.18** (.81) A .10* .00 .34** .26** À.10* .07 (.75) C À.01 .01 .16** .06 À.01 .19** .05 (.76) O À.01 .14** .26** .10** À.10** .07 .06 .07 (.78) M .13** .03 À.45** À.52** À.13** À.15** À.32** À.07 À.05 (.77) N .08* .03 À.16** À.40** À.12** .43** À.19** .12** .11** .30** (.66) P .15** .01 À.45** À.38** À.16** À.14** À.42** À.18** À.01 .57** .28** (.73) M – 22.04 96.12 3.37 3.36 3.25 3.00 3.47 3.69 2.91 2.70 2.07 SD – 2.95 9.84 0.50 0.69 0.64 0.60 0.57 0.62 0.62 0.54 0.57

Notes. N = 680. Cronbach’s α appears in the diagonal (see brackets). Gender: 1 = female, 2 = male. PSB = Prosocial Personality Battery; H = Honesty- Humility; E = Emotionality, X = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; O = Openness to Experience; M = Machiavellianism; N = Narcissism; P = Psychopathy. *p < .05, **p < .01, all two-tailed.

Table 2. Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for variables predicting self-reported prosocial tendencies Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 BSEB β BSEB β BSEB β Gender À4.18 0.92 À.17** À1.23 0.88 À.05 À0.91 0.85 À.04 Age 0.67 0.12 .20** 0.48 0.10 .14** 0.48 0.10 .14** H 0.57 0.06 .29** 0.32 0.07 .16** E 0.32 0.05 .22** 0.24 0.05 .17** X 0.21 0.05 .14** 0.19 0.06 .12** A 0.44 0.05 .27** 0.28 0.06 .17** C 0.15 0.05 .09** 0.12 0.05 .07* O 0.32 0.05 .21** 0.34 0.05 .22** M À2.19 0.63 À.14** N À0.81 0.72 À.04 P À2.74 0.69 À.16** R2 .06 .37 .41 F 22.51** 49.03** 42.89**

Notes. N = 680. Gender: 1 = female, 2 = male. H = Honesty-Humility; E = Emotionality, X = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; O = Openness to Experience; M = Machiavellianism; N = Narcissism; P = Psychopathy. *p < .05, **p < .01, all two-tailed. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly.

consent having higher scores on Honesty-Humility and behavior correctly in 64% of the cases. Among control vari- 1 lower on Machiavellianism. ables, age was a significant predictor of prosocial behavior, Atotalof121 students completed the survey again. A neither one of the HEXACO dimensions had a significant hierarchical binary logistic regression analysis was con- contribution to the prediction of prosocial behavior in the 2 ducted to determine the contribution of the basic and dark second step (w = 5.21, df = 6, p =.52), while with the Dark personality traits in predicting prosocial behavior. The Triad, narcissism had a significant contribution in the third 2 results showed that the baseline model predicted prosocial step (w = 9.24, df = 3, p =.03;Table3).

1 Summary of descriptives and correlations among study variables in this subsample is available in Table 1 in the Electronic Supplementary Material, ESM 1.

Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality 59

Table 3. Summary of hierarchical logistic regression analysis for variables predicting prosocial behavior Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 BSEBOR [95% CI] BSEBOR [95% CI] BSEBOR [95% CI] Gender À0.51 0.32 0.60 [0.32, 1.14] À0.23 0.37 0.80 [0.39, 1.64] À0.24 0.37 0.79 [0.38, 1.63] Age 0.09* 0.04 1.10 [1.02, 1.17] 0.09* 0.04 1.09 [1.02, 1.17] 0.09* 0.04 1.10 [1.02, 1.18] H 0.04 0.02 1.04 [0.99, 1.09] 0.00 0.03 1.00 [0.94, 1.06] E 0.03 0.02 1.03 [0.99, 1.07] 0.02 0.02 1.02 [0.98, 1.06] X 0.00 0.02 1.00 [0.96, 1.04] 0.02 0.02 1.02 [0.98, 1.07] A 0.00 0.02 1.00 [0.96, 1.04] À0.01 0.02 0.99 [0.95, 1.04] C 0.01 0.02 1.01 [0.97, 1.06] 0.01 0.02 1.01 [0.97, 1.06] O À0.01 0.02 0.99 [0.95, 1.03] 0.00 0.02 1.00 [0.96, 1.04] M À0.06 0.26 0.94 [0.56, 1.56] N À0.74** 0.29 0.48 [0.27, 0.84] P À0.17 0.29 0.84 [0.48, 1.49] Constant À2.41 0.79 0.09 À4.92 1.80 0.01 À1.59 2.55 0.20 w2 8.12* 13.33 22.57* df 2811 Pseudo-R2 .03 .05 .09 % 64.6 64.9 65.5

Notes. N = 336. Gender: 1 = female, 2 = male. OR = odds ratio; CI = confidence interval. H = Honesty-Humility; E = Emotionality, X = Extraversion; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; O = Openness to Experience; M = Machiavellianism; N = Narcissism; P = Psychopathy. *p < .05, **p < .01, all two- tailed.

Discussion ness, anxiety, need for emotional support from others, and empathy. Among these characteristics, empathy is The main aim of this paper was to examine the relationship most strongly related to prosocial behavior; it is considered between prosociality and the basic and dark traits, and to to be its important precursor and a motivator. Therefore, it compare their contribution in predicting self-reported seems logical that the Emotionality factor would be related prosocial tendencies and actual prosocial behavior. In line to prosocial tendencies primarily through its Sentimentality with expectations, the dark traits had negative relations subscale, which was the case in our study. On the other with prosociality, while basic personality traits had positive hand, Openness on its positive pole encompasses character- relations with prosocial tendencies. Descriptive compar- istics such as enjoyment of beauty in art and in nature, isons of effect sizes indicated that, among the Dark Triad inquisitiveness about various domains of knowledge, cre- traits, Machiavellianism and psychopathy were more nega- ativity, and a tendency to accept the unusual, and the tively related to prosocial tendencies than narcissism (with results of our study suggest that these also tend to be char- small effect size of narcissism compared to medium to large acteristics of prosocially oriented people. It is possible that of the former two). This is not surprising, given that Machi- people who appreciate nature and art at the same time avellianism and psychopathy are considered to be the “dar- appreciate others, and are more prone to engaging in proso- This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the ker” side of the Dark Triad (Rauthmann & Kolar, 2012). cial behavior. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. Among basic personality traits, prosocial tendencies were Regarding the contribution of HEXACO and the Dark especially related to Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness Triad in predicting prosocial tendencies, the results of the (with medium to large effect size), and Openness to Expe- hierarchical regression analyses showed that, after control- rience (with medium effect size), which was partly ling for demographical variables, HEXACO explained 31% expected, given that Ashton and Lee (2007)proposedthat of the variance. Although all of the HEXACO traits had a the general altruistic versus general antagonistic orientation significant contribution, the highest contribution to the is located between Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, and explanation of prosocial tendencies was (based on Emotionality factors. The reasons for a relatively lower cor- the descriptive comparison of regression coefficients) of relation of prosocial tendencies and Emotionality compared the three theoretically expected traits: Honesty-Humility, 2 to Openness can be found on the facet level. Namely, Agreeableness, and Emotionality. Above HEXACO, the Emotionality encompasses characteristics such as fearful- Dark Triad (more specifically, Machiavellianism and

2 The facet-level correlation matrix is available from the first author upon request.

Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 60 A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality

psychopathy) explained an additional 5% variance of proso- sample, imbalanced in gender ratio. Namely, in both parts cial tendencies. Unlike the HEXACO traits, the more pro- of the study, approximately 80% of the participants were nounced dark traits were linked to less self-reported females. Although it seems that women and men are simi- prosocial tendencies, which is in line with previous findings lar in engaging in prosocial behavior, there are differences that those rating high on the Dark Triad are generally less in types of prosocial behavior that they engage in: women’s prone to helping behaviors (Bereczkei et al., 2010;Berger& prosocial behaviors are more communal and relational, Palacios, 2014; Lannin et al., 2014;White,2014). When while men’s are more agentic and collectively oriented as comparing the predictability of specific dark traits, Machi- well as strength intensive (see Eagly, 2009). It is possible avellianism emerged as the strongest negative predictor that the relations between prosociality and basic and dark of prosocial tendencies, which is in accordance with previ- personality traits would be different depending on gender; ous findings (e.g., Aghababaeia et al., 2014). Although Haw- however, due to relatively small number of male partici- ley (2003, 2006) suggested that Machiavellians use both pants in our studies, we did not conduct within-gender anal- aggressive and prosocial strategies, which gives them evolu- yses. Moreover, the sample in the second part of the study tionary advantages, our results do not seem to support this. might systematically differ from the rest of the sample, as One of the possible explanations lies in the fact that we they might be generally more willing to invest time for psy- measured prosocial tendencies anonymously, in an online chological research. study, where it is doubtful whether one can have an interest As this study was a part of a larger study, we used short in expressing prosociality. Namely, one of the characteris- measures of both basic and dark personality traits, which tics that distinguishes Machiavellianism from the other only enabled getting a general overview of the studied vari- two Dark Triad traits is intentional planning and care about ables and their relations. Namely, only some facets of Hon- reputation (Jones & Paulhus, 2011), and Machiavellians esty-Humility are related to prosocial behavior (Hilbig, seem to be willing to help only in the presence of others Glöckner, & Zettler, 2014), and analyzing studied relations (Bereczkei et al., 2010). on a facet level would certainly enhance the understanding After comparing the contribution of the basic and dark of these relations. Furthermore, a longer measure of HEX- traits in predicting self-reported prosocial tendencies, in ACO (100-item version) also includes the interstitial scale the second part of the study, we investigated these relations altruism that divides its loadings on Honesty-Humility, with the actual behavior. The results showed that the Dark Emotionality, and Agreeableness dimensions, assessing a Triad predicted prosocial behavior above and beyond the tendency to be sympathetic and soft-hearted toward others, HEXACO traits, which did not contribute significantly in which would be predictive for the outcomes investigated in predicting prosocial behavior. However, general trait mea- this research. Therefore, conducting future research with sures usually do not predict specific behaviors very strongly, longer measures is highly recommended. Moreover, in and the correct classification of cases in this study was not the second part of the study, participants received a some- very high (up to 65%). Among the dark traits, only narcis- what deceiving information regarding the purpose of filling sism emerged as a significant predictor of prosocial behav- in the survey again, which was intended for reflecting a ior, indicating that grandiosity and self-centeredness could more real-life situation; however, future research should be the most pronounced characteristics of those who are avoid the use of deceptive techniques whenever possible. not likely to engage in prosocial behavior. These findings Although we used two measures of prosociality (self- are not consistent with findings from the first part of the report and a behavioral measure), it seems plausible that study showing that dark traits which accounted for proso- both of the measures are saturated with empathy, which This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the cial tendencies were Machiavellianism and psychopathy, is highly related to the Dark Triad (Furnham et al., 2013). This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. while narcissism was unrelated to prosocial tendencies. However, PSB might be more saturated with empathy than This is in line with previous findings indicating that self- our behavioral measure, as it encompasses a higher-order reported prosocial behavior is just one factor of prosociality, factor labeled as other-oriented empathy (Penner et al., and is distinct from other forms of prosocial behavior 1995), and there were some differences between the two (Böckler et al., 2016), so the different personality traits prosociality measures in their relations with the basic and might be related to different forms of prosociality. dark traits: while the effect size of correlations was similar to PSB, with the behavioral measure, they were trivial for Limitations and Future Directions the basic traits, and small for the dark traits. Moreover, our results indicated that the prosocial behavior might be Although the results of this study showing that the Dark influenced by other variables than prosociality. Triad explains prosociality above and beyond the HEXACO There are indices that the Dark Triad can be positively traits are compelling, some of the limitations need to be associated with some forms of prosocial behavior, like public addressed. First, the study was conducted on a student prosociality, and inversely with anonymous prosociality

Journal of Individual Differences (2019), 40(1), 55–62 Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing A. Wertag & D. Bratko, Personality and Prosociality 61

(Bereczkei et al., 2010; Konrath et al., 2016; White, 2014), Batson, C. D. (2011). Altruism in humans. New York, NY: Oxford so it would be useful to explore relationships between each University Press. Batson, C. D., & Powell, A. (2003). Altruism and prosocial behavior. of the dark traits and different forms of prosocial behavior. In T. Millon & M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of psychology. Furthermore, as each of the Dark Triad traits are actually Personality and social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 463–484). Hobo- multidimensional (Cain, Pincus, & Ansell, 2008;Hare& ken, NJ: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/0471264385.wei0519 Neumann, 2005; Rauthmann & Will, 2011), the relations Bereczkei, T., Birkas, B., & Kerekes, Z. (2010). The presence of others, prosocial traits, Machiavellianism. Social Psychology, between specific forms of each trait and prosociality should 41, 238–245. be explored, as specific forms of each trait can be differen- Bereczkei, T., & Czibor, A. (2014). Personality and situational tially related to exhibiting prosocial behavior, and specific factors differently influence high Mach and low Mach persons’ forms can be related to exhibiting prosocial behavior under decisions in a social dilemma game. Personality and Individual – 2014 Differences, 64, 168 173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014. different conditions (Lannin et al., ). Finally, future 02.035 studies could also explore some potential moderators and Berger, C., Batanova, M., & Cance, J. D. (2015). Aggressive and mediators of the relationship between personality and proso- prosocial? Examining latent profiles of behavior, social status, ciality, like empathy (White, 2014), that were not included in Machiavellianism, and empathy. Journal of Youth and Adoles- cence, 44, 2230–2244. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015- this study as it was dealing primarily with the micro level of 0298-9 analyzing prosocial behavior (Penner et al., 2005). Berger, C., & Palacios, D. (2014). 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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. American Psychological This document is copyrighted by the Revision received March 21, 2018 Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 127–132. https://doi. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. Accepted March 29, 2018 org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.08.035 Published online November 26, 2018 Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., Wiltshire, J., Bourdage, J. S., Visser, B. A., & Gallucci, A. (2013). Sex, power, and money: Prediction from the Anja Wertag Dark Triad and Honesty-Humility. European Journal of Person- Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar ality, 27, 169–184. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1860 Marulićev trg 19 McGinley, M., & Carlo, G. (2006). Two sides of the same coin? The 10000 Zagreb relations between prosocial and physically aggressive behav- Croatia iors. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 337–349. https:// [email protected] doi.org/10.1007/s10964-006-9095-9

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