Christopher John Breeden

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Verified

Christopher verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Ph.D.
• Professor (Assistant) at Wingate University

Personality disorders (PDs) are thought to be ego-syntonic, but evidence on this matter is limited. To expand on the evidence, we examined whether people with varying levels of PD traits show tendencies to adjust their behavior to create correspondence with their (self-perceived) PD trait levels. Specifically, we examined whether people higher (vs....

Physical activity, beneficial for physical and psychological health, may facilitate affective mechanisms of positive emotion and approach-motivation. Greater resting frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA), an index of greater relative left than right frontal cortical activity, is a neural correlate of affective mechanisms possibly associated with active lif...

People's commitment to moral principles affects how they self-regulate and directs people down different ethical paths. The Integrity Scale was designed to assess the strength of people's commitment to moral principles. Here, we sought to contribute to evaluating the construct validity of the Integrity Scale. We related the scale to various theoret...

Although entitlement is important for understanding antisocial behavior, personality dysfunction, and personality malevolence, little evidence exists on how entitlement relates to processes that could theoretically maintain and cultivate it. In line with a self-presentation conceptualization, we speculated that entitlement probably entails the cult...

One structural claim of narcissism states that antagonism is a common correlate of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. However, relations between antagonism and narcissism constructs may depend on other dispositional features within people. For example, some theorizing suggests that antagonism might relate more positively to grandiose narcissism w...

Although researchers have sought to uncover correlates of features of nascent political ambition (the initial tendency to run for political office), available studies leave gaps concerning the role of personality. We assessed the effects of Five Factor Model personality traits, the “dark triad” (grandiose narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy),...

Some scholars treat grandiose narcissism and self-esteem as independent predictors. This has led to creating one nomological network for grandiose narcissism and one nomological network for self-esteem. However, some evidence shows that grandiose narcissism and self-esteem interact to predict outcomes. Hence, some features of the nomological networ...

A self-presentation framework for the Dark Triad (DT) constructs stipulates that each construct encompasses chronic patterns of tactical identity-maintenance behaviors. Research addressing this idea is scant, and the evidence has been limited to unidimensional measures of the DT constructs. Here, participants (N = 309) completed multidimensional me...

Although people higher in “Dark Triad” (DT) constructs are known for manipulating and distrusting others, a few studies suggest these people might also be easy targets for manipulation and differentiate less between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources. Here, we explored whether DT constructs might each contain facets that relate positively to gul...

As subjective well-being is foundational to understanding people, researchers have sought to uncover its correlates. Some theorizing proposes that effects of broad personality traits on subjective well-being constructs are mediated by self-esteem; unfortunately, evidence pertaining to this idea has been limited to the study of “normal” broad person...

Popular theorizing about happiness pursuit emphasizes universal paths to happiness, but other theorizing acknowledges different people achieve happiness in different ways (i.e., subjective wellbeing; SWB). The present work extended this latter perspective by examining how antagonistic pursuit of a grandiose identity (“narcissistic antagonism”)—gene...

Research suggests that individuals who are more depressed are prone to behaviors that reinforce their depressive symptoms. We performed a novel test of the self-verification perspective of this phenomenon. In two experiments, nonclinical participants completed a sham color-gazing task in which depressed people ostensibly see colors become less inte...

Although many processes might contribute to the self-perpetuating nature of antagonistic personality, we proposed and tested the “antagonism-confirmation” perspective on this phenomenon. This perspective states that antagonistic personality is based in tendencies to confirm (vs. disconfirm) the self’s beliefs about its personality. Importantly, thi...

Although most research treats narcissism and self-esteem as additive predictors of outcomes, some clinical theorizing and data suggest they may interact to predict some socially undesirable outcomes. Unfortunately, little evidence exists for this idea. Following psychodynamic theorizing, we speculated that, as self-esteem increases, narcissism migh...

Machiavellianism is presumed to encompass advanced social-cognitive skill, but research has generally suggested that Machiavellian individuals are rather deficient in social-cognitive skill. However, previous research on the matter has been limited to measures of (a) Machiavellianism that are unidimensional and saturated with both antagonism and di...

Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism are dark-personality constructs that relate to propensities to harm others. Accounts of these propensities tend to highlight malevolence or pathological deficits, but innocent cognitive mechanisms may also be relevant. In that regard, we tested the novel idea that well-intentioned people higher...

People higher in antagonistic personality are believed to have impaired moral judgment that can be traced to psychopathological conditions or enjoyment of cruelty. We suggest that this phenomenon can be partially understood as a normative process of leniency toward more similar others. An online study had participants (N = 250, Mage = 38.47; 56.8%...

Self-presentation theory suggests that all people strategically self-present, so it struggles to account for self-proclaimed “authentic” people who are apparently unaware or unconcerned with the impressions they make. But, we addressed whether self-proclaimed authentic people create authentic identities via strategic displays that communicate authe...

Some research found that actors higher in dark-personality constructs help others cultivate desired identities (i.e., beneficial impression management; BIM) and this helping could be based partly in an altruistic agenda. We expand on these findings by testing whether these “dark” actors are responsive to the salient identity needs of others. Partic...

The “psychodynamic mask model” of narcissism posits that narcissists' self-esteem is inherently fragile. Available research provides inconsistent and ambiguous support for this model. In light of weaknesses associated with some previous tests, we provided novel evidence on whether narcissism dimensions relate to an indicator of “contingent self-est...

Clinical and personality research and theorizing has benefitted from assessing people’s experiences of interpersonal problems, but these assessments have neglected assessing people’s subjective perceptions of impairments and benefits from such problems. To address this gap, two studies tested the reliability and validity of two interpersonal circum...

We proposed a context-dependent account of psychopathy and morality which argues that any psychopathy dimension-including those typically theorized to be maladaptive-can be conducive to helping others under appropriate contexts. In Study 1, a college sample (N = 331; M age = 18.68) completed two-factor and Triarchic psychopathy measures and reporte...

The idea that personality is closely connected to the strategic presentation of the self is occasionally echoed across social-personality and clinical psychology; although self-presentation may be a feature of personality, investigations into this possibility are rather rare and possess various shortcomings that make them somewhat inconclusive. To...

Although dark personalities exhibit a manipulative interpersonal style, it remains unclear how this style manifests differently across conceptually-distinct dark personalities. To address this issue, a college-student sample (N = 299) completed indices of the Dark Triad (DT; grandiose narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and vulnerable narcis...

We proposed that, following failure, narcissistic self-enhancement is designed to buffer symptoms of failure via self-serving accounts or avoidance (i.e., superficial self-enhancement) without promoting actual self-enhancement (i.e., substantive self-enhancement), whereas high-self-esteem self-enhancement is designed to promote substantive self-enh...

We aimed to corroborate the notion that the Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES), a popular unidimensional index of psychological entitlement, resembles a blend of vulnerable- and grandiose-based entitlement rationales across various psychological dimensions. College participants (N = 523) were randomly assigned to complete either the PES or a rec...

A self-presentation conceptualization of narcissism stipulates that narcissism constructs accompany chronic patterns of tactical behaviors that portray narcissistic identities. Research addressing this idea is scant, and the evidence is non-definitive. Here, participants (N = 511) completed a battery of popular grandiose and vulnerable narcissism i...

Two experiments (Total N = 393) demonstrated that disparagement humor can trigger a social identity threat for members of the targeted group resulting in perceptions of a diminished possible self and feeling socially excluded. Experiment 1 (N = 278) revealed that, upon exposure to humor disparaging one’s political in-group (versus political out-gro...

To address gaps in understanding how narcissism and self-esteem influence aggression under low and high provocation, participants (N = 401) read vignettes depicting low or high levels of provocation and then indicated their aggression, negative emotionality, appraisals of the situation, and goals. As anticipated, at high vs. low self-esteem, narcis...

Objective The present research profiled antisocial personality constructs in relation to tactical self‐presentation behaviors and various beliefs associated with such tactical behavior. Method An MTurk sample (N = 524; Mage = 37.89; 61% female) completed indices of the Dark Triad (DT; narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and self‐reported th...

Humor fundamentally trivializes its topic and invites people to think about it playfully and non-seriously. Intergroup humor, humor that disparages a social group or its representatives thus disguises expressions of prejudice in a cloak of fun and frivolity, affording it the appearance of social acceptability. As a result, disparagement humor repre...