Joshua Tripp Lambert

• Master of Arts
• University of Alabama

In addition to sources (e.g. scripture) that directly disseminate religious agents' minds (e.g. attitudes), an egocentric model suggests one's own mind may serve as a basis for estimating religious agents' minds. However, the egocentric model is rarely directly tested for inferences of religious agents' minds, and such tests have largely been limit...

Vulnerable and grandiose narcissism may relate differentially to psychological states following ego-threat. We hypothesized that following ego-threat, more (vs. less) vulnerable narcissistic people would be more motivated toward action as evidenced by neural correlates of action preparation (suppressed motor-cortical beta activity) when a competiti...

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....

Sexual sadism has long been of interest to scholars and clinicians in psychology, and most research on sexual sadism has focused on forensic samples. However, recently, research has uncovered the existence of sexual sadism in general populations. Measures designed to assess sexual sadism in the general population are lacking. To address this gap, w...

Authoritarianism has been of interest to multiple fields in the social sciences (e.g., psychology, political science). Though traditionally conceptualized as a right-wing phenomenon, burgeoning research suggests it is also a left-wing phenomenon. The Left-Wing Authoritarianism Index-13 (LWAI-13) was recently developed as a brief measure of left-win...

Liberals tend to indicate being less happy than conservatives; although one perspective suggests this happiness gap reflects liberals’ enhanced concern over the systemic maltreatment of others, the “maladjustment perspective” suggests it reflects, in part, liberals’ tendencies to reject aspects of conservatism that support agency and produce some l...

Although clinical psychologists have long speculated that antagonistic individuals may lack insight into their moral deficits, some evidence has shown that more (vs. less) antagonistic people view moral traits as somewhat desirable and rate themselves as lower on moral characteristics (suggestive of some insight). But, we suggest that antagonistic...

Numerous studies show that perceived authenticity is a reliable predictor of mental health outcomes. To expand on these studies, we examined whether such relations could be due to perceived authenticity’s confounding with both self-esteem and executive functioning. A representative sample of US participants ( N = 446; M age = 46.10; 51.1% female; 7...

Endorsement of the moral foundations specified by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can sometimes fail to relate negatively to certain dispositions indicative of bad moral character. This evidence has fueled some concerns over whether the moral foundations in MFT are “moral.” To increase understanding of how moral foundations relate to moral character...

The “bad-begets-bad” phenomenon describes how witnessed or perceived misconduct in an organization promotes mental states and behavior that encourage further misconduct. Based in two perspectives on how the Dark Triad (DT) constructs (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) differentiate, we proposed their roles in contributing to the bad-begets...

Introduction: Self-verification theory makes the controversial claim that people higher in depression seek to confirm their depressed identity. Recent evidence suggests that people with higher self-reported depression severity alter their reports of self-relevant information to seem depressed. This article discusses the results of two preregistered...

People with high integrity should stubbornly insist on maintaining their moral stances regardless of how their stances will make them appear. However, we examined whether people who claim to be high in integrity will express different moral stances to appear high in integrity. Participants (N = 433) self-reported their integrity and then read and r...

It has been assumed that personality disorders or constituent traits are ego-syntonic, but studies that have addressed this claim have revealed ego-dystonicity. Across three studies (two preregistered), we addressed some methodological weaknesses in these past studies that may conceal ego-syntonicity. Participants (total N = 1,331) completed measur...

Introduction: Sadistic pleasure presumably incorporates processes that support an authentic enjoyment of others' pain. However, antagonism confirmation theory, grounded in social-psychological theorizing on identity maintenance and the notion of ego-syntonicity, suggests that individuals higher in sadism report greater pleasure in response to othe...

Some theorizing in clinical and social psychology suggests authentic people lack a self-presentational agenda; however, a small amount of evidence has challenged this idea and suggested authentic people have an agenda to appear authentic. The present study tested this suggestion directly. We assessed whether people higher in authenticity ascribe hi...

People higher in sadism presumably experience pleasure upon witnessing another person's suffering (i.e., the “sadistic-pleasure mechanism”). However, some data suggests that this foundational hypothesis may be inaccurate; we propose the data are consistent with assuming that people higher in sadism are less reactive to negative stimuli (i.e., the b...

Historical accounts presume that authentic people are true to the self and avoid self-presentation. However, recent evidence suggests that feelings of authenticity do not necessarily follow from acting in line with self-views, and people with high (self-reported) dispositional authenticity may distort self-relevant information to make a desired imp...

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...

Everyday and sexual sadism presumably represent distinct forms of sadistic personality. We investigated the idea that everyday sadism involves the expression of sadistic responses across nonsexual and sexual contexts, and sexual sadism involves the expression of sadistic responses in exclusively sexual contexts. Participants (N = 321) completed mea...

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...

Nonclinical people high in sadism report less displeasure upon witnessing another person's suffering; some recent theorizing speculates that such people may seek to rationalize this blunted displeasure by diminishing another's amount of suffering. To help address this idea further in the context of an experimental design, participants (N = 375) rea...

Entitlement has attracted interest across various social science disciplines due to its broad connection to selfish decision-making outcomes and mental health. Although unidimensional entitlement scales have been widely used, these scales conflate vulnerable- and grandiose-based entitlement forms. The Psychological Entitlement Scale – Grandiose-Bas...

Recent research suggests presumptions about atheists’ uncommitted mating strategy causes atheists to seem less trustworthy, and that people who are more religious or espouse less agreeable attitudes toward uncommitted mating (i.e., more restricted sociosexual attitudes) tend to harbor greater anti-atheist attitudes. We provided additional tests of...

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...

Prior research has shown that, following ego-threatening provocation, effects of grandiose narcissism on aggression and hostile goals are weakened as self-esteem increases. This study investigated if a close correlate of self-esteem, mental toughness, is actually responsible for weakening effects of grandiose narcissism on aggression and hostile go...

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...

Affect figures prominently in theories of narcissists' reaction to provocation, but because these theories focus on negative affects, high-approach positive affect has not been studied. Here, we posited the “positive-passion hypothesis,” which states grandiose- but not vulnerable-narcissistic individuals experience high-approach positive affect rat...

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...