
Peter Karl -PK- JonasonUniversity of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw · Psychology Research Institute
Peter Karl -PK- Jonason
Ph.D.
Semi-retired, sort of.
About
305
Publications
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Introduction
I am most known for my work on the Dark Triad traits but also do work on mating decisions, morality, social media, and sexual signalling. I am psychometrician and quantitative researcher relying on big data, cross-national data, and experimental studies.
Editor-in-Chief
1. International Journal of Psych.
2. Advances in Cognitive Psych.
3. Studia Psychologica
4. Frontiers in (Evolutionary) Psych.
Publications
Publications (305)
The relationships among the Dark Triad (DT) traits-Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy-are well-established in psychological literature. However, with the inclusion of everyday sadism in the proposed Dark Tetrad, it is important to determine whether sadism adds significant explanatory power beyond psychopathy, especially given its high co...
While for some (maybe even most), the act of sex may be a rather silent affair, others may communicate their needs, fantasies, and pleasure to their partners. However, research on this topic has several methodological and conceptual shortcomings. In heterosexual participants (N = 433; MAge = 30.97, SD = 9.22, range = 18–73), who spoke German (20%;...
A prospective partner’s sexual history provides important information that can be used to minimise mating-related risks. Such information includes the number of past sexual partners, which has an inverse relationship with positive suitor evaluation. However, sexual encounters with new partners vary in frequency over time, providing an additional di...
In a multinational study (61 countries; N =15,039), we examined how collective narcissists, both agentic (ACN) and communal (CCN), reacted cognitively (through endorsement of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs) and behaviorally (via prevention, hoarding, and prosociality) to the pandemic. Higher ACN and CCN predicted greater endorsement of COV...
In this study (N = 495), dating apps were conceptualized as digital leks. We examined how interpersonal (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy), sexual (sociosexual attitudes, desires, and behavior), and search (satisficing, alternatives) styles relate to mating success through dating apps (dates and sex). Individuals with a faster life history...
While there is substantial research on what people want in their romantic and sexual partners, much of this work focuses on WEIRD, youthful samples, fails to consider the role of undesirable characteristics (i.e., things people do not want in partners) at all, or in conjunction with desirable characteristics (i.e., things people do want in partners...
The present study examined how the personality dimensions of the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) predict infidelity intentions and jealousy and whether these variables predict conflict tactics used in relationships. Adult women (N = 567, 18-73 years old, Mage = 31.91; SD = 10.29) completed self-report scales assessi...
We were interested in how people in a romantic relationship would perceive the intelligence of their partners who have high or low trait anger. Specifically, we referred to the tension between compassion (low anger) and competence (high intelligence) in mate choice. Some evolutionary theories suggest that mating might be considered a bargaining pro...
According to evolutionary psychologists, an individual—consciously or not—who allocates resources for somatic effort focuses on homeostasis and the protection of themselves and others. During health crises, patients must choose between mobilizing their remaining resources to either recover or accepting the disease as inevitable. When patients choos...
A theoretical perspective on grandiose narcissism suggests four forms of it (sanctity, admiration, heroism, rivalry) and states that these forms conduce to different ways of thinking and acting. Guided by this perspective, we examined in a multinational and multicultural study (61 countries; N = 15,039) how narcissism forms are linked to cognitions...
While previous studies guided by evolutionary life history theory have revealed several important socioecological moderators of the influence of population density (PD) on reproduction, absent is an understanding of how individual-level factors such as personal resources and sex differences might interact and play a role. Using data from a large sa...
Facial hair is a sexually dimorphic trait with potential evolutionary and sociocultural functions. Bearded men are perceived as dominant, aggressive, and masculine, but also as having better parenting skills. Men may intentionally manage the amount and shape of their facial hair as a part of their self-promotion strategy; however, facial hair manag...
Conspiracy beliefs may be a way to cope with a difficult and threatening world. In this exploratory study (N = 360; 51.4% men; Mage = 32.39, SD = 10.62), we tried to understand (a) general and (b) popular conspiracy beliefs in Poland using a life history perspective by examining their correlations with retrospective reports of one’s childhood condi...
Grandiose narcissism is defined as increased motivation for status and viewing oneself as entitled and superiorto others. We hypothesized that these tendencies might be associated with basal levels of testosterone becausetestosterone is considered the most social hormone—driving dominance and the motivation to achieve social status.We distinguished...
Recently, we identified 24 factors (e.g., appearance, conformity, leisure) that may capture whether people want to be similar or different from their sexual and romantic partners on different qualities in 274 (nWomen = 225) Italians (Marchi et al., 2023; Personality and Individual Differences). In this brief report, we reanalyzed that data, but now...
Objective
Narcissism may play a role in shaping body image concerns. Here we examined the relationships between narcissism (i.e., agentic extraversion, antagonism, narcissistic neuroticism, leadership/authority, exhibitionism/entitlement) and body image concerns and disturbances (i.e., drive for thinness, drive for muscularity, eating disorder symp...
The “Dirty Dozen” is a popular, brief, self-report scale to capture individual differences in the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). While the scale has good psychometric properties, there has not yet been an examination of informant ratings for this instrument, despite the apparent utility of informant ratings...
Grandiose narcissism is defined as increased motivation for status and viewing oneself as entitled and superior to others. We hypothesized that these tendencies might be associated with basal levels of testosterone because testosterone is considered the most social hormone-driving dominance and the motivation to achieve social status. We distinguis...
Morality is built upon individualizing (i.e., care, fairness) and binding (i.e., loyalty, authority, and purity) moral foundations, which are the systems that help people to make moral decisions and behave accordingly. Past research has found that moral foundations are related to past unethical behaviors, but we are the first to test them among peo...
Even though Poles accept war refugees from Ukraine, the refugees could represent a realistic threat (via economic competition), which could create anti-refugee attitudes. However, they are unlikely to represent a symbolic threat toward ingroup values, given that they are culturally like Poles. Agentic and communal national
narcissists differ in the...
This poster presents the findings of our study that trying to understand conspiratorial beliefs using a life history perspective.
Unfounded—conspiracy and health— beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal struct...
Background
Gaslighting is a form of psychological/emotional abuse inflicted upon an intimate partner that includes manipulative tactics such as misdirection, denial, lying, and contradiction – all to destabilize the victim/survivor. Compared to other forms of intimate partner abuse, gaslighting remains underexplored in the literature.
Aims/Purpose...
In a multinational project (N = 3707), we factor analyzed a commonly used self-report measure of intrasexual competition and found a three-dimensional system. We called these factors envy (i.e., wanting what others have), jealousy (i.e., protecting what one has), and competitiveness (i.e., beliefs that one is better). To better understand these fac...
Mate value is an important concept in mate choice research although its operationalization and understanding are limited. Here, we reviewed and evaluated previously established conceptual and methodological approaches measuring mate value and presented original research using individual differences in how people view themselves as a face-valid prox...
Men with distinct facial hair are perceived as more aggressive, dominant, older, and more formidable, mostly by other men. However, despite considerable interest in the social perception of beardedness, only a few studies have explored men’s preferences toward facial hair. We investigated men’s preferences toward facial hair and whether their judgm...
Moral foundations (i.e., care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) are systems that help people make important decisions. We propose a new approach to the scoring of moral foundations by measuring their relative importance (i.e., how important the foundation is compared to others). In Study 1 (N = 1283), we observed that absolute and relative...
Respondents select the type of psychological studies that they want to participate in consistence with their needs and individual characteristics, which creates an unintentional self-selection bias. The question remains whether participants attracted by psychological studies may have more psychological dysfunctions related to personality and affect...
In this study (N = 367; 62.53 % men) we reconsidered the Napoleon complex that suggests shorter people—men in particular—may compensate for their shortness with antagonistic behaviors. We conceptualized antagonism as individual differences in the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) and found they were associated...
We replicated and extended (N = 495) what is known about the relationships between the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and a wider range (than previously reported) of sociosexuality including risky sexual behaviors (e.g., lack of condom use) and sexuality in relation to dating applications like Tinder, in general...
Intimate partner cyberstalking refers to the monitoring and controlling of an intimate partner through technologies. Unlike the cyberstalking of strangers, less is known about the motives and perpetration of intimate partner cyberstalking. In this study, we explore how vulnerable narcissism, secondary psychopathy, and borderline traits (i.e., the "...
Evolutionary social science is having a renaissance. This volume showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements produced by the evolutionary study of romantic relationships. The editors assembled an international collection of contributors to trace how evolved psychological mechanisms shape strategic computation and behavior across the life s...
We investigated how objective, behavioral data on social media use was correlated with the Dark Tetrad facets and the HEXACO traits. We tracked usage time and usage session of social media users (N = 243), considering Instagram to be a visual social medium compared to Facebook and, therefore, to be related to “dark” personality characteristics (i.e...
The Oxford Handbook of Human Mating covers the contributions and up-to-date theories and empirical evidence from scientists regarding human mating strategies. The scientific studies of human mating have only recently risen, revealing fresh discoveries about mate attraction, mate choice, marital satisfaction, and other topics. Darwin’s sexual select...
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 205, April 2023, 112075
What kind of Dr do you want to be?: A cross-sectional study measuring personality and sex effects of medical students☆
Author links open overlay panelIrem F.KashikchiaBayram M.SavrunbPeter K.Jonasonc
a
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
b
Faculty of Medi...
To better understand how personality traits related to interpersonal functioning, we considered (N = 308) the possibility that personality leads to certain love styles which then lead to social rejection in the forms of low self-esteem and high loneliness. We focused here on the Five Factor model derived from the DSM (i.e., psychoticism, antagonism...
While people value a good sense of humor in their potential romantic partners, we know comparatively less about the function of humor in long-term relationships. Using the survey method, we measured the production, appreciation, and quality of humor along with humor styles and dyadic adjustment in long-term relationships among 149 heterosexual coup...
Objective: Religiosity and spirituality are central to people's lives and shape their worldviews and cognitions. Based upon existing knowledge, we suggest that their influence increases susceptibility to accumulating evaluation-disabling beliefs known as contaminated mindware (i.e., pseudoscience, conspiracy, and paranormal beliefs), which may lead...
With the threat of COVID-19, conspiratorial beliefs have proliferated, and people’s religiosity has risen. However, religiosity may only capture a narrow range of people’s meta-physical beliefs, spirituality may capture other aspects, and both of which may be associated with conspiratorial beliefs differently. To better understand the distinction b...
Collective narcissism (CN) is associated with outgroup threat-evoked hostility and anti-refugee attitudes. Agentic CNs are more sensitive to realistic than symbolic threats, whereas communal collective narcissists are more sensitive to symbolic threats. Albeit Poles accepted war refugees from Ukraine, the refugees could represent realistic threat (...
We tested the psychometric properties of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen measure of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism in Portugal ( n = 1,034) and Spain ( n = 386). Adult ( M = 43.40, SD = 14.81, range = 18–88) participants (1,113 women) completed the Dirty Dozen measure of each trait along with ultrabrief measures of extraversion, openness,...
The Dark Triad traits are characterised by a callousness, antagonistic, and a norm-violating core, and on their own they are linked to a sense of entitlement and grandiosity (i.e., narcissism), impulsivity and callousness (i.e., psychopathy), and manipulativeness and cynicism (i.e., Machiavellianism). Individuals characterised by these traits might...
In the current paper we introduce a new conceptualization of communal narcissism, as encompassed by two narcissistic strategies congruent with self-promotion and self-defensive motives. In addition, we posit that communal narcissistic strategies should be aligned with communal self-enhancement. Therefore, we propose narcissistic sanctity as an ego-...
Because conspiracy theories have many negative consequences, understanding the psychological factors underlying their endorsement is an important task for researchers. We examined whether people's time perspective (TP) – the tendency to focus on the certain aspects of the past, present, or future – is associated with conspiracy beliefs. In two stud...
With this meta-analytic review, we aimed to estimate the relationship that sadistic personality has with the Dark Triad traits and, secondarily, describe the research on the Dark Tetrad traits. We searched for articles in the following databases, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, PubMed, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, and Web of Science, where we found 128 articles...
Most research on the development of personality traits like the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) focuses on local effects like parenting style or attachment, but people live in a larger society that may set the stage for any local effects. Here we paired nation-level data on the traits from 49 nations with several mi...
In this study, we replicated what is known about the relative importance of dealbreakers (i.e., traits avoided) and dealmakers (i.e., traits sought) in romantic and sexual relationships and extended it to an examination of self-reports of mate value, self-esteem, and loneliness. In two experiments (N = 306; N = 304) we manipulated the information p...
This research aimed to explore the dimensionality of online and offline stalking forms and the associations between Dark Tetrad traits and perpetration of various stalking behaviors. Serbian adults (N = 232; 64.2% women) completed the Short Dark Triad, the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale, the Cyberstalking Scale, and a newly developed instrument—the S...
In the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we collected data (N = 1,420) from Portugal and Spain in relation to personality (i.e., Dark Triad traits, Big Five traits, religiousness, and negative affect) and attitudes related to COVID-19 about its origins, opinions on how to deal with it, and fear of it. The most pervasive patterns we f...
When people cannot find desirable mating prospects, they may abstain, lower their standards, or travel farther to solve this mate shortage. We examined people's (N = 306) willingness to adopt these three solutions to mating shortages in relation to individual differences in disgust in men and women and for long-term and short-term partners. Those w...
The occurrence of depression is influenced by social relationships, however, most studies focus on individuals, not couples. We aimed to study how depressive symptoms of couples evolve over time and determine, which characteristics are associated with their distinct trajectories. A multi-centric cohort sample of 11,136 heterosexual couples (mean ag...
How humans choose their mates is a central feature of adult life and an area of considerable disagreement among relationship researchers. However, few studies have examined mate choice (instead of mate preferences) around the world, and fewer still have considered data from online dating services. Using data from more than 1.8 million online daters...
Intimate partners are common targets of cyberstalking, yet despite the negative impact the behavior remains largely underexplored. In the present study, we explore behavioral methods adopted to cyberstalk intimate partners. Participants (N = 449, 50.1% men) recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk completed an online questionnaire and we assessed a r...
Network analysis offers an opportunity to gain a more nuanced view of the connections between the darker aspects of personality by examining the interrelationships between the components that make up these constructs. We examined the associations that five dark personality dispositions (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and s...
Contract cheating is a critical emerging threat to academic integrity in higher education. Although some situ-ational predictors of student engagement in contract cheating are known, little is known about the psychological predictors of contract cheating. Intentions are a key predictor of future behavior. Thus, in this study, students' (N = 459) in...
The #MeToo movement has drawn attention to sexual harassment in the workplace. Using an adaptationist approach, two studies were designed to investigate sex differences in perceptions of a sexually ambiguous comment and individual differences that may explain variation in those perceptions. Study 1 (n = 179) was a within-subjects study to investiga...
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a source of fear around the world. We asked whether the measurement of this fear is trustworthy and comparable across countries. In particular, we explored the measurement invariance and cross-cultural replicability of the widely used Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), testing community samples from 48 countri...
We tried to understand individual differences in two super-categories of cues to vulnerability. In a qualitative, act-nomination study (N = 79), we found several underpowered patterns in that more physical cues of vulnerability were listed than psychological ones, no sex difference were observed for number of psychological vulnerabilities, but men...
We tried to understand responses to the 2020 restrictions on abortions in Poland. We found (N = 255) that religious people (predominantly Catholic) were in favor of the ban as were people who held binding moral values. In addition, people who saw the ban negatively and providing opportunities for duty and mating were less in favor of the ban wherea...
The motivation to mate is a universal motive for all sexually dimorphic species, of which humans belong, that facilitates reproductive success. Jealousy is a universal emotion that is adaptive in the context of mate retention. We tested the relationship between the Dark Triad traits and jealousy as well as the moderating effect of mate value (study...
We thank Sharpe and colleagues for the opportunity to discuss our article titled “The dark side of the rainbow: Homosexuals and bisexuals have higher Dark Triad traits than heterosexuals” in more detail. Here, we address the methodological concerns raised by Sharpe et al. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111270) and conclude by discussing our c...
Dark personality traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, spitefulness, and sadism) are associated with adverse childhood experiences and deviant online behaviors. However, their mediating role between childhood emotional abuse and cyberbullying has never previously been investigated. We examined direct and indirect associations of...
Narcissism, especially the vulnerable kind, is associated with anger and hostility. In a sample of outpatients, group psychotherapy ( N = 74) and community members ( N = 153), we replicated and extended previous work linking vulnerable, but not grandiose, narcissism to hostile attributions across different socio-relational contexts. We also examine...
Researchers have examined overt social-behavioral manifestations of Dark Triad traits, while mostly ignoring the similarities in the covert self-concept of these individuals. Across two independent samples, we investigated aspects of an unstable self-concept in relation to the Dark Triad traits. In Study 1 (N = 298), we found that higher levels of...
Individual differences in how people perceive the world, might be important factors underlying their personality traits and pathologies. In the current study (N = 253) we examined the associations between the maladaptive Big Five traits and perceptions of three situations (i.e., a bar, a classroom, and an office). Adversity was the most central per...
Researchers have extensively explored the early and middle stages of romantic and sexual relationships for those high on the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism) but they have generally missed the termination stage of relationships. In this study we examined (N = 341) the role these traits play in one termination...
We thank Sharpe and colleagues for the opportunity to discuss our article titled “The dark side of the rainbow: Homosexuals and bisexuals have higher Dark Triad traits than heterosexuals” in more detail. Here, we address the methodological concerns raised by Sharpe et al. and conclude by discussing our critics’ problematic suggestion that there is...
In this brief report, we examined (N = 449; 50.1% men) the role of the Dark Tetrad traits (i.e., psychopathy, sadism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) and Fundamental Social Motives (i.e., social bonds, status, safety, mate-seeking, mate-retention, pathogen avoidance, family, and autonomy) in relation to self-reported perpetration of cyberstalking...
Background
There is considerable variation in people’s attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic. One way to understand why people differ in their attitudes is to examine how personality traits predict the degree to which people hold different attitudes.
Methods
We collected data (N = 1420) from Portugal and Spain using Facebook advertising. We meas...
The Dark Triad is a term used to describe a constellation of three socially undesirable personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Dirty Dozen scale, a brief measure of the Dark Triad, among a sample of 412 at-risk youths from Portugal (M = 13.19...