The bartender asks, ‘who has the darkest personality out of you three?’ The Narcissist says ‘me’, the Psychopath says, ‘I don’t care’ and the Mach says ‘it’s whoever I want it to be’.

All embarrassing jokes aside, the Dark Triad of Personality rather ominously named, is an area of Psychological research which is attracting significant attention. It is however only a young field, in fact it was just over a decade ago that Paulhus and Williams (2002) coined the term ‘Dark Triad’. It’s an area of research that seems to intrigue Organisational, Clinical and Forensic Psychologists alike and of course has important implications for society as a whole. However, is there any real merit, use and/or empirical rigour in the study of these traits? I was inspired to delve a little deeper into the Dark Triad after last month’s blog on office politics, which touched on certain characteristics which fall…