An empirical analysis of the Dark Triad using a psycholinguistic software

In order to identify the "dark" characteristics of an individual, the Dark Triad of personality is often used. This psychological construct comprises three personality dimensions: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The three components are commonly measured using the Dirty Dozen scales (Jonason & Webster, 2010) or the Short Dark Triad Inventory (Jones & Paulhus, 2014). However, the measurement of the Dark Triad is associated with various problems. The three antisocial personality characteristics are conceptually different, yet empirically overlapping. This leads to distortions in the results of traditional and established inventories. Generally, results can be biased by particular response tendencies including the effort of a positive self-presentation, schematic response tendencies (acquiescence tendency, error of central tendency), and the orientation towards socially desirable behavior. External assessments can also be affected by subjective judgments of the assessor. Moreover, because of the nature of the three personality dimensions (manipulative character, overconfidence, acting instrumental), distorted measurements might be expected. Due to this fact, various validated and established questionnaires are criticized in the literature. The manipulative character itself creates extreme risks of distortion in self-assessments.

A promising method to resolve these difficulties of established Dark Triad inventories is an innovative speech analysis. It is based on the empirical finding that personality traits and feelings are much more difficult to sham and therefore it enables objective and valid assessments. The psycholinguistic software PRECIRE, which has been developed by PSYWARE GmbH, is able to identify certain psychological characteristics of the speaker by using voice recordings as well as transcribed language. The software utilizes methods of so-called formal-quantitative text-analysis and combines them with prosodic features from speech signals. Moreover, the software PRECIRE includes mechanisms of artificial intelligence and operates as a self-learning system. Investigating personality characteristics by examining the voice of a person with the psycholinguistic software is a completely innovative approach, that has not been utilized in management research before.

The proposed study, which is based on an exclusive collaboration of the University of Hohenheim and PSYWARE, focuses on the development and validation of a Dark Triad personality measurement. This investigation is to be conducted by using established methods that include different types of assessments (external and self-assessments) and the objective speech analysis. The idea is to get a three-sided point of view on an individual‘s personality in terms of the Dark Triad. The aim is to match the results of self-assessment questionnaires with external evaluation and objective speech analysis to find out to what extent they correlate.