Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 120–124

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Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Self-construals and the Dark Triad traits in six countries☆
Peter K. Jonason a,⁎, Joshua Foster b, Atsushi Oshio c, Maria Sitnikova d, Bela Birkas e, Valdiney Gouveia faWestern Sydney University, Australia
University of South Alabama, United Statesc
Waseda University, Japand
Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, RussiaeUniversity of Pecs, HungaryfUniversidade Federal da Paraiba, Brazilb

a r t i c l e

i n f oArticle history:
Received 23 January 2017
Received in revised form 21 February 2017
Accepted 23 February 2017
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Psychopathy
Narcissism
Machiavellianism
Sex differences
IndependenceInterdependence
Self-construals

a b s t r a c t
In a sample (N = 1969) drawn from six countries, we examined the relationships between individual differences
in independent and interdependent self-construals and the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, andMachiavellianism). Overall, the Dark Traits were largely unrelated to interdependence whereas Machiavellianism and narcissism, in particular, were associated with stronger independent self-construals. Men scored higher
than women did on the Dark Triad traits in all countries with some cross-cultural variance. Women were usedboth more independent and interdependent self-construals than men were but these were weak and driven
by country-speciﬁc effects. Sex differences in the Dark Triad traits were partially accounted for by individual differences in self-construals, but these mediation effects were quite small and speculative given limited evidence
for sex differences in self-construals in the six countries we sampled. Results are discussed in terms of differentiating the Dark Triad traits.
© 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The Dark Triad traits (Paulhus & Williams, 2002) capture individual
differences in grandiosity, exhibitionism, superiority (i.e., narcissism),
manipulativeness, cynicism (i.e., Machiavellianism), interpersonal antagonism, and callousness (i.e., psychopathy). The traits have theoretical and practical implications for various ﬁelds of research, includingorganizational, clinical, and social psychology. In the present study, we
attempt to provide new details on how one can differentiate and understand these traits in relation to individual differences in independent(i.e., deﬁning the self in terms of unique qualities) and interdependent(i.e., deﬁning the self in terms of relationships with others) selfconstruals using a cross-cultural sample of participants representing
six different countries given the potential cross-cultural differences inself-construals (Kashima et al., 1995).
Independence and interdependence are part of a larger body of evidence suggesting that personality traits can be organized in a super-ordinate fashion along two dimensions. These “Big Two” dimensions(Gebauer, Wagner, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2013; Triandis, 1989) haveslightly different labels but all center on the distinction between “self☆ Authors' note: Thanks to Virgil Zeigler-Hill for reviewing our study prior to
submission.
⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney
University, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.
E-mail address: pjonason@westernsydney.edu.au (P.K. Jonason).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.053
0191-8869/© 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

interested” or self-proﬁtable traits (i.e., independence/agency; e.g., ambition, competitive, masculine) and “other-interested” or other proﬁtable traits (i.e., interdependence/communion; e.g., caring, generous,
feminine). These basic units of personality are genetically inﬂuenced(Neiss et al., 2005) and situationally stable (Baumeister & Leary,1995). There is considerable evidence suggesting the Dark Triad traits
should be correlated with independent and interdependent selfconstruals. For example, the Dark Triad traits (Jonason & Webster,2010) and independence are correlated with anger (Akutsu,
Yamaguchi, Kim, & Oshio, 2016). The Dark Triad traits, especially narcissism, have a self-interested and, at times, an anti-group dispositionalcore (Jonason, Strosser, Kroll, Duineveld, & Barufﬁ, 2015). And third,
agency is characterized by a desire to be independent and autonomousas the Dark Triad traits are correlated with similar motivations like needfor power, prestige, and dominance (Jonason & Ferrell, 2016); with limited associations for motivations that resemble communion like theneed for afﬁliation. Taken together, we expect individual differences inself-construals to relate to the Dark Triad traits in predictable ways. Primarily, we expect it to strongly differentiate the Dark Triad traits suchthat narcissism is the primary hub of the correlation between independent self-construals and the Dark Triad traits which should be rather
cross-culturally invariant. Second, we expect the traits to collectively berather orthogonal with interdependent self-construals with even a slightly negative association for psychopathy given its “antisocial” nature.

P.K. Jonason et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 120–124

In addition, there is cause to expect sex differences in both the Dark
Triad traits and self-construals. Men score higher than women do on the
Dark Triad traits in most countries sampled (Jonason, Li, & Czarna,2013), which may be a function of differences in the costs and beneﬁts
ancestral men and women have experienced for engaging in fast andslow life history strategies. In contrast, sex differences in self-construals(Cross & Madson, 1997; Kashima et al., 1995) may be a function of different cultural inﬂuences on what is male and female stereotyped behavior (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014). Regardless of which “origin” story
is correct, there is, therefore, cause to predict that (1) men should
score higher on the Dark Triad traits and independent self-construals
than women do, (2) women should score higher on the interdependent
self-constuals, and (3) the sex differences in the Dark Triad traits might
be mediated by individual differences in self-construals such that highscores on independent and low scores on interdependent selfconstruals should facilitate the presence of the Dark Triad traits in men.
In this study, we investigate how individual differences in selfconstruals allow us to better understand and differentiate the Dark
Triad traits. We also examine how those self-construals might act as
mediators for sex differences in the Dark Triad traits. Importantly, we
test these predictions in an ethnically diverse sample drawn from six
countries to get some sense of the robustness/variance in these effects
around the world.
1. Method
1.1. Participants and procedure
Participants (NGrand = 1969; MAge = 21.33, SDAge = 3.99, Range =16 to 47) were 310 Australian (97 men; MAge = 19.17, SDAge = 3.70),
351 Japanese (135 men; MAge = 21.42, SDAge = 1.41), 371 Russian (94men; MAge = 19.17, SDAge = 2.35), 300 Hungarians (129 men;
MAge = 25.00, SDAge = 4.26), 306 Brazilian (91 men; MAge = 22.47,
SDAge = 5.56), and 331 American (90 men; MAge = 20.73, SDAge =2.86) undergraduate college students who participated in a larger online (translated and back-translated in the non-English speaking samples) study about “personality and views of the future” in exchange
for course credit in their psychology classes. Participants were informedof the nature of the study, asked to consent and, if provided, completed aseries of self-report measures where the items were randomized withineach measure. Upon completion participants were thanked anddebriefed.
1.2. Measures
The 27-item Short Dark Triad (Jones & Paulhus, 2014) was used tomeasure Machiavellianism (e.g., “I like to use clever manipulation to
get my way.”), narcissism (e.g., “I insist on getting the respect I deserve.”), and psychopathy (e.g., “people who mess with me always regret it.”). Participants indicated their agreement to the above (1 =strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). Items for each scale were averaged together to create indexes of narcissism, Machiavellianism, andpsychopathy.1,2
We assessed individual differences in self-construals using a 20-item
measure taken from Singelis (1994) and Takata (1999) as used previously by Park and Kitayama (2012) and validated in Japanese (Uchida,2008) and Brazilian samples (Gouveia, Singelis, & Coelho, 2002)
1
In the full sample Machiavellianism was correlated with narcissism (r = .09, p b .01)
but it was correlated with psychopathy (r = .46, p b .01) and psychopathy was correlatedwith narcissism (r = .15, p b .01). The weak correlation between narcissism and Machiavellianism was created by a slightly negative one in the Japanese sample (rs = −.05).
Country-speciﬁc correlations are available upon request.
2
As this measure has already been validated in English and Japanese(Shimotsukasa & Oshio, in press), we were conﬁdent in its utility there, but because
this is a relatively new measure, we checked it in our other samples and found fairﬁt elsewhere (e.g., χ2s/df ≈ 2.35, RMSEAs ≈ 0.06).

121

where 10 items measured independence (e.g., “I enjoy being uniqueand different from others in many respects.”) and 10 items measured
interdependence (e.g., “I would offer my seat in a bus to my professor
or my boss.”). Participants indicated their level of agreement (1 =strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) with the items. The independence
and interdependence scales had adequate internal consistency (seeTable 2) and were orthogonal in the full sample (r = .02), but positively
correlated in the Japanese sample (r = .29, p b .01).3

2. Results
Table 1 contains descriptive statistics and sex differences tests forscores on the Dark Triad traits and self-construals. Men scored higher
than women did on the Dark Triad traits around the world with negligible differences for narcissism in America and Japan. In contrast, women
were more likely to use independent and interdependent selfconstruals than men were in the full sample, but these sex differenceswere markedly smaller than those for the Dark Triad traits and were
driven by isolated effects in America for independence and Japan andRussia for interdependence. While there were no interactions of location and participant's sex (2 × 6 ANOVA) for narcissism, independence,and interdependence, there were interactions for Machiavellianism(F(5, 1962) = 3.41, p b 0.05, η2p = 0.01) and psychopathy (F(5,1962) = 2.60, p b 0.05, η2p = 0.01), such that sex differences for psychopathy were moderate in size for all countries except Japan whereas
sex differences in Machiavellianism were particularly pronounced in
Hungary and Japan. There were country effects for narcissism (F(5,1962) = 56.53, p b 0.01, η2p = 0.13), Machiavellianism (F(5, 1962) =36.66, p b 0.01, η2p = 0.09), psychopathy (F(5, 1962) = 30.30,
p b 0.01, η2p = 0.07), independent (F(5, 1946) = 34.32, p b 0.01, η2p =0.08), and interdependent (F(5, 1946) = 11.39, p b 0.01, η2p = 0.03),
self-construals. Brieﬂy, it appears that Japan was particularly high on
psychopathy whereas Russia was much lower; America was the mostnarcissistic and independent whereas Japan was the least; Japan was
the most Machiavellian whereas Australia was the least; and Japan
was the most interdependent and Hungary was the least. When wecompared relative Dark Triad scores overall we found that participants
were the most Machiavellian, then narcissistic, and then psychopathic(F(2, 3932) = 1495.65, p b 0.01, η2p = 0.43). This same pattern was observed in Hungary (F = 182.31, η2p = 0.37), Brazil (F = 412.55, η2p =.58), Australia (F = 475.20, η2p = 0.61), and Japan (F = 400.93, η2p =0.53). In the American (F = 414.80, η2p = 0.56) and Russian (F =486.98, η2p = 0.57) samples, the differences between Machiavellianismand narcissism were not signiﬁcant.
Next, we examined the correlations between the Dark Triad traits
and individual differences in independence and interdependence forall samples combined and in each country speciﬁcally (Table 2). For all
samples combined, Machiavellianism and narcissism were moderately
associated with higher independence. All three traits had particularly
weak (rs b 0.13) associations with interdependence. Across samples,
correlations with Dark Triad traits were the most consistent for narcissism and independence (rs = 0.23 to 0.36), whereas the correlations
varied more substantially across samples for all other combinations ofDark Triad traits and self-construals. This was not entirely surprising
given that stronger correlations tend to be more stable than weaker correlations, and we have mostly smallish correlations. Strangely, in Japan,
where independence and individualism were correlated, Machiavellianism was similarly correlated with independence and interdependence. However, when we corrected for Type 1 error inﬂation, thecross-cultural variability mostly disappeared. The correlations between
Machiavellianism and individual differences in interdependence were
negatively correlated mean country-level independence (r = −0.84).
The correlations between psychopathy and individual differences in
3Country-speciﬁc correlations are available upon request.

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P.K. Jonason et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 120–124

Table 1
Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alphas, and sex differences in the Dark Triad traits and individual differences in self-construals in the full sample and by country sampled.
M (SD)
Dark Triad

Self-construals

Narcissism

Psychopathy

Machiavellianism

IndependenceInterdependence

Full sample
OverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .68
2.80 (0.64)
2.88 (0.65)
2.77 (0.63)
3.53⁎⁎

α = .71
2.12 (0.62)
2.34 (0.62)
2.01 (0.59)
11.35⁎⁎

α = .72
3.02 (0.63)
3.16 (0.63)
2.94 (0.62)
7.29⁎⁎

α = .77
3.65 (0.61)
3.60 (0.59)
3.67 (0.61)−2.62⁎⁎

α = .64
3.44 (0.51)
3.40 (0.51)
3.46 (0.51)−2.45⁎

0.16

0.51

0.33

−0.12

−0.11

America
OverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .643.03 (0.54)
3.09 (0.51)
3.01 (0.56)
1.17
0.15

α = .75
2.11 (0.60)
2.35 (0.57)
2.02 (0.59)
4.49⁎⁎
0.57

α = .75
2.99 (0.64)
3.16 (0.62)
2.92 (0.64)
3.08⁎⁎
0.38

α = .82
3.82 (0.64)
3.68 (0.64)
3.86 (0.63)−2.30⁎−0.25

α = .58
3.48 (0.50)
3.50 (0.49)
3.50 (0.49)
−1.33
−0.15

Australia
OverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .68
2.98 (0.61)
3.19 (0.59)
2.89 (0.59)
4.20⁎⁎
0.47

α = .73
1.99 (0.57)
2.26 (0.54)
1.86 (0.53)
6.05⁎⁎
0.68

α = .77
2.72 (0.54)
2.88 (0.56)
2.65 (0.58)
3.23⁎⁎
0.36

α = .74
3.67 (0.53)
3.61 (0.52)
3.70 (0.53)
−1.32
−0.15

α = .59
3.50 (0.42)
3.50 (0.46)
3.50 (0.46)
−0.26
−0.03

BrazilOverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .51
2.70 (0.50)
2.81 (0.54)
2.65 (0.47)
2.47⁎

α = .59
1.96 (0.52)
2.10 (0.59)
1.90 (0.47)
2.70⁎⁎

α = .60
2.88 (0.51)
2.98 (0.57)
2.84 (0.47)
2.27⁎

0.31

0.37

0.27

α = .78
3.67 (0.63)
3.68 (0.51)
3.66 (0.66)
0.29
0.03

α = .61
3.55 (0.55)
3.56 (0.53)
3.55 (0.51)
0.23
0.03

Hungary
OverallMen
Women
t−Value
Cohen's d

α = .71
2.79 (0.64)
2.89 (0.65)
2.72 (0.63)
2.20⁎

α = .74
2.21 (0.68)
2.44 (0.64)
2.03 (0.65)
5.36⁎⁎

α = .78
3.03 (0.73)
3.26 (0.75)
2.85 (0.66)
4.91⁎⁎

0.26

0.63

0.58

α = .69
3.69 (0.52)
3.68 (0.51)
3.70 (0.53)
−0.47
−0.05

α = .64
3.26 (0.55)
3.30 (0.54)
3.22 (0.55)
1.29
0.15

Japan
OverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .79
2.37 (0.62)
2.42 (0.61)
2.34 (0.63)
1.23
0.14

α = .73
2.47 (0.58)
2.56 (0.59)
2.41 (0.56)
2.25⁎
0.25

α = .74
3.39 (0.53)
3.40 (0.54)
3.38 (0.51)
0.49
0.05

α = .80
3.26 (0.61)
3.27 (0.60)
3.26 (0.62)
0.07
0.01

α = .78
3.44 (0.54)
3.37 (0.57)
3.49 (0.52)−2.08⁎−0.22

RussiaOverallMen
Woment-Value
Cohen's d

α = .72
2.95 (0.64)
3.04 (0.60)
2.92 (0.65)
1.72⁎

α = .72
1.94 (0.59)
2.19 (0.61)
1.86 (0.56)
4.78⁎⁎

α = .69
3.03 (0.60)
3.16 (0.51)
2.99 (0.62)
2.57⁎

α = .61
3.41 (0.46)
3.31 (0.39)
3.45 (0.48)−2.54⁎

0.20

0.56

0.29

α = .78
3.80 (0.56)
3.78 (0.51)
3.80 (0.53)
−0.37
−0.04

−0.26

⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

interdependence were correlated mean country-level independence(r = 0.92). No other correlations were large enough to be consideredsigniﬁcant with country-level independence or interdependence
through this study which may be a function of the small sample sizeof countries under consideration.4
Descriptively, we examined the correlations in men and women(Table 2). The overall correlation between Machiavellianism and independence was stronger in men than in women but the opposite pattern
emerged for overall narcissism. The effect for Machiavellianism wasdriven by country-speciﬁc effects in Hungary and Japan whereas the effect for narcissism was driven by country-speciﬁc effects in Australiaand Hungary. When it came to interdependence, effects were not as
4
In hopes of understanding the effects we also used the Human Development Report(http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/ﬁles/2015_human_development_report_1.pdf), but as
we only had six countries, no associations were signiﬁcant (p b 0.05) smaller than 0.82. Instead of reporting technically non-signiﬁcant relationships, some as large as 0.72, we omit
them here. The interested reader is encouraged to contact the ﬁrst author. Nevertheless, as
we were not directly trying to account for cross-cultural variance, we feel this is a tangential consideration presently.

sweeping but we mention them here. For Machiavellianism, the correlation in men was larger than in women but the reverse was the casein Russia. For psychopathy, psychopathy was more strongly correlatedwith interdependence in men than women in America and Russia,
whereas the opposite was true in Hungary. We urge caution in the interpretation of country-speciﬁc effects given the various sources of error
present in cross-cultural personality research (e.g., translation, conceptual) and Type 1 error inﬂation.
And last, we tested for mediation of sex differences. We conﬁned our
mediation test to the full sample but county-speciﬁc tests are available
upon request. However, the effects themselves were particularly
weak, not crossing zero in six bootstrapped regressions with 1000 samples. For psychopathy, there was partial mediation for interdependence(ΔR2 = 0.01, F = 22.41, p b 0.01, βSex at Step 1 = − 0.25, βSex at Step
2 = −0.24) suggesting that part of being low on interdependence facilitates psychopathy in men. For Machiavellianism, there was partial suppression for interdependence (ΔR2 = 0.01, F = 20.26, p b 0.01, βSex at
Step 1 = − 0.16, βSex at Step 2 = − 0.17) such that the association forparticipant's sex grew slightly after adding in Machiavellianism. And

P.K. Jonason et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 113 (2017) 120–124

123

Table 2
Zero-order and moderated correlations between self-construals and the Dark Triad traits.
Independence

Machiavellianism
Full sample
America
Australia
BrazilHungaryJapan
RussiaNarcissism
Full sample
America
Australia
BrazilHungaryJapan
RussiaPsychopathy
Full sample
America
Australia
BrazilHungaryJapan
RussiaInterdependence

Overall

Men

Women

z

Overall

Men

Women

z

0.20⁎⁎
0.10
0.05
0.13⁎
0.13⁎
0.25⁎⁎

0.16⁎⁎
0.06
0.03
0.12
0.42⁎⁎
0.43⁎⁎

−0.04
0.14⁎
0.08
0.13
−0.09
0.14⁎

0.11⁎⁎
−0.03
0.20⁎
0.01
0.18⁎
0.42⁎⁎

0.07

−0.08

0.10⁎⁎
0.14⁎
0.08
−0.01
0.04
0.23⁎⁎
0.12⁎

0.21
−1.36
0.97
0.16
1.21
1.93⁎

0.09

−0.13⁎

0.09⁎⁎
0.08
0.11
−0.01
0.12⁎
0.30⁎⁎−0.09

4.15⁎⁎
−0.65
−0.40
−0.08
4.57⁎⁎
2.88⁎⁎
1.83⁎

0.37⁎⁎
0.31⁎⁎
0.24⁎⁎
0.33⁎⁎
0.36⁎⁎
0.23⁎⁎
0.33⁎⁎

0.32⁎⁎
0.14
0.29⁎⁎
0.23⁎
0.45⁎⁎

0.40⁎⁎
0.38⁎⁎
0.25⁎⁎
0.39⁎⁎
0.30⁎⁎
0.29⁎⁎
0.36⁎⁎−1.89⁎
1.43
0.34
−1.39
1.49
−1.52
−1.18

−0.06⁎
0.03
−0.10
0.06
−0.03
−0.16⁎⁎−0.13⁎

−0.01
−0.06
−0.00
0.14
0.07
−0.15
−0.08

−0.08⁎⁎
0.06
−0.13
0.01
−0.12
−0.16⁎−0.13⁎

1.45
−0.96
1.04
1.02
1.62
0.09
0.42

−0.05
0.01
−0.05
0.17⁎

0.62
1.32
0.79
1.26
2.35⁎

−0.12⁎⁎−0.08
0.01−0.16⁎⁎−0.13⁎⁎−0.33⁎⁎
−0.08
−0.17
0.07
−0.04
−0.37⁎−0.09⁎⁎
0.04−0.08−0.16⁎−0.20⁎−0.83−3.06⁎⁎
0.90
−0.08
2.32⁎

−0.12
−0.10

0.73
−2.38⁎⁎−0.05⁎
−0.09
−0.05
0.12⁎
0.10
0.18⁎⁎
−0.05

0.13
0.23⁎
−0.02
−0.25⁎
0.05
0.01
0.27⁎⁎
0.11
−0.02

−0.00
0.22⁎⁎
−0.05

−1.02
0.25

−0.06
−0.09
−0.19⁎⁎−1.66⁎

Note. z is Fisher's z to compare independent correlations.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

for narcissism, there was partial mediation for interdependence (ΔR2 =0.003, F = 5.41, p b 0.05, βSex at Step 1 = −0.08, βSex at Step 2 = −0.07)
but partial suppression for independence (ΔR2 = 0.14, F = 309.35,
p b 0.01, βSex at Step 1 = − 0.07, βSex st Step 2 = − 0.09). Despite
conﬁrming our hypothesis for psychopathy and narcissism, the weakness of these effects, the emergence of and difﬁculty in interpreting suppression effects, and the fact that there were few country-speciﬁc sex
differences in self-construals, we urge caution in their overinterpretation.
3. Discussion
There can be no question that the personality distinction of agency
and communion is sweeping and can be seen in how people describeor construe themselves (e.g., Kashima et al., 1995; Wojciszke &Bialobrzeska, 2014). One set of traits that may be better understoodwith this distinction is the Dark Triad. To date, however, few researchers
have attempted to understand and differentiate them using individual
differences in self-construals. In a study drawn from six countries, we
examined the utility of self-construals to account for overall and sex-differentiated variance in the Dark Triad traits.
The evidence for an association between narcissism and independent construals was overwhelming and cross-culturally stable. Resultsfor Machiavellianism and independent self-construals were less compelling. Machiavellianism was correlated with independent self-construal overall but especially in Brazil, Hungary, and Japan. And last,results for psychopathy and independent self-construals were particularly weak. Psychopathy was not negatively correlated with independent self construals but this was rather weak, driven by slightly
negative correlations in all countries expect Japan and Brazil. The failure
to ﬁnd strong evidence in psychopathy might be a method artifact ormight indicate that those high in psychopathy do not deﬁne themselvesin terms of uniqueness or relatedness. Future research might beneﬁt
from determining just how those high in psychopathy deﬁne themselves, with a similar need in Machiavellianism. In both cases, themore relevant self-deﬁning concepts might be related to more success-driven factors. Indeed, when examining psychogenic motives,

results were equivocal for a link between autonomy or power—arguably
agency motives—and psychopathy and Machiavellianism (Jonason &Ferrell, 2016). However, there was clear orthogonality between the
Dark Triad traits and interdependent self-construals and between bothforms of self-construals (except a small correlation in Japan). Collectively, these results should be taken as modest support for the two dimensional nature of self-construals and that they allow us to at least
discriminate narcissism from psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
There is substantial evidence for cross-cultural differences in selfcontruals (Kashima et al., 1995; Triandis, 1989). Reliably, Asian countries tend to be more interdependent and less independent than Western countries, but few cross-cultural assessments have included places
like Hungary, Russia, and Brazil. Japan was particularly low on independent self-construals whereas Russia was particularly high. Brazil was
more centrally located in the independent self-construal space whereas
American and Australia were on the high side. In contrast, Brazil andJapan were particularly interdependent in their self-construals, whereas
it was particularly low in Hungary. Collectively, however, the samples
were more oriented towards independence than interdependence.
The factors that drive these cross-cultural differences are left to subsequent research with larger samples of countries, but if they follow
prior research, it may have to do with factors like environmental
stressors, gender equality, developmental progress, and the operationalsex ratio.
In contrast, to work on self-construals (Cross & Madson, 1997), there
is far less cross-cultural work on the Dark Triad traits. In one study, theSingaporean sample was lower on the Dark Triad traits than the Western sample (Jonason et al., 2013). In the present study, narcissism andindependent self-construals were most pronounced in America, interdependent self-construals were most pronounced in Japan and Brazil
but particularly weak in Hungary, and Japan and Hungary were highin psychopathy and Machiavellianism whereas Russia and Brazil wererather low. These results suggest a complicated pattern of countrylevel and trait-level differences that are beyond the present study to understand further. Future research will need to determine why such differences exist, but they may also be a function similar factors as for theagency-communion distinction (Gebauer et al., 2013).

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For both self-construals and the Dark Triad traits, there were reliable,
albeit weak-to-moderate in magnitude, sex differences. Consistent withprevious research, women were higher on the interdependent self-construal and lower on the Dark Triad traits than men were. Sex differencesin the Dark Triad traits were relatively robust to the country sampledwhich might classify them as obligate sex differences (i.e., sex-speciﬁc
adaptive design), nevertheless, with such a small sample of countries
it is hard to rule alternative hypotheses like facultatively calibrated sex
differences, emergently-moderated sex differences, or sex-role mediated effects. Nevertheless, the largest sex difference was inpsychopathy—a medium effect size—following by Machiavellianismand narcissism that were smaller in magnitude. Nevertheless, wefound at least some support for the idea that low rates of interdependent self-construals are partially responsible for sex differences in narcissism and psychopathy.
In contrast, sex differences in interdependent self-construals weremuch more variable across countries sampled and weak. If that were
not enough, sex differences in independent self-construals suggested
it was women, not men, who were more independent. It is noteworthy,
however, that this effect was localized to the American sample suggesting there may be cultural changes in America that uniquely drove thiseffect. Unfortunately, we cannot be too dogmatic in our appraisal ofthis effect given the imbalance of men and women in our sample,
Type 1 error inﬂation, and the reliance on a psychology undergraduate
sample. It is, however, possible that women are changing, becoming
more independent while simultaneously maintaining their interdependent core. Future research will need to verify the robustness of sex differences in self-construals, test for potential changes in them overtime, and what accounts for both those sex differences and the potentialchange over time.
4. Limitations and conclusions
Despite the use of cross-cultural data and examining individual-level
and country-level data, the study is characterized by a number of limitations. First, although our data span various regions of the globe it is limited to only one Asian country, two Eurasian countries, one SouthAmerican country, and two predominantly Anglo-Saxon countries, it
could still be described as educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic(Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) and was biased towards more
women than men which is a common limitation using undergraduate
psychology student samples and these countries were sampled atsome degree of convenience despite spanning much of the globe. Second, while we attempted to understand cross-cultural variance, we
fell short with the data at hand. However, the goal of this study was
not to understand cross-cultural variability. We leave that task tomore experienced cross-cultural researchers with larger datasets. Instead, our goal here was to try to understand the Dark Triad traits
using individual differences in self-construals. Third, most internal consistency estimates passed the standard threshold (i.e., 0.70; Nunnally,1978), a few only passed the more liberal threshold (i.e., 0.50;
Schmitt, 1996). Fourth, our data was explicit and cross-sectional in nature and there might be cause for implicit assessments of agency andcommunion to enhance our results (Park, Uchida, & Kitayama, 2015).
Fifth, we adopted a short measure of the Dark Triad traits which may
not have been as well tested as longer alternatives and is not reducible
to constituent parts to provide even ﬁner grained detail in the analysis.
Sixth, it is possible that the correlations we observed were somewhat
inﬂuenced by semantic overlap in the scale content. Content in the independent self-construal might be quite similar to, in particular, the items
that measure narcissism. While a potential limitation, this actually highlights the very claim that we are making that the independent and not
the interdependent form or self-construals are reﬂected in the Dark

Triad traits, narcissism in particular. Nevertheless, we have provided
new data, gathered from six nations to better understand individual differences in the Dark Triad traits.
In conclusion, we found that narcissism, especially, and Machiavellianism, to a lesser extent and a less cross-culturally stable way, were associated with independent self-construals whereas all three traits were
orthogonal to individual differences in interdependent self-construals
which themselves were orthogonal. This suggests that while the Dark
Triad traits might not all be likely to play-up their individuality (i.e., psychopathy in the present data), they are especially unlikely to emphasize
their relatedness or communion with others. We encourage future workthat examines the Dark Triad traits using non-self-report methods, in a
wider range of countries, and attempts to account for cross-culturalvariation.
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