Women’s preference for men with the three Dark Triad personality traits has again been confirmed by a new study. Women tend to chase after men with dark and brooding appearance for some benefits; such as social and reproductive (more offspring) success, suggests the new study.
Attraction to certain negative traits has previously been linked to having more offspring.
A selection of men’s faces which had been morphed to suggest the three negative character traits were shown to women by a group of psychologist. The dark triad is explained by spring.org as follows:
- Psychopathy: being selfish, callous, remorseless and anti-social.
- Machiavellianism: being manipulative, having low morals and exploiting others.
- Narcissism: having excessive amounts of pride, vanity and a massive ego. At the same time having little empathy for others. (Read – Signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
Dr Minna Lyons, one of the psychologists, detailed the result:
“We examined whether the preferences of the women surveyed for the Dark Triad personality traits in men’s faces were related to reproductive success.
Previous studies have found that out of the three Dark Triad features, narcissism was associated with physical and psychological health benefits in men as well as social success.
We predicted that women’s preference for narcissism could be most strongly related to their reproductive success, and as we found that women with preference for high narcissistic men’s faces gave birth to more offspring.
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Women with strong preference for Machiavellian male faces reported fewer offspring than their same-aged peers with weak preference.
Those with a preference for psychopathic men’s faces was unrelated to women’s current number of offspring.
These findings suggest that in today’s society women’s preference for some of the Dark Triad traits in men may be related to their reproductive success.”
Reference:
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Urszula M. Marcinkowska, Minna T. Lyons, Samuli Helle. Women’s reproductive success and the preference for Dark Triad in men’s faces: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.01.004