The Dark Triad: The 3 Personality Traits That Destroy Everything Around Them

In 2002, psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams published a paper identifying a specific cluster of three personality traits that, when present together, predicted antisocial behavior, interpersonal damage, and long-term destruction of the environments in which they operated at rates that no single trait could explain alone. They called this cluster the Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. In the two decades since, it has become one of the most studied concepts in personality psychology — and one of the most practically important for anyone navigating complex social and professional environments.