Three Students Win Graduate Student Research Award at SEPA

Erica, Jacq, and Nicole at SEPA 2023
Pictured left to right: Erica Van Overloop, Jacq Strowd, and Nicole Kollmann in front of their poster

The Counseling Psychology programs at the University of Southern Mississippi were well-represented at the 69th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association (SEPA) in New Orleans this year. Three students in the lab won a Graduate Student Research Award for their poster: Erica Van Overloop, Nicole Kollmann, and Jacq Strowd. Congratulations!

The poster presented some results from a recent study examining dark personality traits and criminal thinking as predictors of academic misconduct among college students. Narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits predicted academic dishonesty while taking gender and social desirability into account. Criminal thinking appeared to be a better predictor because once it was entered into the model narcissistic and psychopathic traits were no longer significant.

Van Overloop, E., Kollmann, N., Strowd, J., & Dahlen, E. R. (2023, April 5-8). Venturing into the darkness of academic dishonesty [Poster presentation]. 66th Annual Convention of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA, United States.

Savannah Merold Defends Dissertation

Savannah Merold, an advanced doctoral student who recently completed her predoctoral internship at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, MO, successfully defended her dissertation this week. Savannah's dissertation, "The role of mate seeking motives, status acquisition motives, and dark personality in predicting responses to an aggression-provoking situation," synthesized research from evolutionary and personality psychology. She used vignettes designed to activate social motives thought to be relevant to aggression (e.g., mate seeking, status acquisition), assessed dark personality traits, and examined participants' responses to an aggression-provoking scenario.

Although Savannah found evidence that the vignettes activated the intended motives for women, this was not the case for men. The smaller number of men in the study and some methodological limitations resulted in insufficient statistical power to detect these effects in men. Overall, hypotheses about social motives and dark personalty traits interacting with gender to predict aggressive responses were not supported. Future research in this area is likely to benefit from using much larger and more diverse samples that will permit more extensive examination of gender main effects and interactions.

Congratulations to Savannah on accomplishing this important milestone!

Jacqueline Strowd Completes Master's Project

Jacqueline Strowd successfully completed her master’s project and is now working on her dissertation proposal. Jacq’s master’s project examined a number of personality traits with either theoretical or empirical significance as possible predictors of academic dishonesty among college students. While most of the predictors she examined were positively related to academic dishonesty, psychopathic and Machiavellian personality traits were the only significant predictors in her regression model. Her secondary analyses identified one component of psychopathy and another of Machiavellianism that accounted for most of these relationships.

Jacq did a great job with her master’s project, and is planning to continue this line of research in her dissertation. Congratulations on finishing this project and moving on to the next step!

Savannah Merold Proposes Dissertation

rocks in the water
Savannah Merold, an advanced doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her dissertation today. Savannah’s dissertation will examine the role of mate-seeking and status acquisition motives, along with dark personality traits (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism), in the use of direct and indirect aggression.

Building on her thesis work, she plans to use vignettes to activate mate-seeking and status motives and examine how the dark personalty traits predict participants’ responses. Gender will also be included, as it is expected that women and men may respond differently.

Congratulations to Savannah on the successful proposal!

Taylor Bolton Defends Dissertation

Taylor Bolton's dissertation defense
Taylor Bolton, a 4th year doctoral student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, successfully defended her dissertation this week. Taylor’s study utilized structural equation modeling to test a multivariate model designed to improve our understanding of cyber aggression among college students and emerging adults not enrolled in college. She found that anger, sadistic personality traits, and moral disengagement predicted cyber aggression perpetration. Moreover, moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between sadistic traits and cyber aggression perpetration.

After completing the revisions requested by her committee, Taylor plans to re-examine some of her analyses as we work on streamlining her study for publication. By eliminating some of the variables that contributed little and adding at least one covariate, we hope to end up with a more parsimonious model that will be helpful in understanding cyber aggression.

Congratulations to Taylor on the successful defense of her dissertation!

Taylor is in the process of applying for predoctoral internships next year. Defending her dissertation early will give her more time to focus on the internship experience.

Taylor Bolton Proposes Dissertation

man typing on computer in the dark
Taylor Bolton, a student in her third year of the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program, successfully proposed her dissertation this week. Taylor’s dissertation, “Assessing the effects of psychopathy, sadism, aggression, and boredom proneness on cyber aggression perpetration in emerging adults: Is moral disengagement to blame?” will test a theoretically derived model in which the effects of dark personality traits, aggressiveness, and boredom proneness on cyber aggression will be examined. Moral disengagement will be included as a predicted mediator of these relationships.

Taylor recently completed her master’s project on cyber aggression and is expanding this work into her dissertation. She is one of the first students in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab to focus on electronic aggression, and we are very interested to see what her dissertation research will reveal.

Congratulations to Taylor on the successful dissertation proposal!

Lab Welcomes Alison Poor

Photo of chalkboard with welcome written on it
The Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab is pleased to welcome our newest doctoral student: Alison Poor. Alison will be entering the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Southern Mississippi in the Fall and joining us in the lab.

Alison is completing her B.S. in Psychology at Louisiana State University. During her undergraduate career, she was an ASPIRE Scholar and worked in Dr. Paul Frick's Developmental Psychopathology Lab. She is interested in juvenile corrections, working with mentally ill offenders, dark personalities, and relational aggression.

Congratulations to Alison on her admission to the doctoral program! We are looking forward to working with you.

Upcoming Paper on HEXACO, Dark Triad, and Relational Aggression

We just learned that a manuscript based on Niki Knight’s master’s thesis was accepted for publication in Personality and Individual Differences. Congratulations to Niki!

Here’s the abstract from the upcoming paper:

Relational aggression has been linked to many forms of psychological maladjustment. Identifying the personality traits associated with the perpetration of relational aggression offers promise in improving our ability to understand, prevent, and treat relationally aggressive behaviors. Much of the research to date has utilized the Five Factor Model; however, the HEXACO model of personality (Ashton et al., 2004) may offer some advantages in studying aggression. Moreover, the manipulative and often covert nature of relational aggression suggests that the Dark Triad personality traits are likely to be relevant. This study explored the utility of the HEXACO model and Dark Triad in predicting relational aggression in college students’ (N = 442) peer relationships. Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness predicted proactive and reactive relational aggression, and Emotionality also predicted reactive relational aggression. Pathological narcissism and psychopathy predicted proactive and reactive relational aggression while taking respondent gender and the full HEXACO model into account, with vulnerable narcissism and psychopathy serving as positive predictors and grandiose narcissism serving as a negative predictor. Findings support the utility of both the HEXACO and Dark Triad models in understanding peer relational aggression among emerging adults.

The citation is as follows:

Knight, N. M., Dahlen, E. R., Bullock-Yowell, E., & Madson, M. B. (in press). The HEXACO model of personality and Dark Triad in relational aggression. Personality and Individual Differences.

Savannah Merold Proposes Thesis

Savannah Merold's thesis proposal
Savannah Merold, a second-year student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully proposed her master’s thesis today. Savannah’s thesis will examine the role of social intelligence and psychopathic personality traits in relational aggression among emerging adults.

There is reason to believe that social and emotional intelligence are positive predictors of relational aggression, and some have suggested that certain levels of these forms of intelligence might be necessary for relational aggression to occur (or at least to be successful). At the same time, there is no reason to think that social or emotional intelligence would be sufficient to produce relational aggression. Thus, we plan to examine the degree to which psychopathic traits might inform our understanding of this relationship.

Congratulations to Savannah on a successful thesis proposal!

The Dark Side of Personality

The Dark Side of Personality
I recently picked up a copy of The dark side of personality: Science and practice in social, personality, and clinical psychology, edited by Zeigler-Hill and Marcus (2016). As you can likely infer from the title, it focuses on dark personality traits, starting with the Dark Triad but including others (e.g., sadism, spitefulness, authoritarianism). What is less apparent from the title is just how far beyond the traditional dark personality variables the book goes, addressing topics around the periphery of dark personality (e.g., self-esteem, dependency, urgency). I was pleasantly surprised at how much more comprehensive it was than what I was expecting.

The book is easy to recommend to anyone wanting to improve their knowledge of dark personality research. Here are a few of the things I found most impressive:
  • Many of the most influential researchers in the dark personality literature contributed chapters to the book, providing an excellent representation of the scope and complexity of this area of study.
  • Readers are presented with information on both the adaptive and maladaptive features of each dark personality trait. This provides important context and helps one reconcile what can sometimes appear to be inconsistent findings in the literature.
  • Dark personality traits are addressed in the larger context of broad models of personality (e.g., the Five Factor Model). Again, this helps readers new to the dark personality literature understand how these traits fit into systems with which they will be more familiar.
  • The book is organized using some of the recent work on pathological personality traits reflected in DSM-5. This is effective here because it helps the reader group variables that might not initially seem connected into broader domains.
I have been surprised by how few scholarly attempts there have been to synthesize the vast number of studies including dark personality variables during the last decade. This book is a major step in that direction and should be helpful in making this literature more accessible.

Taylor Nocera-Bolton Completes Master's Project

Taylor Nocera-Bolton
Taylor Nocera-Bolton, a master’s student who has been working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab and will be entering the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program in the Fall, has successfully completed her master’s project. Taylor examined a number of dark personality variables in the prediction of cyber aggression among college students. In addition to generating useful information that will guide the lab’s future study of cyber aggression, Taylor’s work led to a poster at the Southeastern Psychological Association in March and a manuscript we plan to submit for publication very soon.

What is a master’s project? When students with master’s degrees who did not complete a formal master’s thesis during their master’s program are admitted to the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program, they complete a master’s project before beginning work on their dissertations. A master’s project involves the completion of an independent research project that is similar to a master’s thesis but does not usually involve a thesis committee. These projects provide students with an opportunity to progress through the entire research process before taking on a dissertation. In addition to familiarizing the student with all aspects of research, they provide faculty with a clear sense of the student’s strengths and weaknesses, leading to the identification of appropriate training goals.

Taylor did a fantastic job with her master’s project, and we anticipate that she will have little difficulty transitioning into her dissertation work.

What is the Dark Triad?

The Dark Triad Image
We are simultaneously drawn to and repelled by sensationalized stories of serial killers and mass murderers, seeking to understand how one of our fellow humans could commit such atrocities against innocent victims. Are these offenders vastly different from us in their genes, early environment, and/or recent life stressors, or are we all capable of such cruelty under the right set of circumstances? We wonder about what dark aspects of the human personality might be involved in such horrific acts. The question of why people violate social norms, commit moral transgressions (e.g., deceit, manipulation), and inflict harm on others has long intrigued psychologists and the public alike.

The Dark Triad refers to three overlapping but distinct personality traits associated with a variety of antisocial and morally transgressive behaviors: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavelianism (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Considered together, these traits involve emotional coldness, a lack of empathy, the desire for personal advancement at the expense of healthy relationships, grandiosity, and a willingness to manipulate others (Jonason, Lyons, Bethell, & Ross, 2013). Although there are well-known clinical manifestations of psychopathy and narcissism, work on the Dark Triad has emphasized the goal of understanding the subclinical forms of these traits found throughout the population (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, 2013). That is, most of the Dark Triad research seeks to understand the dark personalities we encounter in our daily lives.

Psychopathy

Psychopathy describes a specific constellation of affective, interpersonal, lifestyle, and behavioral characteristics. These include impulsivity; callous affect; poor reliability in performing various roles; a lack of remorse, empathy, or guilt; and a tendency toward rule violation (Hare, 2003; Jones & Paulhus, 2014). Although psychopathy is associated with criminality and violence (Hare & Neumann, 2009) and is considered to be the most dangerous of the Dark Triad traits, its utility is not restricted to criminal and forensic contexts. For example, subclinical psychopathy predicts a variety of behaviors that are not necessarily criminal (e.g., academic dishonesty, relational aggression, cyber aggression, substance misuse) but still likely to be of interest (Kokkinos, Antoniadou, & Markos, 2014; Williams, Paulhus, & Hare, 2007).

Narcissism

Much like the clinical version (i.e., Narcissistic Personality Disorder), subclinical narcissism involves grandiosity, as well as entitlement and a sense of superiority; however, this grandiose narcissism is only one part of the construct. Another important aspect involves narcissistic vulnerability, which refers to a vulnerable self-concept and efforts at self-enhancement (Morf & Rodenwalt, 2001). While grandiose narcissism tends to be emphasized in much of the Dark Triad literature, vulnerable narcissism appears to be relevant in many areas of emotional and interpersonal functioning. Subclinical narcissism has been linked to aggression (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998), online antisocial behavior (Carpenter, 2012), and a number of other variables of interest.

Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is probably the least understood of the Dark Triad traits. It refers to a manipulative interpersonal style named for Niccolò Machiavelli (Christie & Geis, 1970). In The Prince (1513), Machiavelli described several behaviors most of us would regard as immoral (e.g., lying, deceit, and even murder) as effective strategies for a ruler to maintain power. Machiavellianism is perhaps best characterized as the perspective that the ends justify the means. People high in Machiavellian traits are described as cynical on morality, focused on personal gain, and willing to manipulate and exploit others to achieve their goals (Jones & Paulhus, 2009). Machiavellian personality traits have been linked to online relational aggression (Abell & Brewer, 2014) and a number of other antisocial behaviors.

At the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, our primary interest with regard to the Dark Triad traits involves their role in nonclinical populations (i.e., individuals in the community who are not currently receiving treatment for diagnosed personality disorders or other mental health problems) of emerging adults. That is, we are interested in how individual differences in scores on subclinical measures of Dark Triad traits relate to a variety of socially undesirable behaviors (e.g., overt and relational aggression, cyber aggression, dysfunctional anger expression, jealousy, academic dishonesty, aggressive driving) among young adults.

References

Abell, L., & Brewer, G. (2014). Machiavellianism, self-monitoring, self-promotion and relational aggression on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 258-262.

Bushman, B. J. & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 219-229.

Carpenter, C. J. (2012). Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and anti-social behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 482-486.

Christie R. & Geis F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.

Furnham, A., Richards, S. C., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). The dark triad of personality: A 10 year review. Social and Personality Compass, 7, 199-216.

Hare, R. D. (2003). Manual for the Revised Psychopathy Checklist (2nd Edition). Toronto, ON, Canada: Multi-Health Systems.

Hare, R. D., & Neumann, C. S. (2009). Psychopathy: Assessment and forensic implications. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 54, 791-802.

Jonason, P. K., Lyons, M., Bethell, E. J., & Ross, R. (2013). Different routes to limited empathy in the sexes: Examining the links between the Dark Triad and empathy. Personality and Individual Differences, 54, 572-576.

Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personality traits. Assessment, 21, 28-41.

Jones, D.N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2009). Machiavellianism. In M.R. Leary & R.H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in social behavior. New York: Guilford.

Kokkinos, C. M., Antoniadou, N., & Markos, A. (2014). Cyber-bullying: An investigation of the psychological profile of university student participants. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 35, 204-214.

Morf, C. C. & Rhodewalt, F. (2001). Unraveling the paradoxes of narcissism: a dynamic self-regulatory processing model. Psychological Inquiry, 12, 4, 177-196.

Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556-568.

Williams, K. M., Paulhus, D. L. & Hare, R. D. (2007). Capturing the four-factor structure of psychopathy in college students via self-report. Journal of Personality Assessment, 88, 205-219.

Dark Personality and Cyber Aggression Presentation Accepted for SEPA

Atlanta Night Skyline Wallpaper
We just had a presentation proposal accepted for the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, which will take place in Atlanta in March. Taylor Bolton a second-year master's student working in the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, will present research based on her master's project. Taylor's research focuses on the role of dark personality traits in electronic aggression among college students.

One of the challenges in this area of research involves the lack of consensus in how electronic aggression (aka, cyber aggression, cyberbullying) should be defined and measured (Berne et al., 2013). Taylor is using what appears to be one of the better self-report measures available for emerging adults, the Cyberbullying Experiences Survey (Doane et al., 2013). We anticipate that her findings will provide useful information about the relationship between electronic aggression and offline relational aggression and between various dark personality traits and electronic aggression.

Congratulations, Taylor!

Lab Welcomes Two New Doctoral Students

Image of a butterfly with the word welcome
The Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab is pleased to welcome two new doctoral students who will be entering the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at the University of Southern Mississippi and joining us in the lab this fall.

Savannah Merold will be graduating this spring with a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. At Southern Miss, Savannah worked as a research assistant in Dr. Sacco's Social Psychology Lab. She completed an independent project focusing on how social and emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between psychopathic personality traits and social perception.

Philip Stoner will be graduating this spring with a B.A. in Psychology and English from Mississippi University for Women. During his undergraduate career, Philip worked as a research assistant in the Clinical Studies Lab at Mississippi State University, where he obtained research experience in areas such as aggression, alcohol use, narcissism, and sleep.

Congratulations to Savannah and Philip on their admission to the doctoral program! We are looking forward to working with you both.

Electronic Aggression

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has some information available on the topic of electronic aggression and its connection to youth violence. Since we recently mentioned some of the varying terminology used to describe these behaviors, it seemed important to note that the CDC suggests that electronic aggression is preferred term. They offer the following as their rationale: “Although many different terms-such as cyberbullying, Internet harassment, and Internet bullying-have been used to describe this type of violence, electronic aggression is the term that most accurately captures all types of violence that occur electronically.” This seems appropriate since electronic aggression is probably the broadest and most inclusive of the various terms.

They characterize electronic aggression as an "emerging public health problem" and note it has been linked to a number of problems among youth, including increased victimization, emotional distress, and conduct problems. Finally they provide downloadable resources for educators, parents and caregivers, and researchers.

At the Anger and Traffic Psychology Lab, we have just started collecting data for a new study on electronic aggression among college students. We are hoping to learn more about how to measure it effectively and how it relates to some of the dark personality variables we have been studying.

Niki Knight Defends Master's Thesis

Niki Knight successfully defended her master's thesis today, The HEXACO and Dark Triad in Relational Aggression. Niki examined the HEXACO model of personality and Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) as predictors of proactive and reactive peer relational aggression in a college student sample.

With regard to the HEXACO model, the factors of Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness were positively associated with proactive and reactive relational aggression in peer relationships. Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic traits were positively associated with reactive relational aggression; narcissistic and psychopathic but not Machiavellian traits were positively associated with proactive relational aggression. Taken together, Niki's results supported the utility of both the HEXACO model and the Dark Triad constructs in predicting peer relational aggression among college students.

Niki is a doctoral student in her third year of the program and will soon begin work on her dissertation.

Congratulations to Niki on a successful defense!

Dark Personalities and Relational Aggression

The "Dark Triad" of personality refers to narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, three constructs with links to overt aggression and other socially undesirable behaviors. Despite the utility of these variables in understanding a variety of behaviors, relatively little is known about their potential role in relational aggression. Moreover, there may be other "dark personality" constructs not adequately represented in the Dark Triad that could be helpful in understanding relationally aggressive behaviors (e.g., sadism).

We recently started collecting data for a couple of studies examining the possible role of the Dark Triad constructs in relational aggression and how they fit into broader models of personality, such as the Five Factor Model and the
HEXACO model of personality.

These studies fit our goal of learning more about relational aggression among emerging adults. In addition, it seems that the study of dark personality constructs may be beneficial in some of our other research areas (e.g., anger and traffic psychology).

Niki Knight Proposes Master's Thesis

Niki Knight, a doctoral student in her first year of the Counseling Psychology Program, successfully proposed her master's thesis today, The HEXACO Model of Personality and Dark Triad in Relational Aggression. She can begin data collection after obtaining IRB approval.

Niki's thesis will examine the relationships between the constructs represented by the HEXACO personality model and relational aggression in college students, focusing on the role of Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness. Additionally, she will assess the predictive utility of the Dark Triad constructs (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) in predicting proactive and reactive relational aggression.