Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Dark Tetrad Responses To Moral Dilemmas, Kayli Wrenn

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Dark Tetrad consists of four socially malevolent personality traits: psychopathy, sadism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. The current study assessed the relationships among each dimension of the Dark Tetrad and moral decision making using sacrificial moral dilemma vignettes. Participants (n = 212 undergraduates) completed two measures of each of the four Dark Tetrad constructs then read a series of 16 sacrificial moral dilemma vignettes. These dilemmas manipulated whether the participant would personally perform the sacrifice and described either the disgusting or sad emotional consequences of the sacrifice. After each vignette, participants rated the moral rightness/wrongness, moral permissibility, and behavioral intention to …