Why dark personalities participate in politics?

Literature provides mixed results concerning how the Dark Triad traits are related to political activities. Within the current paper, we aim to address some of the existing limitations and attempt to solve these ambiguities. We examined the relations of the Dark Triad traits to political participation as well as to normative (e.g., voting) and non-normative (e.g., blocking streets) behaviors. In total, 558 young Polish adults aged between 18 and 25 years old took part in the study twice across a period of eight months. Moreover, in a follow-up study we examined 476 British adults aged between 18 and 75 attempting to replicate obtained results on the one hand, and to presume about motivations underlying political participation on the other. Results revealed that narcissism and psychopathy (but not Machiavellianism) are consistently related to political participation. The current study contributes to the literature through revealing trait-specific motivations explaining the relation between the Dark Triad traits to political participation and political behavior.