Self-Construal as a Predictor of Antagonistic Personality Traits

Self-construal refers to how individuals perceive themselves relative to others and includes dimensions of independence and interdependence. To understand antagonistic personality traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism, we investigate how these four traits (the Antagonistic or Dark Tetrad) are predicted by independent and interdependent self-construal using self-report measures from 861 Canadian university students. Direct entry linear regression found that after accounting for age and gender, each antagonistic trait was significantly predicted by independent and interdependent self-construal. As the pattern of regression weights differ for self-construal dimensions, we conclude that self-construal differentially predicts the Antagonistic Tetrad. These results add to work examining how self-construal is related to the Antagonistic Triad by the addition of sadism and investigating the predictive ability of self-construal.