New research published in journal Co-author: Psychology We provide evidence that people with certain antisocial personality traits respond in particular ways when trying to make a good impression. This study suggests that while some people hide their harmful traits during mock job exams, people with strong narcissistic tendencies actually emphasize their harmful traits. These findings provide a better understanding of how deception works in personality tests and how different dark traits respond to social pressure.
The research team, consisting of Bojana M. Dinic from the University of Novi Sad and Irena Boskovic from Erasmus University Rotterdam, wanted to investigate how dark personality traits interact with deceptive test-taking. The Dark Tetrad refers to four socially aversive personality traits that share a core of insensitivity and manipulative interpersonal behavior.
The first is Machiavellianism. This refers to a strategic, calculated, and cynical approach to manipulating others for personal gain. The second is narcissism, especially its grandiose form, which is characterized by exaggerated self-importance, entitlement, and a constant need for external approval.
The third trait in this group is psychopathy, which includes a severe lack of empathy, a lack of remorse or guilt, and a tendency toward impulsive behavior. The final trait is sadism, defined as deriving pleasure or enjoyment from the physical or psychological pain of others.
People who score high on these traits tend to engage in deceptive behavior, such as lying to achieve their goals. Researchers began this project to observe how survey responses changed when people with these traits were specifically instructed to present themselves in the best light possible.
In psychological evaluation, expressing oneself in an overly positive manner is called “hypocrisy.” This behavior often takes the form of impression manipulation, where a person intentionally distorts their self-description to appear more competent or moral than they actually are. People can manage their impressions in two main ways. This is often referred to as agency and communication. Agentic management focuses on getting ahead, and involves people exaggerating their social status, intellectual abilities, and overall abilities to appear competent.
In contrast, community management focuses on getting along with others. People who use this strategy may exaggerate their cooperativeness and kindness while firmly denying any socially unacceptable impulses or shortcomings. Another specific form of disguising goodness is called paranormal phenomena. This occurs when an individual systematically denies appearing perfectly healthy and well-adjusted, even experiencing the most common daily health complaints, such as a mild headache.
Both impression management and paranormal phenomena are common in high-stakes situations such as job interviews and forensic evaluations. To test these dynamics, the researchers recruited 104 community participants from Serbia. The sample consisted of 87 women and 17 men, with an average age of approximately 27 years. Most participants were college students or current employees.
This study used a within-subjects design, with all participants completing the same set of questionnaires twice under different conditions. In one condition, participants were instructed to answer the questions honestly. Another condition asked them to imagine they were taking a job selection exam and needed to make the best impression possible. The order of these conditions was random, so about half of the participants answered honestly first, and the other half started with the false good instructions.
The scientists measured participants using three specific psychological tools, including a covert attention check to ensure participants were reading the questions carefully. They assessed levels of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism using the Short Dark Tetrad Questionnaire, which includes 28 statements. To measure impression management, they used a two-dimensional impression management index. This tool assesses both the tendency to exaggerate social status and the tendency to deny socially unacceptable impulses.
Finally, we used a paranormality scale consisting of true or false statements to measure how often participants denied common everyday health symptoms. This data provides evidence that participants significantly changed their responses based on the instructions. When participants were instructed to pretend to be nice, their psychopathy and sadism scores decreased compared to when they answered honestly. This suggests that people are aware of the socially undesirable qualities of callousness and cruelty and try to hide these qualities when trying to secure a job.
However, in the sham-good condition, narcissism scores actually increased. This indicates that people often perceive narcissistic traits such as high self-confidence and assertiveness as desirable professional traits. Because grandiosity has some overlap with adaptive leadership qualities, participants may have actively emphasized their narcissistic tendencies to appear like ideal job applicants.
Machiavellianism scores remained stable in both the honest and fake-good conditions. The authors suggest that this stability may occur because modern measures of Machiavellianism focus on strategic planning and emotional control rather than overt aggression. Participants may have felt no need to hide these calculating traits, or they may have already hidden their true nature even during the honest condition.
When the authors analyzed the changes between honest good scores and fake good scores, they discovered an unexpected pattern regarding Machiavellianism. Higher scores on Honest Machiavellianism actually predicted lower increases in community control under falsely favorable conditions. The authors suggest that highly Machiavellian people may be acutely aware of the challenges of faking the good. Because they want to maintain a realistic and trustworthy image, they may avoid exaggerating the warmth of their relationships to the point of seeming suspicious.
The researchers also looked at how dark traits were associated with certain types of hypocrisy. Under honest reporting conditions, individuals with high levels of narcissism and Machiavellianism tend to engage in agentic control, which means they naturally exaggerate their abilities and social status. On the other hand, people with high levels of psychopathy and sadism had very low community management skills and did not go out of their way to exaggerate their cooperative or moral qualities.
Interestingly, none of the characteristics of the Dark Tetrad were significantly associated with paranormal phenomena. This suggests that people with dark personality traits are more likely to deceive others about their social status or compliance with social norms than they are to fake perfect physical or mental health. Scientists also evaluated the Serbian version of the Paranormal Scale during this process. They noted that slightly higher cutoff scores may be needed to accurately identify health-related deception in this particular population.
Although this study considers personality and deception in detail, several limitations should be noted to avoid misunderstandings. This study is based on a simulated job search rather than a real-life scenario. People are likely to act differently if real jobs or legal consequences are actually at stake. Additionally, the sample was relatively small, geographically limited to Serbia, and comprised a large proportion of young women.
These patterns may look different in other countries and in different age groups because cultural norms determine which characteristics are considered socially desirable. One of the subscales measuring social desirability was also shown to have slightly low statistical reliability, meaning that these particular results should be viewed with some caution. Future research might examine these dynamics in larger and more diverse samples to see if the results hold across different cultures.
The authors suggest that subsequent research should also include specific populations prone to dark traits and deceptive behavior, such as violent criminals. Testing these measures in truly high-stakes settings could provide further information about how people manipulate self-expression in the real world.
The study, “Hypocrisy in the Dark Tetrad: The relationship between score changes and impression management and paranormality” was authored by Bojana M. Dinic and Irena Boskovic.
