People with hostile personality traits often express their egocentric tendencies through rigid and authoritarian political beliefs, which serve as a bridge to managing self-control. Recent research suggests that these harsh personality traits do not function through a direct desire for social dominance, but instead rely on strict adherence to authority and tradition to justify punishing others. These findings were published in the journal personality and individual differences.
Psychology researchers have proposed that aggressive and prejudiced social attitudes result from two main motivational pathways in a framework known as the dual-process model of prejudice. This approach separates ideological motivations into two distinct trajectories. One path is driven by a preference for social hierarchy, the other by the need for social order.
The first path is characterized by group-based inequality and social status preferences. Psychologists call this the social dominance orientation. People who score high in this area see the world as a competitive arena in which certain groups are naturally deserving of power over others.
The second path centers on strict obedience to established authority and traditional norms. This is called right-wing authoritarianism. People with this tendency perceive the world as a dangerous place and respond to perceived threats with moral absolutism and a desire to punish those who break the rules.
Both of these ideological pathways are associated with aggressive personality profiles. Recent psychological frameworks have identified a unified core of these hostile traits called the dark factor of personality. This core represents a general tendency to maximize personal benefit at the expense of others while justifying the resulting harm.
This dark core contains several well-known traits, including narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. Narcissism involves an exaggerated sense of superiority, psychopathy involves reduced empathy and impulsivity, and sadism involves deriving pleasure from the suffering of others. These characteristics do not function independently but appear as different expressions of the same underlying nature.
To understand how these dark traits are reflected in behavior, researchers are investigating self-regulatory processes such as emotion regulation and self-control. Emotional regulation involves the ability to appropriately manage and respond to emotional experiences. Self-control is the ability to overcome impulses to achieve long-term goals or comply with social standards.
Fernanda Otoni, a psychologist at the University of Tuiuti do Paraná, and her colleagues set out to investigate how these factors are related. They designed a study to see if authoritarian beliefs act as a psychological bridge between a hostile personality and a person’s ability to control their emotions and impulses. Their goal was to integrate personality, ideology, and self-regulation into a single explanatory model.
Researchers recruited 498 adult participants from different regions of Brazil. Volunteers ranged in age from 18 to 71 years, with an average age of approximately 33 years. The group was relatively balanced in terms of gender, and participants represented a wide range of political affiliations.
Each participant completed a series of psychological questionnaires designed to assess various aspects of their personality and behavior. One study measured the dark factor of personality, asking respondents how much they agreed with statements that reflected callousness, deceitfulness, and vindictiveness. Other studies measured levels of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.
To assess self-regulation, the team used two additional scales. The first survey measured general self-control, capturing respondents’ perceived ability to resist temptation and maintain discipline. Second, we assessed difficulties in regulating emotions and identified problems such as emotional impulsivity and an inability to accept negative emotions.
The researchers analyzed the responses using a statistical technique called path analysis. This method allows scientists to examine directional links between several different variables simultaneously. They specifically looked for indirect pathways through which authoritarian beliefs could link dark personality to certain self-regulatory abilities.
They found that dark elements of personality were fully associated with right-wing authoritarian self-control. In this sample, individuals with highly hostile temperaments reported stricter adherence to traditional authority and greater willingness to punish rule-breakers. This authoritarian rigidity was associated with reported levels of self-control.
This result suggests that self-control is not necessarily an adaptive and positive force. For people with high levels of temperamental conflict, the ability to control impulses may serve as a strategic tool rather than a purely protective ability. They may follow disciplinary rules and use punitive authoritarian beliefs as socially acceptable ways to express hostility.
A surprising pattern emerged regarding social dominance orientation. The desire for hierarchical group relationships did not serve as a bridge between dark personality factors and self-regulation. In the statistical model, this variable did not show any mediating effects on self-control or emotional difficulties.
This lack of relationship may be explained by the specific cultural context in which the study was conducted. In historically unequal societies like Brazil, social hierarchies are often maintained by traditional institutions and ingrained cultural norms. In such environments, individuals may not require explicitly selfish personality traits to support anti-egalitarian beliefs.
The study also revealed insights into how emotional regulation works. The researchers found that difficulty managing emotions has a direct and inverse relationship with self-control. This connection persisted even when dark personality factors and authoritarian ideology were taken into account.
These emotional deficiencies do not seem to promote right-wing adherence to authoritarianism or social dominance orientation. The association between ideological beliefs and emotional dysregulation was very weak. This challenges the assumption that authoritarian individuals simply lack the ability to cope with negative emotions.
Rather, the data support the idea that emotion regulation and self-control function as separate and relatively independent domains. People with maladaptive regulatory strategies, such as constantly suppressing their emotions, often struggle to maintain basic self-control. This regulatory failure appears to occur independently of their political or social worldview.
The researchers detailed several limitations to the study. Because the data were obtained from a self-report questionnaire, responses may be influenced by social desirability bias. Participants may have changed their answers to appear more favorable, especially regarding sensitive topics such as prejudice and aggression.
This study is based on observational data collected at one point in time. This design means the results cannot prove that a dark personality changes someone’s authoritarian beliefs or weakens their self-control. This association only highlights how these psychological traits tend to cluster within populations.
The statistical model the research team used explained only a small amount of the variation in participants’ responses. This indicates that other unmeasured factors may play a role in shaping how people regulate their emotions and form ideological beliefs. Socioeconomic status, early childhood environment, and other personality traits may compensate for gaps.
Future research could extend this framework by incorporating different cultural contexts and measures of social inequality. Including data that tracks individuals over many years can also help clarify the developmental timelines of these traits. Extending psychological research beyond the industrialized populations of the West remains an essential goal for the broader scientific community.
The study, “Dark Core and Dual Processes of Prejudice: When Self-Control and Emotional Dysregulation Serve Adversarial Purposes,” was authored by Fernanda Otoni, Ariela Raissa Lima-Costa, Antonio Silverio da Rocha Neto, Victoria Sobreira Gonçalves, Lygia Ziegler Samuel, and Bruno Bonfa-Araujo.
