A new study provides evidence that men with more pronounced psychopathic personality traits exhibit greater increases in Honesty, Emotionality and Agreeableness personality traits when they were instructed to give answers (to a personality inventory) that would make them more appealing to women. Findings indicate that psychopathic traits may increase men’s willingness to deceptively present themselves as having more prosocial personality traits when this is needed to attract women. The study was published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Psychopathic personality traits are a pattern of personality characteristics that are associated with a disregard for the rights and feelings of others, a lack of empathy, and a tendency towards impulsivity and aggression. Individuals with pronounced psychopathic personality traits also tend to be callous, cold, and indifferent to the suffering of others.
However, psychopaths have a chameleon-like ability “to blend into their social environment in order to avoid being detected as antisocial predators.” Due to this, although psychopathic personality traits are largely seen as aversive and negative by others, individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits often appear quite adept in many areas of life. This is particularly the case in the domain of dating.
One mechanism through which individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits avoid having their characteristics negatively impact their social interactions is mimicry. Mimicry involves the imitations of facial, vocal, and postural expressions during interactions. It can be particularly common, in all people, in the dating context where mild deception and exaggeration is common in people of both sexes, although more so in men.
Study author Kristopher J. Brazil and his colleagues wanted to explore whether psychopathic traits in men are indeed associated with a greater tendency to mimic prosocial (and thus positive) personality traits in the context of dating. More specifically, they wanted to know whether psychopathic men will significantly change their personality traits when presented with a dating scenario.
Study participants were 164 undergraduate students, all men from two universities in Ontario, Canada. As the study dealt with heterosexual relationships, students who declared to be gay were not eligible for participation. Most of the participants were White (64%) and single (59%).
Participants first completed an assessment of personality traits (the HEXACO Facets scale) and psychopathic traits (the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale 4). They were then shown a video containing a woman actor who recorded herself giving a dating profile. The woman in the video was a 20-year-old university student who described herself as being spontaneous, fun-loving, conscientious, sentimental, and a “hopeless romantic.”
At the end of the video, she provides a description of her ideal partner as someone who loves to have fun, is spontaneous, loves adventure, and also someone she can feel comfortable with relaxing alone together.
Participants were then instructed to complete the personality assessment again, but in a way that would make them appear most attractive to the person in the video (“Please respond to the following questions IN ORDER TO APPEAR MOST ATTRACTIVE TO THE PERSON IN THE DATING PROFILE VIDEO”). The researchers assessed mimicry after participants viewed the dating profile in two ways. First, participants self-reported their use of spontaneous mimicry while watching the dating profile video on a rating scale. The second measure of mimicry asked about instrumental and affective mimicry in everyday life.
Results showed, that, on average, participants in general presented themselves as more honest, extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, and a bit more open to experience after watching the dating video. There was no difference between men who were in a relationship and those who were not in the level of changes to the personality traits after being instructed to appear more attractive.
This suggested that men on average tended to change their personality scores when instructed to mimic i.e., try to appear more attractive, regardless of psychopathic traits.
When researchers analyzed how much individual responses to the personality assessment changed after the dating video and the instruction to present oneself in a way that would be the most attractive, they noted that the highest changes were in personality traits of honesty, emotionality and extraversion.
Psychopathic traits were found to be associated with the level of changes in personality responses. Participants with higher levels of psychopathic traits showed a relatively greater increase in honesty, emotionality and agreeableness, and a relatively smaller increase in extraversion in the mimicked condition (when they tried to appear more attractive), compared to their true personality profiles. In spite of this, associations between psychopathic traits and measures of mimicry were only marginal and with only one measure of mimicry.
“The findings showed that psychopathic traits were associated with significant increases in the three personality traits from the HEXACO (e.g., Honesty, Emotionality, and Agreeableness) after viewing a dating video when compared to their true personality (as well as smaller increases in eXtraversion). We also found that psychopathic traits were unrelated to explicit use of spontaneous mimicry while viewing the video and affective mimicry in everyday life, which is in line with studies showing average levels of automatic experiences of mimicry in those higher in psychopathy,” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on an important aspect of male social behavior. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, participants were only university students and it relied solely on self-report measures. Results might not be the same on different populations and if different types of assessments were used.
The study, “The Chameleons of Dating: Psychopathic Traits Are Associated with Mimicking Prosocial Personality Traits in Dating Contexts”, was authored by Kristopher J. Brazil, Destiny Cloutier, Nicole De Las Llagas, Samantha Grace McMahon, Victoria Benevides, Angela S. Book, and Beth A. Visser.