Dark triad among university students with respect to gender: The predictive roles of Hexaco personality traits

The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which the variables of honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientciousness and openness to experience predicted machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy levels of university students according to gender. The sample of the study consisted of 388 (250 female, 138 male) undergraduate students enrolled in different faculties of Çağ University in the academic year of 2017-2018. Three instruments, namely, "Personal Information Form", "Short Dark Triad Scale", and "HEXACO Personality Inventory" were used in the study. Multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data the data value of 0.05 was established as a level of significance. The results of the study revealed that honesty-humility, openness to experience, emotionality and agreeableness were the significant predictors of both machiavellianism and psychopathy tendencies of university students. On the other hand, extraversion, honesty-humility, conscientiousness and openness to experience had significant predictive roles on the narcisssistic tendency of university students. The predictive roles of the HEXACO variables were also differentiated across gender groups. Implications of the findings were discussed and some suggestions were made for further research.