Examination of the dark triad personality traits of students in the faculty of sports sciences

The study aimed to examine the Dark Triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy)of higher education students in the field of sports education. The research sample consisted of 257 students, including 87 women and 170 men, studying in faculties of sports sciences. For descriptive statistics of the participants, a demographic information form was used, and to determine the Dark Triad personality traits, the Short Dark Triad (SD3) scale, developed by Jones and Paulhus (2014) and adapted into Turkish by Özsoy, Rauthmann, Jonason, and Ardıç (2017), was utilized. SPSS 23 was used for data analysis. To determine the normality distribution of the data, skewness and kurtosis values were examined, and it was found that the data provided a normal distribution. The Independent Samples T-Test was applied for binary group comparisons, and the MONOVA test was used for multiple comparisons. The analysis of the data between variables is presented in tables along with their interpretations in the findings section. As a result, it can be said that male participants exhibited more dominant Dark Triad personality traits compared to female participants, and that students in the third year showed more prominent psychopathy personality traits compared to first-year students. Additionally, no significant relationships were observed between the participants' other variables and Dark Triad personality traits.