Personality Correlates of Out-Group Harm
- Author(s)
- Simon Columbus, Isabel Thielmann, Robert Boehm, Ingo Zettler
- Abstract
Motivated by theoretical accounts positing that participation in intergroup conflict is driven by a desire to promote the in-group, past studies have explored the link between prosocial personality dimensions and out-group harm. However, while dimensions such as Honesty-Humility predict in-group cooperation, they do not explain out-group harm. Across two incentivized experimental studies (one preregistered; overall N = 1,584), we show that out-group harm is uniquely associated with higher levels of the Dark Factor of Personality (D), a personality dimension capturing the core of all aversive personality characteristics. Conversely, high levels of D, alongside low levels of Honesty-Humility, are associated with less in-group cooperation. Our results show that in-group cooperation and out-group harm are associated with distinct personality dimensions.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Occupational, Economic and Social Psychology
- External organisation(s)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Copenhagen, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law
- Journal
- Social Psychological and Personality Science
- Volume
- 15
- Pages
- 838-847
- No. of pages
- 10
- ISSN
- 1948-5506
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506241254157
- Publication date
- 09-2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 501021 Social psychology
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/53af4214-22ae-4acf-b207-3c709fcad5f2