engleski

Personality and prosociality – predicting prosocial tendencies from the “good” and the “bad” traits

Prosocial behavior covers the broad range of actions intended to benefit others rather than oneself. Research related to dispositional determinants of prosocial behavior showed that the best predictor of prosocial behavior is personality trait Honesty-Humility (HH) represented in the HEXACO model. This trait encompasses tendencies such as being sincere, honest, faithful, loyal, modest/unassuming versus sly, deceitful, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical, pompous. The low pole of the HH was found to be essentially identical to the common core of the Dark Triad (DT ; i.e. Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and psychopathy), which has been linked to callousness, exploitation and manipulation, as well as antisocial behavior. As previous research showed that some, but not all of the facets of HH have significant contribution in predicting prosocial behavior, similarly to the DT traits, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between prosocial tendencies and the “good” and the “bad” personality traits. Moreover, given the substantial overlap between the HH and the DT traits, the aim was to compare how good are the “good” traits versus the “bad” traits in predicting prosociality. Data was collected within a larger on-line survey on 689 students from various universities in Croatia (552 female and 137 male), with the mean age of 22.04 years (SD =2.94), and all variables were assessed via self-report measures (HEXACO-PI-R, Short Dark Triad and Prosocial Personality Battery). Results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that, after controlling for age and gender, the HH facets accounted for unique 15.5% of variance of prosocial tendencies, while the DT traits accounted for additional 12.9% of variance. On the other hand, if the DT traits were entered into the regression analysis first, they accounted for 25.2% of variance, while the HH facets had only marginal incremental validity over the DT (3.2%). In accordance with previous research, among HH facets the most substantial contribution to the association with prosocial tendencies had fairness and greed-avoidance, while among the DT had Machiavellianism and psychopathy. On the whole, this study demonstrated that the “bad” traits explain prosociality above and beyond the “good” traits, suggesting that the luck is actually on the other side of the coin.

Prosocial tendencies; personality; Honesty-Humility; Dark Triad

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