Dark Personality Traits and Toxic Environments: What a Massive Study Reveals
Monday, August 18, 2025.
Can corruption, inequality, and violence shape your personality?
A huge groundbreaking global study suggests yes.
When societies are marked by injustice and instability, folks are more likely to develop dark personality traits—callousness, exploitation, and moral disregard.
The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from nearly two million people across 183 countries and all 50 U.S. states.
The message is clear: our cultural environments, and micro-environments matter. Where corruption thrives, selfishness does as well.
What Are Dark Personality Traits?
Psychologists group traits like narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism, and spitefulness under a single umbrella known as the Dark Factor of Personality (D).
Just as intelligence has a general “G factor,” personality research suggests “D” is the common core of toxic behavior. Folks high in D:
Believe exploiting others is justified.
See rules as optional.
Rationalize selfishness as “survival.”
These tendencies appear in marriages too, where subtle manipulation can surface as covert narcissism in a spouse or as deep disconnection described in quiet quitting in marriage.
How Society Shapes Toxic Traits
The study’s authors built an index of “Aversive Societal Conditions” (ASC), using four markers: corruption, economic inequality, poverty, and violence.
They matched these conditions from the early 2000s to personality data collected almost two decades later.
The results reveal a consistent link: societies with harsher conditions produced higher average D scores.
This echoes what I’ve seen in couples therapy: when environments are unstable, people often adopt self-protective behaviors that later calcify into rigid traits. In relationships, that looks like trauma mismatch in couples, where survival strategies clash.
The Geography of Dark Traits
The U.S. data revealed striking differences:
High-D states included Nevada, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—regions with higher levels of corruption and violence.
Low-D states included Vermont, Utah, New Hampshire, and Minnesota—demographics which reflect stronger trust and stability.
Globally, the same trend held true. Where life is harsher, people tend to internalize darker beliefs.
It’s a reminder that families don’t raise children in a vacuum. Cultural values matter. I explored this more deeply in Differentiation, Other-Validated Intimacy, and the Roots of Cultural Narcissism.
Why This Study Matters
The results suggest personality is not just a matter of DNA or private choice—it’s cultivated in the soil of society.
Corruption fosters callousness.
Inequality fuels selfishness.
Violence normalizes exploitation.
The study also found stronger effects among younger people and in cultures that prize individualism, suggesting that both timing and values amplify dark traits.
In intimate life, this helps explain why betrayals are so common in unstable contexts. Recovery is possible, but difficult, as I’ve outlined in the 7 stages of affair recovery.
Frequently Asked Questions About Dark Personality Traits
What are dark personality traits?
Dark personality traits are socially and ethically aversive patterns such as narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, sadism, and spitefulness. Psychologists argue they share a common core known as the Dark Factor of Personality (D)—a tendency to prioritize self-interest even when it harms others.
What is the Dark Factor of Personality?
The Dark Factor, or D, is the general factor underlying all dark traits. Just as intelligence researchers talk about a “g factor” for cognitive ability, personality researchers use D to explain why different toxic traits cluster together. People high in D often justify dishonesty, exploitation, and manipulation as acceptable survival strategies.
How do corruption and inequality influence personality?
According to a massive study published in PNAS, societies marked by corruption, poverty, inequality, and violence produce higher average levels of dark traits. In harsh environments, selfishness may feel necessary for survival, and over time those beliefs solidify into stable personality patterns.
Can dark personality traits change?
Dark traits are relatively stable, but not set in stone. Therapy, supportive environments, and healthier cultural norms can reduce harmful behaviors. At the societal level, reducing inequality and corruption may lower the prevalence of these traits. At the personal level, couples often begin addressing them in therapy—especially when betrayal or manipulation threatens the relationship.
The Caveats
The sample came from an online personality platform, which may not perfectly represent entire populations. And while the researchers controlled for timing, the results are correlational, not necessarily causal.
Still, the sheer scale—1.9 million people worldwide—makes this one of the strongest studies linking social conditions to toxic personality traits.
As lead author Ingo Zettler put it: “Reducing aversive conditions in one’s society does not only facilitate life for several people, but might also reduce the likelihood of very aversive individuals in this society in the future.”
In other words: building fairer, safer societies may literally reduce the number of narcissists, manipulators, and exploiters that our world has to endure.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Moshagen, M., Hilbig, B. E., & Zettler, I. (2018). The dark core of personality. Psychological Review, 125(5), 656–688. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000111
Moshagen, M., Zettler, I., Horsten, L. K., & Hilbig, B. E. (2020). The dark factor of personality. European Journal of Personality, 34(1), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2220
Zettler, I., Lilleholt, L., Bader, M., Hilbig, B. E., & Moshagen, M. (2025). Aversive societal conditions explain differences in “dark” personality across countries and US states. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(34), e2309817122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2309817122