Dark traits: Sometimes hot, and sometimes not? Female preferences for Dark Triad faces depend on sociosexuality and contraceptive use

a r t i c l e i n f o Although the Dark Triad personality (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has been researched widely, only few studies have investigated women's preferences for men who present high and low Dark Triad features. With an on-line two-alternative forced choice questionnaire we investigated the interaction between preferences of 1962 Finnish women for facial stimuli that differed in the intensity of the Dark Triad traits, accounting for mating context, contraceptive use, and sexual openness (sociosexuality). Among non-contraceptive-using women, unrestricted sociosexuality was positively correlated with preference for high nar-cissistic male faces, whereas in contraceptive-using women, sociosexuality correlated negatively with preference for high Machiavellian male faces. We suggest that i) facial cues to Dark Triad traits are detectable by women, but ii) their effect on the judgments of attractiveness may vary depending on sociosexuality and contraceptive use, and that iii) preference for narcissism follows similar variation trends as masculinity preference, depending on sociosexuality and the use of hormonal contraception. The Dark Triad personality (i.e. Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy) is a set of three conceptually distinct but empirically overlapping traits (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), sharing features such as callousness and inter-personal manipulation (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, 2013). The Dark Triad has been suggested to be a male-typical adaptation for pursuing a short-term mating strategy (Jonason, Li, Webster, & Schmitt, 2009). Three traits of Dark Triad are to certain extent similar to masculinity, as both are related to self-reported short-term mating success and status-seeking behaviours (Jonason et al. The relationship between the Dark Triad and masculinity is not entirely clear, but it appears that at least Machiavellianism and psy-chopathy are not directly related to masculinity. In a recent study, Lyons, Marcinkowska, Helle, and McGrath (2015) found that preference for high masculine features in male faces was not associated with a preference for psychopathy or Machiavellian faces. It appears that although men who are high on the Dark Triad or masculinity scale pursue similar mating strategies, masculinity and the Dark Triad may be quite different to each other in terms of female choice (Lyons et al., 2015). It has been suggested that women are attracted to the " bad boy " characteristics embodied by the Dark Triad constellation (Jonason, Webster, Schmitt, Li, & Crysel, 2012), which could be associated with both direct (e.g., resources) and indirect (e.g., offspring genetic fitness) benefits. Women may pursue flexible mating strategies; where …