Feeling me, feeling you? Links between the Dark Triad and internal body awareness

a r t i c l e i n f o Despite a rapid increase of interest in the Dark Triad of personality (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism and Machi-avellianism), very little research has focused on links between the Dark Triad and internal body awareness (i.e., interoception). In an on-line study (N = 323), we investigated the relationship between the Dark Triad and different facets of interoception, such as awareness and trust in body sensations, the capacity to regulate attention, and an awareness of mind–body integration. When we controlled for shared variance between the Dark Triad traits, narcissism emerged as a positive predictor for all but one facet of interoception. Primary psychopathy was a positive predictor of attention regulation, whereas secondary psychopathy was a negative predictor of awareness of body sensation and attention regulation. Machiavellianism emerged as a negative predictor of trusting body sensations. The findings are discussed within an evolutionary framework. Awareness of one's internal bodily signals (i.e., interoception, or body awareness) and the capacity for empathy and emotional experience are intricately linked to each other and could potentially have a relationship with other traits that are characterised by low empathy. In the present study, we were interested in investigating how body awareness relates to the Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), a constellation of traits characterised by low empathy In the recent decades, there has been a mushrooming of theoretical and empirical studies investigating manipulative personalities, or the Dark Triad constellation (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, 2013). The Dark Triad consists of a set of overlapping, yet distinct personality traits: narcissism (i.e., vanity and grandiose self-view), Machiavellianism (i.e., cynicism and distrust in others), and psychopathy (primary psychopathy: callous and unemotional tendencies; secondary psychopathy: antisocial and risk-taking behaviours). Theoretically, the Dark Triad has been placed within the evolutionary Life History framework, where individuals vary from slow (late maturation and reproduction, altruistic and cautious inter-personal styles) to fast (early maturation and reproduction, exploitive and impulsive inter-personal styles) in an adaptive continuum (Jonason, Koenig, & Tost, 2010). Low empathy could be useful for individuals who are enacting a fast life history strategy, enabling them to efficiently manipulate and use others (Jonason et al., 2013). It is possible that the fast end of the life history continuum relates to poorer interoceptive ability. Perhaps diverting attention away from oneself, and focusing on the external setting allows for better extraction of immediate resources from the environment, …