People Seem to Become Less Socially Aversive With Age

Socially aversive—or ‘dark’—personality traits such as Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, or Sadism are variations of a general tendency of some individuals to put themselves over others. Whereas the effects of such traits at work or for social interactions more generally are well-documented, surprisingly little research has investigated how socially aversive traits develop throughout adulthood. That is, do we tend to become more or less socially aversive as we age?

Recently, we addressed this question in following around 500 German adults (ages ranging from 18 to 65 years) over a 4-year period, who filled out personality questionnaires assessing aversive traits (Egoism, Machiavellianism, Moral Disengagement, Narcissism, Psychological Entitlement, Psychopathy, Sadism, Self-Interest, and Spitefulness). Based on the responses, we could not only obtain estimates of people’s levels in these traits, but we could also assess their level in the fundamental tendency underlying all these traits, the dark core of personality. (A general introduction into this concept can be found here, and a questionnaire with automatic feedback on your levels in the dark core of personality can be found here; please note that I am co-hosting these websites).

Source: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

What we found

We found strong evidence that people’s levels of socially aversive traits decrease with age. That is, except for Psychological Entitlement and Sadism, people—on average—self-ascribed lower trait levels in all assessed traits (and the dark core of personality overall) across the 4-year period. This pattern was most pronounced for younger and older individuals, whereas the least change was evident for those aged between 38 and 50 years.

Interestingly, the way in which people changed in the different aversive traits tended to mirror the way in which people changed in the dark core of personality overall. In other words, knowing how a person’s level in the dark core of personality develops allows for a prediction of how that person’s levels in virtually all socially aversive traits develop. Together with other recent findings (e.g., here, here, or here), this study substantiates the idea that there is an underlying basic tendency—which we termed the Dark Factor of Personality—representing the degree to which people place themselves over others and pursue their own goals irrespective of the costs for others (while holding some beliefs that serve as justifications for such behavior), and that different socially aversive traits are flavored manifestations of this behavior.

Next to these findings about how people’s levels in the dark core of personality and, in turn, socially aversive traits develop in general, we found quite strong evidence that people’s relative levels were maintained (so-called high rank-order stability). That is, across the dark core of personality and all traits, people who tended to have rather low (or high) levels compared to others at the first measurement occasion also tended to have rather low (or high) levels four years later (while the levels across all people were lower at the second as compared to the first measurement occasion). So, mirroring extensive research on other traits (e.g., here), whereas people tend to change in general, they also tend to "remain themselves" relative to their reference group.

Source: Image by Alexa Fotos (Pexels).

Why might people’s levels change in general?

There are several potential explanations for why people might become less socially aversive when getting older (we did not test any of these directly, though). A prominent explanation is the maturity principle of personality development, which states that people become more mature when getting older (e.g., due to changing social roles such as having more responsibility for others—as a parent, perhaps, or via guiding/supervising others at work). Given that the dark core of personality describes to what degree people prioritize self-interest at the cost of others, a decrease in such a tendency (and, in turn, socially aversive traits) might be more functional for dealing with evolving responsibilities.