Publikationen
- Wolff, C., & Wetzel, E. (2023). The development of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism in young adulthood. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1). doi.org/10.1525/collabra.77870
The development of the personality traits Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism is hardly understood. We theorize that the well-documented maturity principle applies to these traits. Decreasing levels of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and the antagonistic dimension “narcissistic rivalry” could be interpreted as reflecting maturation. The self-enhancing “narcissistic admiration” trait might remain unchanged. A sample of N = 926 German university students aged 18 to 30 (74% female) participated in a longitudinal study with 4 waves of measurement over 2 years, completing short and full-length measurement instruments. The preregistered analyses included latent growth curve models based on Item Factor Analysis with partial measurement invariance. We accounted for the possibilities of cohort effects and nonlinear development and we controlled the false discovery rate. All four traits showed very high rank-order stability (rs ranged from .74 to .81). In line with the maturity principle, mean levels of Machiavellianism and psychopathy linearly decreased (ds were −0.18 and −0.12). Moreover, model comparisons revealed systematic heterogeneity in Machiavellianism’s linear growth curve, indicating that young adults differ from each other in the direction or steepness of their developmental paths. We also assessed self-esteem and life satisfaction. Linear changes in Machiavellianism were inversely related to linear changes in life satisfaction (r = −.39), making the mean-level decrease in Machiavellianism appear as adaptive. While findings concerning narcissism were inconclusive, this study provides incremental evidence that the maturity principle might apply to Machiavellianism and, potentially, to psychopathy.
- Wolff, C., & Keith, N. (2019). Motives relate to cooperation in social dilemmas but have an inconsistent association with leadership evaluation. Scientific Reports, 9, 10118. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45931-4 (Volltext).
A common assumption is that good leaders are driven by a power motive that motivates them to influence others. However, leaders need to restrain themselves in social dilemmas where cooperation maximizes collective outcomes. We theorize that in social dilemmas, a desire for positive relationships (affiliation motive) is more beneficial than a power motive because it draws attention away from short-term self-interest towards understanding others. In a game of Settlers of Catan in the laboratory, we find that a functional variant of the affiliation motive relates to verbal encouragement of cooperation, to fewer occurrences of oil spills, to higher ratings of transformational leadership and, in a field survey, to fewer selfish business decisions. Furthermore, a dysfunctional variant of the power motive relates to two of three indicators of selfishness. Group members perceive selfish individuals as assuming leadership roles which indirectly relates to slightly higher ratings of transformational leadership. This pattern of evaluation may privilege men who, on average, show more selfish behaviour which can be partially attributed to their motives. Mere awareness of gender-based discrimination does not enable raters to circumvent this pattern of evaluation. This work suggests a need for interventions that increase appreciation of cooperative leaders.
- Wolff, C. (2019). On the role of power and affiliation motives for leadership and selfishness in men and women (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/8711/ (Volltext).
- Volmer, J., Koch, I. K., & Wolff, C. (2019). Illumination the ´dark core´: Mapping global versus specific sources of variance across multiple measures of the dark triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 145, 97-102. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.03.024 (Volltext).
- Greiff, S., Stadler, M., Sonnleitner, P., Wolff, C., & Martin, R. (2017). Sometimes more is too much: A rejoinder to the commentaries on Greiff et al. (2015). Journal of Intelligence, 5, 6. doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence5010006 (Volltext).
- Greiff, S., Stadler, M., Sonnleitner, P., Wolff, C., & Martin, R. (2015). Sometimes less is more: Comparing the validity of complex problem solving measures. Intelligence, 50, 100-113. doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2015.02.007.
- Keith, N., & Wolff, C. (2015). Encouraging active learning. In K. Kraiger, J. Passmore, N. R. Santos, & S. Malvezzi (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of the psychology of training, development, and performance improvement (pp. 92–116). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. doi.org/10.1002/9781118736982.ch6 (Volltext).
