Dr. David Buss

Could you tell us about the dark triad?

Yeah, so the dark triad, so we've been talking about sex differences on average, but there are critical within sex individual differences.

And the dark triad is one of the most important ones.

The dark triad consists of three personality characteristics.

So narcissism,

Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

If you combine these qualities, you have some very bad dudes.

And I say bad dudes because men tend to score higher in these things than women.

Why is this important?

Well, it's important in the mating context because those who are high on dark triad traits tend to be sexual deceivers, for one.

So they're very often very charming, very good at seducing women and then abandoning them.

They're very good at the art of seduction.

They also tend to be serial sexual harassers and sexual coercers.

And so if you combine dark triad traits with the dispositional pursuit of a short-term mating strategy, that's an especially deadly combination.

That's when you get sexual harassment, sexual coercion.

It's a subset of men who commit the vast majority of these acts of sexual violence.

Yes.

So, well, stalking has multiple motivations, but one of the most frequent motivations is a mating motivation where either there's a breakup and the woman dumps the guy and the guy doesn't.

want to get dumped.

He wants to maintain a relationship with her.