Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dimensions of Religious/Spiritual
Well-Being and the Dark Triad of
Personality
Monika Kmmerle a Human-Friedrich Unterrainer ac
Phoebe Dahmen-Wassenberg a Andreas Fink a Hans-Peter Kapfhammer b
a
Institute of Psychology, Karl Franzens University Graz, and b Psychiatry Clinic, Medical University of Graz, Graz, and
c
Center for Integrative Addiction Research (Grner Kreis Society), Vienna, Austria
Key Words ated with some RSWB subdimensions such as hope or con-
Religious/spiritual well-being Dark triad Narcissism nectedness. Conclusions: First deductions can be made
Machiavellianism Psychopathy from these data concerning an ambivalent role of spirituality
in impaired personality structure. These associations might
be further investigated especially in psychiatric patients di-
Abstract agnosed with personality disorders in order to describe po-
Background: In general, religious/spiritual dimensions are tential psychopathological facets of religion and spirituality
found to be negatively correlated with all kinds of psychiatric more adequately. 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel
disorders such as depression, suicidal ideation and sub-
stance abuse. Contrary to these findings, the goal of this
study was to investigate the relationship between dimen-
sions of religious/spiritual well-being (RSWB) and less favor- Introduction
able aspects of personality the so-called dark triad of per-
sonality traits, i.e. narcissism, machiavellianism and psy- There is a positive relationship between religion and
chopathy together with general deficits in personality spirituality and various indicators for mental health as
structure. Sampling and Methods: A total of 312 college stu- well as favorable aspects of personality (e.g. agreeable-
dents (220 females) completed the Multidimensional Inven- ness) constantly highlighted in the literature. On the oth-
tory for RSWB, the revised Narcissistic Personality Inventory, er hand, religious/spiritual well-being (RSWB) was found
the Machiavellianism Inventory and the Levenson Self-Re- to be negatively associated with nearly every kind of men-
port Psychopathy Scale along with the 16-item Inventory of tal illness such as anxious/depressive disorders or sub-
Personality Organization. Results: RSWB was confirmed to stance dependencies [1]. Piedmont [2] describes religion
be negatively correlated with these negative aspects of per- and spirituality as universal threads in the fabric of hu-
sonality, in particular with subclinical psychopathy. More
specifically, there were several notable overlaps; narcissism,
for instance, was found to be significantly positively associ- M.K. and H.-F.U. contributed equally to this work.
r ()
narcissism machiavellianism psychopathy structural deficits
General religiosity 0.05 (0.16) 0.19 (0.04) 0.26** (0.32*) 0.03 (0.11)
Forgiveness 0.11 (0.02) 0.38** (0.15) 0.43** (0.32*) 0.19 (0.02)
Hope immanent 0.43** (0.50*) 0.11 (0.05) 0.23** (0.35*) 0.30** (0.15)
Connectedness 0.20** (0.34*) 0.15 (0.07) 0.21** (0.36*) 0.10 (0.27*)
Hope transcendent 0.08 (0.07) 0.24** (0.11) 0.25** (0.02) 0.37** (0.34*)
Experiences of sense and meaning 0.27** (0.40*) 0.26** (0.01) 0.34** (0.38*) 0.19 (0.01)
RSWB 0.17 (0.32*) 0.34** (0.10) 0.44** (0.46*) 0.21** (0.01)
Values denote Pearsons correlation coefficients with standardized regression coefficients in parentheses.
* p < 0.003; ** p < 0.0004.
tween machiavellianism and the RSWB dimensions could with several other healthy control groups [15, 20]. These
be thoroughly explained by the shared variance of the results proved to be the same for all of the RSWB sub-
predictors. Narcissism showed a decent positive associa- scales. We also found minimal effects (Cohens d <0.2) for
tion with hope immanent (r = 0.43) as well as a weak pos- the scores of the dark triad variables by comparing them
itive correlation with connectedness and experiences of with other student samples [12, 17, 21, 22] as well as for
sense and meaning (r = 0.20 and r = 0.27). Other RSWB the IPO scores of a general German community sample
dimensions and the total score showed no significant as- [18].
sociation with narcissism. According to the standardized
regression coefficients, narcissism turned out to be a rel-
evant predictor of hope immanent ( = 0.50), connected- Discussion
ness ( = 0.34), experiences of sense and meaning ( =
0.40) and, consequently, the RSWB total score ( = 0.32). In the present study, we focused on the dark side of per-
Structural deficits in personality exhibited a moderate sonality in relation to different facets of religiosity and
negative correlation with hope immanent and hope tran- spirituality. Thereby, we assumed that at least some facets
scendent (r = 0.30 and r = 0.37). No further significant of religiosity and spirituality could be positively linked to
association with any of the other RSWB dimensions was a lacking development of personality. However, with re-
found other than a minor negative correlation between spect to this assumption, our results offer a straightfor-
structural deficits in personality and the RSWB total score ward conclusion, particularly in view of the finding that
(r = 0.21). However, this association, as well as the cor- the dimensions of RSWB were negatively related to psy-
relation between structural deficits and hope immanent, chopathy. Even after controlling for the shared variance of
could be explained completely by the shared variance of the other dark variables, psychopathy turned out to be the
the predictors. Nonetheless, structural deficits in person- strongest negative correlate of RSWB. In particular, these
ality predicted diminished hope transcendent ( = 0.34) results mirror the aversive and self-defeating character of
and, remarkably, increased connectedness ( = 0.27). psychopathy already known from previous research [23].
Further facet-level analyses confirmed the general re- According to the negative association of psychopathy with
sults of a negative association between RSWB dimensions the two transcendent dimensions of general religiosity and
and dark triad members on the one hand and structural connectedness, a strictly limited access to the transcen-
deficits in personality on the other hand (at least p < 0.05). dental sphere can be assumed for people scoring high on
There was just one exception: the RSWB dimension of psychopathy. Nevertheless, the dimension of hope tran-
connectedness turned out to be mildly positively related scendent, the hope for a better life after death, remained
to the IPO subdimension of impaired reality testing (r = unimpaired by the unique influence of psychopathy.
0.20; p < 0.001). No relevant differences (Cohens d <0.2) In addition, it was found that RSWB dimensions were
could be detected for RSWB dimensions in comparison not related to machiavellianism when the shared variance
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