The dark core of personality predicts mate poaching, jealousy, sociosexual orientation, ambivalent sexism, and attitudes toward sexual harassment

Personality traits that reflect antagonistic, malevolent or socially aversive behaviours (the dark core), are predicted to have an important role in sexual attitudes and behaviour. This study sought to test whether dark personality traits relate to self-reported mate poaching, romantic jealousy, sociosexual orientation, hostile and benevolent sexism, and attitudes toward sexual harassment. In total, 410 participants (Mage = 35.4 ± 11.4 years) completed questionnaire measures at a single time-point. After controlling for participant demographics, results showed significant associations between the dark core and measured outcomes. In particular, callousness was most important for hostile sexism, deceitfulness was most important for mate poaching and sociosexual behaviour, narcissistic entitlement was most important for romantic jealousy, sadism was most important for sociosexual attitudes, and vindictiveness was most important for ambivalent sexism and sexual harassment attitudes. Participant sex emerged as an important moderator. Multiple mediation models further showed that hostile sexism, but not benevolent sexism, mediated a positive association between vindictiveness and acceptance and tolerance of sexual harassment. Overall, these findings provide evidence that traits of the dark core are important for sexual attitudes and behaviour, and might be of interest to practitioners working in areas related to romantic and sexual issues.