Antagonistic personality and moral insight: Viewing oneself as less moral yet more moral than others

Abstract

There is a longstanding assumption that antagonistic individuals lack insight into their moral deficits. Recent evidence suggests that such insight deficiencies are detectable in comparative judgments about one's morality. Although relatively antagonistic people rate themselves lower in moral characteristics than others rate themselves, they nonetheless insist they are relatively higher in moral characteristics than others. Secure conclusions from these data are precluded by the use of uniform methods (i.e., making explicit comparative judgments on moral traits). To gain a more secure understanding, participants (N = 497) completed indicators of Dark Tetrad (D4) constructs (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism) and rated either themselves or a non-descript other (between-subjects) on their likelihood of engaging in moral (prosocial) behavior in various situations. Overall, participants indicated the self would engage in more prosocial behavior relative to the other; this effect – reflective of perceived moral superiority – was similar in size across levels of a D4 component score. People higher (vs. lower) in the D4 component score indicated that the self and others would engage in less prosocial behavior and both targets would expect to be viewed as less moral. People higher (vs. lower) in antagonistic personality probably do regard the self as morally superior.