What this guide is: Being confronted with a whole host of readings introducing a topic can be quite
overwhelming, and it isn’t always clear where to start. This guide is intended to assist your
understanding of the research underpinning the current lab report. In sum, these readings build up
the arguments we use to eventually make the hypotheses we need to address the research
questions. This document is intended to help point out aspects of interest from the readings and
help keep your thinking organised. All texts are relevant to the overall study, but you’ll find that
some are more useful for generating questions rather than answers (i.e., “this paper tells me
something, but not everything. Can I formulate a hypothesis that address my research questions?).
How to use this guide: The notes here are designed as prompts for points of interest to the current
lab report. As you read the reports, consider the notes here and think about how they might be
useful for addressing the research questions. Do the authors make arguments that you can use? Do
the authors give useful definitions? As you read, do you notice limitations (or “gaps”) that your lab
report could address?
What this guide is not: This guide is not a substitute for reading the papers themselves, nor is it an
exhaustive list of every point of interest/relevance to the current lab report. Do I need to find any
more articles?: The resources below are all you need for this lab report. While you are free to
examine other sources if you wish, you are not required to.
1)
https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/covid-19
Use this Government web report to define our main DV, and to describe the problem faced in
Australia. You can cite like this:
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2021). Mental health services in Australia. Retrieved
from https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/covid-19
If you want to cite another source from within this Government report you can, just add it to your
reference list, and no need to secondary cite.
This report will be useful in answering the question: Is psychological distress a problem in Australia?
2)
Paulhus and Williams (2002)
You don’t need a lot from this paper but the following may be helpful. This is an early dark triad
paper which can be used to define the dark triad constructs. They found these constructs share a
core of disagreeableness. On pages 561-562 they discuss the whether the dark triad is maladaptive
for the individual and say the findings are mixed, however that psychopathy should be negatively
related to anxiety.
3)
Kaufman et al. (2019)
Discussion of the dark triad and the emerging light triad (and development of this scale). This study
relates both personality measures with positive and negative outcome measures, and does the
following:
– argue for a gap regarding positive traits and growth-oriented life outcomes
– defines the light triad
– Shows the light triad is related to life satisfaction, growth-oriented and self-transcendent outcomes
– Shows the dark triad is negatively related to life satisfaction and growth-oriented outcomes
-makes an argument for analysing dark triad constructs together
– covers research linking the dark triad to many socially aversive outcomes
– argues for examination of dark and light triads and well-being, as well maladaptive outcomes
– on page 3 they suggest a controversy in the field regarding whether the dark triad predicts adverse
psychosocial outcomes and whether there are any benefits to the dark triad characteristics. They go
on to test this with several adaptive outcomes, but they have not tested this with psychological
distress.
– while most of the Results are beyond this unit, Table 6 provides some relevant correlations
(between light dark triad and anxiety/depression)
– Portraits of the Light vs. Dark triad section notes a large number of interesting relationships for our
proposed study
– on page 21 they inversely link the light triad with Beck’s cognitive triad of depression
– in their future directions they also recommend future research examine the differential prediction
of the 3 facets of the light triad
4)
Jonason, Baughman, Carter and Parker (2015)
This paper focusses on associations between the dark triad and various well-being outcomes. They
found psychopathy and Machiavellianism were related to a number of negative psychological and
physical outcomes, whereas narcissism was only related to a few. They base their research on an
evolutionary theoretical explanation that links personality with health outcomes. They also argue for
examining the impact of the dark triad on multiple domains as opposed to single types of
dysfunction (e.g., anxiety). They then lay out arguments linking each dark triad construct to health
outcomes (inc. psychological).
They found that different dimensions of the dark triad showed differing relationships with well-being
amongst 3 different populations. Table 3 shows associations between dark triad and mental health.
Table 4 shows similar key relationships for our study, in an Australian sample. There is a lot in these
Results you do not need, just look for justification to examine our research questions.
They did find differing associations across populations, these mixed findings by Jonason et al. are
nicely summarised by Kaufman et al. “For instance, among the Americans, all the three dimensions
were found to predict depressive symptoms. Among the Australian high school students, higher
scores on Machiavellianism were associated with poorer psychological, social, and emotional wellbeing and vice versa, whereas those scoring high on narcissism were found to score higher on
psychological, emotional, and social wellbeing and vice versa. Higher scores on psychopathy were
associated with poor psychological and emotional wellbeing”(Kaufman et al., 2019).
5)
Aghababaei, N., Mohammadtabar, S., and Saffarinia, M. (2014).
This paper is investigating a slightly different question (dark triad, prosociality and amongst other
things – happiness), however it has some useful findings for us. So don’t get bogged down in their
details, rather use their paper for only the following findings. They found no correlations between
happiness and the dark triad. But did find a positive association between pro-sociality and
happiness, suggesting light triad traits might be related to well-being. They also put forward a good
argument for examining such questions with multiple regression rather than bivariate correlations
(2nd paragraph p. 7).