Dimensions of religious/spiritual well-being and the dark triad of personality.
BACKGROUND
In general, religious/spiritual dimensions are found to be negatively correlated with all kinds of psychiatric disorders such as depression, suicidal ideation and substance abuse. Contrary to these findings, the goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between dimensions of religious/spiritual well-being (RSWB) and less favorable aspects of personality - the so-called 'dark triad' of personality traits, i.e. narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy - together with general deficits in personality structure.


METHODS
A total of 312 college students (220 females) completed the Multidimensional Inventory for RSWB, the revised Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Machiavellianism Inventory and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale along with the 16-item Inventory of Personality Organization.


RESULTS
RSWB was confirmed to be negatively correlated with these negative aspects of personality, in particular with subclinical psychopathy. More specifically, there were several notable overlaps; narcissism, for instance, was found to be significantly positively associated with some RSWB subdimensions such as 'hope' or 'connectedness'.


CONCLUSIONS
First deductions can be made from these data concerning an ambivalent role of spirituality in impaired personality structure. These associations might be further investigated especially in psychiatric patients diagnosed with personality disorders in order to describe potential psychopathological facets of religion and spirituality more adequately.
Institute of Psychology, Karl Franzens University Graz, Graz, Austria.
Monika
M
Kämmerle
Human-Friedrich
HF
Unterrainer
Phoebe
P
Dahmen-Wassenberg
Andreas
A
Fink
Hans-Peter
HP
Kapfhammer
D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008257:Machiavellianism; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D009289:Narcissism; D010551:Personality; D010553:Personality Development; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D010555:Personality Inventory; D012067:Religion; D057566:Self Report; D029181:Spirituality