Dark triad and bullying in adolescents: a three-wave random intercept cross-lag panel analysis

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104178

Description

It seems that few longitudinal studies have examined the Dark Triad and bullying in youth, and no studies have used analytic methods to investigate these relationships.

The study used three waves of data from a randomly selected sample of 514 Canadian adolescents aged 15-18 years in random intercept cross-lag panel modeling to assess the Dark Triad and bullying over time.

Results showed that gender and parental control over education were positively correlated with bullying, as were random intercepts of Machiavellianism and psychopathy at the interindividual level.

At the within-individual level, narcissism and Machiavellianism were found to be instantaneously stable, and the remaining within-time correlations reflected bivariate associations, explained to indicate that Machiavellianism and psychopathology share a consistent association with bullying.