Antagonistic and the “better-than-average-effect”

Today, I examine an article I found intriguing. Hart, Hall, Lambert, Cease & Wahlers (2024) published “Antagonistic but Holier than Thou: Antagonistic people think they are (way) better-than-average on moral character” in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment.  Here’s the edited abstract:

Although clinical psychologists have long speculated that antagonistic individuals may lack insight into their moral deficits, some evidence has shown that more (vs. less) antagonistic people view moral traits as somewhat desirable and rate themselves as lower on moral characteristics (suggestive of some insight). But, we suggest that antagonistic people’s struggles with insight can be detected as part of a basic social-cognitive bias that entails believing the self is better-than-average on socially desirable characteristics (i.e., the “better-than-average effect” [BTAE]). Specifically, although antagonistic people may rate themselves lower on moral characteristics than less antagonistic people, they may still believe that their relative standing on moral characteristics compares favorably to others. Participants (N = 515) completed indicators of the Dark Tetrad (D4) constructs (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism) and rated themselves in relation to others on moral and immoral character traits. Overall, participants exhibited very large BTAEs (i.e., rated the self as “better-than-average” on moral character traits); only psychopathy and sadism consistently related negatively to BTAEs, but people with elevations in each D4 construct (or any D4 facet) still exhibited large-to-very-large BTAEs. Such antagonistic participants viewed themselves as possessing substantially greater amounts of moral than immoral character traits but viewed average others as possessing an equal mix of these traits. 

This is a fairly large sample. It seems to me that one of the effects of social media has been an increase in both antagonistic behaviors and battles over moral superiority. Zell et al. define the “Better-than-average-effect” (BTAE) as “the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared with their average peer.”

While the Dark Tetrad originally came from the enneagram, it has been studied in relation to the Big Five. This study illustrates the combination of BTAE and Dark Tetrad constructs, especially narcissism and Machiavellianism, relate to seeing the self as morally superior. 

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