A comparative study of suicidal and self-harm behaviors and the guilt and shame proneness among individuals with the "Dark Tetrad Personality Traits" and the "Vulnerable Dark Triad": A cross-sectional study

Suicidal and self-harm behaviors are among the topics that have long been considered by clinical psychologists.

The present study aimed to compare suicidal and self-harm behaviors and the guilt and shame proneness among individuals with the "dark tetrad personality traits" and the "vulnerable dark triad"

The present cross-sectional study is a type of structural equation modeling that has been conducted using a large sample. The statistical population in the "general population" consists of all young people aged 18-40 in Tehran. The "clinical population" also included all people with suicidal and self-harm behaviors of the same age range. A total of 1876 people were included in the present analysis among which 1696 individuals were selected for the general population using online surveys and 180 ones in purposive sampling for the clinical population from psychiatric hospitals, and prisons located in Tehran. The research tools in the present study included the Short Dark Tetrad (SD4), Scales for vulnerable dark personality traits, the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale (GASP), the Self-Harm Inventory (SHI) and Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R). Data were analyzed by SPSS-26 and AMOS-24 using a comparison of path coefficients and invariance Testing.

The findings indicated that only a statistically significant difference observed between the dark tetrad of personality traits and the vulnerable dark triad was self-harm behaviors (not Suicidal Behaviors) (P<0.001, t=6.603, ∆β=0.13). Also, people with vulnerable dark triad possessed more pathological shame (P<0.001, t=7.346, ∆β=0.21) compared to those with dark tetrad of personality traits.

It can be concluded that the vulnerable dark triad (Factor 2 psychopathy, vulnerable narcissism and BPD) is associated with an increasingly greater risk of self-harm behaviors and pathological shame compared to a dark tetrad of personality (Sadism, Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissism).