Why aren't men attracted to Dark Triad traits in women?

Jaded_Interaction162 · 2023-11-18T17:02:07+00:00

Guys like borderline women a lot and those women tend to be the feminine version of psychopathic males. There's also the hot crazy matrix as well.

mackenzie013_02 · 2023-11-18T17:06:44+00:00

They are attracted to all the rollercoaster “BPD women”.

sixsevenrice · 2023-11-18T16:51:58+00:00

Because men are the "protectors" from an evolutionary perspective. Hence why Dark Triad traits would be useful. Your protector needs to have "that dog" in him.

KayRay1994 · 2023-11-18T16:58:39+00:00

Probably because people with dark triad traits are more likely to be dominant and in control of a situation - something many men aren’t particularly interested in. That being said, men are attracted to a certain kind of toxicity as well - dark triad traits are generally associated with personality disorders like psychopathy, NPD, etc - meanwhile, the inverse is a woman with untreated and severe BPD, which men tend to go wild for, and it makes sense - a woman with BPD can make a man feel important, special and powerful (when things are going well), but when things are bad, the manipulation, fear of abandonment, etc all come in - now, while these aren’t dark triad traits, ie. they’re less calculated and ‘in control’ and more messy/chaotic, they do tend to be what most men look for in a relationship.

Medium_Listen_9004 · 2023-11-18T17:32:32+00:00

I have no interest in causing harm to others. I don't match with people that have that desire either. I'm not losing my conscience for seggs

Whiskeyjack1982 · 2023-11-18T20:12:10+00:00

Because men dont need women to protect us.

We dont need women to commit violence on our behalf.

We don't need women to provide for us.

AngeCruelle · 2023-11-18T17:09:38+00:00

Research findings have been all over the place on this, with some indicating that men are in fact attracted to dark tried traits in women (yes for both sex and relationships), mainly because they're often correlated with physical attractiveness. Iirc narcissism was a high predictor for relationship desirability, and psychopathy was a high predictor for casual sex/STR desirability.

Such as this paper.

That said the sample sizes on this sort of research are often tiny. I imagine it has something to do with there not being a lot of funding and grants available for "how to be fuckable to the opposite sex."

SlowEffective8146 · 2023-11-18T21:04:36+00:00

I'm pretty sure dark triad improves sexual success for both men and women; meaning that they're more willing to take risks, less inhibited, less disgust, more charismatic.

Now what I think happens between men and women for relationship success is that men don't want those traits in a woman because it potentially could lead to an increased cheating risk and men will avoid anything that increases the odds of cheating if they are to commit.

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waffleznstuff30 · 2023-11-18T18:27:45+00:00

I would disagree. Men are attracted to dark triad traits they just present themselves differently in women then they do in men. I know a lot of men who love toxic women and I think a lot of the dating culture we have today enables and encourages toxic behavior and dark triad traits in both men and women. And a lot of the dating advice and "coaching" is geared towards this stuff.

DrBoby · 2023-11-18T19:19:04+00:00

Because men are attracted to traits associated with fertility.

No-Rough-7390 · 2023-11-18T20:58:12+00:00

One word: paternity

AethertheEternal · 2023-11-19T02:44:07+00:00

They’re highly disagreeable, more likely to cheat, be abusive, have higher n-counts and pathologically extroverted.

philseven12 · 2023-11-19T13:13:53+00:00

Because the majority of those traits are a by product of having a high body count and bitterness because of unsuccessful attempts to get the "hvm" to comply and commit

Organic-Raccoon1776 · 2023-11-19T14:39:48+00:00

Because men (generally) want peace—not more difficulty or drama.

EulenWatcher · 2023-11-18T16:56:58+00:00

It's been well established that women GENERALLY are attracted to men with dark triad traits.

No. I'll copy my old translation of a Russian article on the topic.

It is a translation of the first part of the Russian article. I'm not the author and I've translated with the permission of the author. All credit is to the author and people working on the article.

This project was supposed to be an article about the Incels Wiki project, but in the course of work it turned into something more - this material covers in-depth the methodological critiques of many modern ways of studying the gender differences between men and women. I hope readers will find this project interesting.

Here is an article from the "Wikipedia" of the incels, which was the initial reason for this project. [The links is redacted out, as I think Reddit bans my post due to it]

The main author of the article is Alexey Stukalsky. Psychologists, translators, mathematicians and some other specialists helping, checking and proofreading this work: Vladimir Volokhonsky, Anton Lebed, Natalia Butkova, Danila Zakharov, Alexander Doe, Nadezhda Belyaeva and Elizaveta Romanova.

Dark triad

Incels claim that women like men with high scores in Dark Triad traits. This is one of many talking points where incels demonstrate their bias and stubbornly ignore the methodological problems of studies they’re using.

The first methodological issue: The link between attractive facial features and DT traits is weak and partial, there is only limited confirmation for the link with narcissism, but not for Machiavellianism or psychopathy.

Shiramizu V. K. M. et al. 2019

The second methodological issue: Most studies use self-reports to form pools of individuals with DT traits, i.e. in the testing set they include photos of the people identified as carriers of the DT traits according to their results to questionnaire. This approach looks dubious. It is recommended to include assessments of others (relatives, close friends) to accurately determine the presence of the DT.

Muris et. al. 2017

The third methodological issue: most studies view narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism as unidimensional constructs, although there is evidence that they are multidimensional.

Miller et. al. 2019

Broken down into components, some traits have correlation with attractiveness, while others have no correlation or inverse correlation. For example, agentic narcissism is correlated with attractiveness, but antagonistic narcissism is not.

The fourth methodological problem: we can put forward hypotheses about the biological origin of the alleged attraction to the DT only when this attraction is manifested in a universal way for all human cultures and societies. And since such studies have simply not been conducted in non-Westernized societies, we cannot argue about the influence of biology and not culture. I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of these studies [“Problems of evolutionary psychology”, “On the gender difference in risk taking”, “On the gender difference in competitiveness”]. Without them, all evolutionary hypotheses cited by incels are nothing more than speculation. For example, the hunter-gatherer hypothesis: They argue that females choose “dominant males” “to gain access to high quality food and resources (Geary 2004)”. But among hunter-gatherers, everyone gets food equally, there is no special nutritional benefit for the best hunter’s woman, unless the hunters themselves eat slightly better than women (Stibbard-Hawkes et. al. 2020).

Such speculations constitute the majority of evolutionary psychological hypotheses that are not based on empirical data from non-Westernized communities.

These are not all methodological problems - some will be revealed when we talk about the attractiveness or unattractiveness of masculinized faces.

Cherry-picking

Incels also ignore the fact that DT attractiveness studies have highly controversial results. They do not cite studies that didn’t find the link between DT facial features and attractiveness. Moreover, there are evidences that these traits cause disgust.

One: Brewer, Gayle, et al. (2018)

Two: Lyons, Minna, and Louise Simeonov 2016

Three: Solomon, E., & Lyons, M. (2020)

That’s an example of banal cherry-picking.

Considering studies using vignettes (textual descriptions of people with high and low DR traits) they cite the study (Carter, G. L et al. 2014), where the researches found the link between attractiveness and high scores for DT traits, but they ignore another study Qureshi et al. (2016), which has a bigger sample and shows that people with high DT traits scores aren’t more attractive than people with lower DT traits scores. There’s also another ignored work Salvino, M. A. (2018), which found out that narcissism is attractive both for men and women in contrast to psychopathy or Machiavellianism.

They also cite (Brazil, K. J., & Forth, A. E. (2020), but forget about Jauk et al. 2016 where only narcissism remains a significant predictor of mate choice, while psychopathy after controlling for physical attractiveness is not one and Machiavellianism has inverse correlation. As I noted earlier both studies suffer from a serious methodological flaw – low statistical power. How to correctly (and not selectively) quote, you can see in my other article.

Conclusion

From all cited studies and criticism of methodology, we can conclude that there is no strong evidence for the greater attractiveness of people with high DT scores. Narcissism might slightly correlate with attractiveness, but not to the point of monstrous d=0.94 given by incels.

macone235 · 2023-11-18T17:19:04+00:00

Women aren’t generally attracted to dark triad traits. Narcissism is the only one that produces this effect while psychopathy and Machiavellianism don’t.

This would make sense as narcissistic people tend to be more physically attractive, stylish, social, and confident. So I’d expect that women are interested in those associated traits

Azihayya · 2023-11-18T18:14:43+00:00

The woman that every red pill guy imagines is some version of the dark triad girl. She's narcissistic, Machiavellian and psychopathic. That's pretty much the only kind of woman that red pill guys are attracted to, or even think that exist. All of the manosphere spaces think that women are out of their minds and can't help but lying and trying to fuck them over, looking out only for themselves in the most selfish way possible. Also, men have a huge thing for the Megan Fox aesthetic, bad girls, etc. etc.

yusuf1029 · 2023-11-18T16:55:15+00:00

Virility and masculinity is only desired in men. Women don't have to worry about their legacy, lineage, or their inheritors. Women also don't have to work as hard as men in pretty much everything.

Feminists on here think that there's this massive conspiracy to abuse and hold down women harbored by the men of today and yesterday. The reality is that women are only seen as useful to men in a marriage if they provide intercourse and labor via child rearing. Notice how those two things stem from something inherent to the female. Men have to build themselves in order to be successful or even adequate. Dark Triad traits exemplify this kind of man.

xBTx · 2023-11-18T17:41:43+00:00

For more detail see the studies referenced at the bottom of this article

Good idea

From the second reference:

"our final sample was of 267 (56% women; Mean Age = 34.49, SD = 11.78; 60% White/European Heritage, 29% Asian, 3% Latinx, 2% Black, 6% Other"

But why haven't studies proven that men are also attracted to women with dark triad traits?

Seems like this one did

Scarce12 · 2023-11-18T20:52:28+00:00

This research is still rather preliminary and underfunded.

David Buss appears to be at the forefront, but I disagree with some of his views. I find him too apologetic toward young women.

In particular, he says that as women mature they lose interest in dark triad traits, due to learning more about men.

I disagree. I think young women go for dark triad traits because young women have similar traits themselves, and it's this that they outgrow.

Young women have a high amount of other Cluster B disorders - borderline personality disorder, histronic personality disorder, narcissism. And as they age, they improve on these conditions.

Actually, I think there is a hidden dark triad of traits in young women, however feminism in faculties pushes researchers to not study it.

David Buss himself said he got asked to not publish rather obvious findings that men evolutionarily go for beauty and this has been proved to be universal and cross-cultural.

The reason he was asked to tow the social learning theory line that beaty is cultural (and is patriarchally enforced) was because it otherwise "creates too much pressure on young women and they already have enough to deal with".

As if men don't have enough to deal with.

vivienneebackwood · 2023-11-18T21:49:56+00:00

i used to be so confused when girls on love island would say they liked “tall, dark, and handsome” and they’d be talking about a white man.

l thought dark was referring to physical features LOL

TheGreatBeefSupreme · 2023-11-19T00:11:24+00:00

There’s an idea that the reason dark triad traits are more common in men than in women is that they benefit (or used to benefit) the men who possessed them, but didn’t benefit the women who possessed them. Men and women are both more attracted to people that have traits that benefit those people.

RRBeachFG2 · 2023-11-19T13:47:35+00:00

Because men want to take care of women and women want a man that’s going to take care of shit

Cherish_Lifee · 2023-11-19T19:54:33+00:00

women are into dark triad because those traits are benefically for one of the things women care about which is performance. If you want to control people and you dont care if you hurt anyone and you want to be extremely powerful and misuse that power to become even more powerful etc. you are going to be way more successful than someone he is a good ethical person who wont do what you are willing to do.

On the other hand men dont really care that much if a woman makes a ton of money or is influencial, they care more about actually being treated well which a dark triad person obviously wont do for you. Women want the best genetics in a guy and the best performance, so much so that they would rather be treated terrible by a strong powerful rich sucessful guy than be with a ethical less sucessful therfore less well performing male.

GlasgaAccentfurYanks · 2023-11-20T00:05:23+00:00

Femme fatales are great but the problem becomes when you become too human for her to accept. Women such as that, haven't the space to care for you in the same capacity that you give them the freedom to be utterly themselves.

On other words , it is dangerous for a man to forget himself, to lose the reality that he is the prize, the catch the angelic peacock walking the middle road between destruction and creation, he declares himself naked and without fear only, if he dares to whimper in his moments of doom, he is himself doomed.

63daddy · 2023-11-18T17:01:55+00:00

This is basically the bad boy phenomenon which allows women to get pushed out if their comfort zone and seek excitement in a way they’re be unlikely to with other women. Men however can push their comfort zone on their own or with other men, they don’t need to date women to do so.

SeveralLiterature980 · 2023-11-18T17:13:06+00:00

They are.

Female psychopaths seem more slutty, so men more likely to make a move on them:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283732665_How_Alluring_Are_Dark_Personalities_The_Dark_Triad_and_Attractiveness_in_Speed_Dating#:~:text=Dark%20Triad%20traits%20(narcissism%2C%20psychopathy,mating%20success%2C%20while%20Machiavellianism%20and

HOWEVER

In terms of exerting any kind of significant strong effect this is largely BULLSHIT

When you control for the mackdaddy God of Dating Choice --- Physical Attractiveness, any associations to the dark triad vanish to almost nothing. For men or women, really.

Also, birds of a feather:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46164477.pdf

Dark Triad people like each other.

So chances are (and boy this is true) whatever 304 who was crying about her asshole bf loved every minute of it and she was a shitty person too (of course she was, look at what she was doing to you, teasing you, leading you on, but she has a boyfriend, but ohhh if only she could find a guy like you.....not an accident, chief!)

TheLonerCoder · 2023-11-18T17:23:50+00:00

Logically, I would assume it's because men have an innate desire to find suitable MOTHERS. If a woman is dark triad, she would be unable to raise our children correctly.. So we innately look for women that are soft, caring, and feminine. What would a woman being dark triad do for us or our offsprings?

AFuzzyMuffin · 2023-11-18T16:48:33+00:00

Because ur making ur life a living hell and men wouldn't openly want to make their lives objectively and subjectively a living hell. Women r just so emotional in the feelings that they can delude themselves into thinking this is good.

macone235 · 2023-11-18T17:42:20+00:00

Men like peace, women like chaos.

It doesn't get any simpler than that.

Cethlinnstooth · 2023-11-19T00:26:12+00:00

Men of PPD "Women are terrible and do all these terrible things to their men and their children."

Also men of PPD "Men aren't attracted to terrible women."

Pull the other one it plays jingle bells.

sunologie · 2023-11-19T11:58:40+00:00

Men love mentally ill women especially ones with high sex drives and are emotionally unstable enough that they are easy to manipulate and abuse. (women with BPD).

2023-11-18T16:56:35+00:00

Because current society over-polices any perceived negative behavior in men, while not only not policing it in women but encouraging and rewarding it. Therefore a man in a relationship with a dark triad woman is less safe and risks more than a woman in a relationship with a dark triad man

In other words, the woman can get the rush of being with a dangerous bad boy without as much actual present risk, and if he does victimize her in some way everyone will be on her side

bluehorserunning · 2023-11-18T18:50:02+00:00

They are. They’re just in denial over what it looks like.

Windmill_flowers · 2023-11-18T19:27:16+00:00

The dark triad - psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. This describes the personality of every single woman.

zoxzoxzo · 2023-11-18T17:22:03+00:00

Men and women are different and are in general attracted to different things. Simple.

2023-11-18T17:03:19+00:00

idk maybe because their “dark”

TheRedPillRipper · 2023-11-18T17:50:23+00:00

Why aren’t men attracted to Dark Triad Traits

This entirely anecdotal, but I’m confident most men would agree with Kevin Samuels; they prefer Agreeableness. So whilst I presume there aren’t studies to prove this, it makes sense.

Godspeed and good luck!

wtknight · 2023-11-18T18:30:19+00:00

I'm guessing that dark triad women are more likely to use dark triad traits to get ahead in their careers rather than to manipulate men into having sex and relationships with them.

As many men are not attracted more or less by career-oriented women (different men tend to answer differently whether they prefer career women or traditional women), I don't think that there is a correlation between male attraction and dark triad traits in women. Dark triad women in the west just marry whomever and don't really need to use men so much anymore.

On the other hand, I would guess that in more developing countries where women can't use the dark triad to advance their careers, women are more likely to use dark triad traits to make themselves more sexually appealing to high value men, and therefore men are more likely to become more attracted to these women.

Men, on the other hand, tend to be more sexually attracted to women whom they perceive that they can manipulate for sex, which probably doesn't correlate with dark triad traits in women, as dark triad traits are usually signifiers of power, not powerlessness or psychological weakness, which is what makes women more able to be manipulated.

Proudvow · 2023-11-18T18:42:07+00:00

Because that'd be disastrous to men's reproductive goals. The men romantically attracted to dark triad women would barely ever reproduce, since they'd be falling prey to infidelity/paternity fraud constantly. A dark triad woman has no emotional/moral incentive not to go AF/BB, she's going to take advantage of men to the fullest extent possible.

When a dark triad man acts how he does, women at least still get the baby. But that's not necessarily true in reverse. So men are more naturally averse to those traits.

A man is more likely to pass on his genes by romantically pursuing nice, honest, modest women i.e. the direct opposite of the dark triad.

Granted, men still slip up and chase dark triad women for various reasons, such as not seeing through her act, or her being more physically attractive than/easier than his other options (and dark triad women are skilled at identifying and manipulating men with those inclinations), but all else equal he'd usually prefer a more reliable woman.

SleepyPoemsin2020 · 2023-11-18T18:52:54+00:00

Did we read the same article? One of the studies in there focuses on women. And one half of one of the other studies cited focused on women. But the other two studies found people - including men who easily fall in love - were more attracted to dark triad traits?

There is more research on female preferences - albeit I think coming to broad generalizations about groups of people based upon a few studies is unwise - which indicates that dark triad traits are definitely more attractive to at least some women.

But why should I conclude from your link that men aren't more attracted to dark triad traits? There's less focus on male preferences but the studies indicate this is a people problem, not just a woman thing.

bodhasattva · 2023-11-18T20:29:41+00:00

OP - why must I read a whole article?

Could you have not just given us a brief synopsis of what tf "dark triad" means?

atryhardrooster · 2023-11-18T21:57:17+00:00

I don’t think women in general are attracted to narcissistic psychopaths. I think narcissistic psychopaths are able to make themselves appear more attractive to women. They display some traditionally masculine traits, and often times find themselves in higher positions of power because of these traits and how well they work in dictating their place in society. Not to mention they will be far more worried about physical appearance, which plays a huge role in initial sexual attraction. And they are more willing to lie to women about who they really are (manipulation) in order to get with them. Men generally don’t care about a woman’s position in society, or what masculine traits she has. In fact I would say more masculine women would detract men from seeing her as a mate. There’s nothing about dark triad women that a man would be attracted to, except for maybe libido. That’s like dating your boss. Men generally want to be leaders, or at the very least, not at the bottom of the totem pole. This actually affects a man’s testosterone levels. Being perceived as a leader will increase testosterone, while being lower in the hierarchy will decrease it. So men are going to be attracted to a woman who makes him feel like he’s the leader in his tribe aka family because subconsciously it makes him feel better due to increased testosterone. This is why feminine traits are often seen as submissive traits. It’s certainly not that black and white, and societal values and upbringing most certainly has a role in this, but I don’t feel like getting that deep into it.

Sessile-B-DeMille · 2023-11-18T22:47:00+00:00

I dunno, maybe because we're not effing crazy?

mcminimus · 2023-11-18T23:17:58+00:00

Men are attracted to dark traits. That's why they have captain save a hoe.

thetruthishere_ · 2023-11-19T02:24:08+00:00

Many men are and date crazy.

lostacoshermanos · 2023-11-19T06:25:09+00:00

What’s a “dark triad trait”? Care to explain so we can help answer the question?

AssistTemporary8422 · 2023-11-20T20:00:05+00:00

Probably because lack of empathy is a huge problem for raising children.

shanshkrishur · 2023-11-21T09:15:51+00:00

Because men and women are attracted to different things. We had to be in order to survive as a species. It’s like asking why aren’t most men attracted to tall, muscular women? Or why most women aren’t attracted to unassertive, submissive men.

Krxvx-v-3070 · 2024-01-13T04:13:35+00:00

Because guys prefer women that are innocent, loyal someone that we need to care for and provide and have good values.

Title	Why aren't men attracted to Dark Triad traits in women?
Author	Windmill_flowers
Upvotes	9
Comments	174
Date	November 18, 2023 4:46 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/17yagtm/why_arent_men_attracted_to_dark_triad_traits_in/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/why-arent-men-attracted-to-dark-triad-traits-in.1238762 https://theredarchive.com/post/1238762

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