The Role of Aggression in the Relationship Between the General Dark Personality Traits, Honesty/Humility and Support for Political Violence

Abstract

Various contemporary psychological models of radicalisation, next to contextual factors, also highlighted the role of relatively stable dispositions in accepting extremist ideologies and political violence related to these ideologies. Newer studies, focused on the role of dark personality traits in the context of radicalisation, relatively consistently found that persons high on dark personality traits are more likely to support political violence and extreme politics. However, empirical explanations of this relationship are still rare. Therefore, this study, in line with previous research, tested if aggression, a common characteristic of dark personality traits, lies behind the relationship between dark personality traits and the honesty/humility dimension from the HEXACO model with support for political violence, while taking into account potential sources of bias that were present in earlier studies. The results obtained on a sample of 191 faculty students robustly exhibited that the relationship between the studied personality traits and support for political violence disappears after statistically controlling for aggression. Therefore, the results of this study offer a valuable contribution to the understanding of extremist attitudes and provide empirical argumentation in favour of the hypotheses on the role of dispositions in the political lives of citizens.