The Dark Triad and animal cruelty: Dark personalities, dark attitudes, and dark behaviors

How Ethical Ideologies Relate to Public Attitudes toward Animals: The Dutch Case

“…Shimizu, & Pifer, 1994), age (Ascione, 1992;Kavanagh, Signal, & Taylor, 2013;Kellert, 1985), household income (Signal & Taylor, 2006), humane education (Ascione & Weber, 1996;Furnham, McManus, & Scott, 2003;Nicoll, Trifone, & Samuels, 2008), pet ownership (Driscoll, 1992;Martens, Enders-Slegers, & Walker, 2016;Serpell, 1996), religion (Bowd & Bowd, 1989;Driscoll, 1992;Gilhus, 2006), as well as geographic region (Phillips et al, 2012;Pifer et al, 1994). However, research into the correlation between public attitudes toward animals and ethical ideologies is still in its infancy and needs further investigation (Bègue & Laine, 2017).…”

When pain is pleasure: Identifying consumer psychopaths

“…In a previous study examining the associations between dark personality traits and attitudes and behaviors toward animals, Kavanagh et al. () confirmed that individuals scoring higher on Dark Triad traits exhibited more negative attitudes toward animals in general, leading to greater engagement in animal cruelty. Individuals with high psychopathy scores were particularly linked to killing animals or hurting animals with the objective of causing pain.…”

“…In a business context, substantial research is dedicated to investigating the dark side of management decisions and the behavior of the organizational psychopath (e.g., Boddy, ), snakes in suits , and bad bosses (e.g., Buckels, Trapnell, & Paulhus, ; Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, ; Garcia & Sikström, ). Focusing particularly on the treatment of animals, research has shown that individuals with high levels of Dark Triad traits have less positive attitudes toward animals and that they even engage in more acts of animal cruelty (Kavanagh, Signal, & Taylor, ). Consequently, proclaiming this period to be the age of the ethical consumer is not sensible.…”

Animal abuse proclivity: behavioral, personality and regulatory factors associated with varying levels of severity

“…Without this knowledge, it is difficult to develop prevention and intervention strategies that are effective. This is a particular concern considering that there is an increasing body of literature that suggests a strong association between animal cruelty and a variety of other antisocial behaviors (Gullone, 2012;Kavanagh, Signal, & Taylor, 2013;Sanders & Henry, 2015).…”

“…This could be explained by the higher rates of self-reported animal abuse in younger populations (Kavanagh et al, 2013). However, there is limited evidence to suggest that children who commit animal abuse are more likely to continue this behavior into adulthood (Tallichet & Hensley, 2005).…”