The Dark Triad and Facebook Surveillance: How Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, But Not Narcissism Predict Using Facebook To Spy On Others

The Dark Triad of personality – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – has been shown to influence a variety of behaviours. Typically, high levels of these traits predict engaging in behaviour at the periphery of what is considered socially normative. Such individuals do not display clinical maladaptation however, and function relatively normally. The Dark Triad's influence extends to the online context, where it predicts questionable behaviour when using social media such as Facebook. For example it can affect the content of users' status updates, or what media they post. In this paper we examine a new concept known as Facebook surveillance. This details the deliberate examination of users' profiles in order to gather information for one's own advantage. We suggest this is distinct with the conventional viewing of ones “feed” (which has little intent), or the stalking of ex-romantic partners (which has a emotive component). We predicted that Machiavellianism and psychopathy would both predict Facebook surveillance, whereas narcissism would not. Furthermore, we postulated that the Machiavellianism-surveillance relationship would be mediated by endorsement of gossip, whereas for psychopathy it would be mediated by intolerance for uncertainty. 259 participants took part in an online survey to measure these traits. Results supported our hypotheses, and suggested two forms of surveillance – Facebook tracking, which was more recreational, and Facebook investigating, which was more deliberate and targeted. Future studies are then discussed which may use more complex measures of narcissism, and gather behavioural and/or qualitative measures of surveillance