Abstract (eng)
This study investigates the relationship between the dark triad personality trait subclinical psychopathy and the feeling of stress in a social assessment situation. In the introduction theories of stress are described and related to the experience of stress with increased subclinical psychopathy. 59 women with a mean age of 23.23 years (SD = 2.96) were examined. The social rating situation was generated by the validated stress-test Trier Social Stress Test for groups (TSST-G). The experience of stress was operationalized by subjective indicators, such as the perceived stress on the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS-Scale) and the rest-score of the Multidimensional Mood State Questionnaire (MDMQ). An objective / biological indicator was the salivary flow rate per minute. A small negative correlation is found between perceived stress and subclinical psychopathy. Furthermore, salivary flow rate and subclinical psychopathy are found to be marginally positively correlated, suggesting reduced stress in subclinical psychopaths. The correlation between rest-score and subclinical psychopathy contradicted what was predicted by the author. The results suggest partly a hypothesis-compliant, negative correlation between subclinical psychopathy and social stress in women. However, these are very small, not significant correlations. Therefore, exploratory extreme cases are compared, which mostly confirm the negative correlation between subclinical psychopathy and social stress. One possible reason for the small correlations could be that the sample is lacking high values of subclinical psychopathy.