How Likable Are Personality Disorder and General Personality Traits to Those Who Possess Them?

The goal of the present study was to investigate whether having higher scores on maladaptive personality traits was related to rating these traits as more likable.

Two studies were conducted, one with personality disorder traits (N = 219; M_age  = 19.4; 63.8% female; 76.6% Caucasian) and one with general personality traits (N = 198; M_age  = 19.5; 69.7% female; 77.3% Caucasian). In each study, participants self-rated their own personality and separately provided ratings of how "likable" they considered those personality traits.

As expected, participants rated maladaptive traits more favorably if they considered themselves to possess those traits as well. Also as expected, individuals with higher Antagonism scores (including self-rated Dark Triad constructs of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) rated Antagonism and its related facets as "tolerable"-not necessarily likable, but as less unlikable than the average participant.

These findings have implications for the ways that individuals with personality pathology perceive the people around them, which may in turn impact their expectations and behaviors.