The Gray Nine and Parallel Personality Patterns: Big Five, Dark Tetrad, and a "Well-Rounded Personality"

The vast literature on personality psychology generally focuses on neutral or socially beneficial personality traits such as the Five-Factor model (e.g., agreeableness, conscientiousness) or "dark" traits such as Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism. However, the current synthesis of the literature indicates that the distinction between benign, malign, and neutral personality traits and facets is partly misguided. In fact, there are many objective and subjective measures that indicate that high agreeableness is not beneficial, while moderate grandiose narcissism is. Many, if not all of the traits are rather gray and socially and personally desired outcomes indicate that people who aim for a well-rounded personality should typically be clustered in the middle of the various personality spectrums. In addition, many of the personality traits are characterized by parallel patterns of good/bad relations to social and personal outcomes.