What do people who are prone to theft, hate speech, lying or bullying have in common? Over 10 years of international research shows that aversive tendencies stem from a single personality trait: the Dark Factor of Personality (D).
In the book ‘Dark Factor – die Essenz des Bösen in uns’ (Ariston Publishing, 2025), Ingo Zettler and his co-authors delve deeper into everything that research currently knows about the Dark Factor.
The book (currently published in German) is based on over 10 years of research and data from more than 2 million people. It provides background knowledge on what D actually covers, how it can be measured, and why it relates to everything from socio-demographics, to political attitudes, from romantic relationship behavior to mental health, and much more.
No thanks to social jobs
Together with visiting researcher Lea de Hesselle and other colleagues, they investigated the connection between the D factor and the so-called RIASEC model (developed by psychologist John L. Holland), which divides job interests as well as actual occupations into six categories: realistic (e.g., practical work), investigative (e.g., innovation), artistic (e.g., creativity), social (e.g., social interaction), enterprising (e.g., leadership), and conventional (e.g., rules and regulations).
Across more than 8,000 participants from Germany, the United States and Denmark, using self-report questionnaire data, but also registry data on individuals’ actual jobs, the pattern is clear:
Social jobs such as teacher, nurse or therapist are least attractive to people with high D scores and they are actually less likely to work in such jobs. Artistic jobs such as designer or musician are also unattractive to those with higher D scores – though not as pronounced as social jobs. Entrepreneurial jobs such as manager or salesperson? Here, the picture is more nuanced:
‘In German data, we see that people with higher D scores show more interest in such jobs, but in American and Danish data, this is not generally the case. This suggests that culture plays a role for how D is linked to entrepreneurial jobs,’ describes Lea de Hesselle.
Unexpectedly, Danish register data also showed a small positive correlation between D scores and realistic jobs – i.e. practical, craft-oriented positions.
“This is not something we expected, and because the effect is small and not apparent in German or American data, we advise against drawing too strong conclusions from this ,” says Lea de Hesselle.
