Trouble when they walk in? Candidates, dark personality, and attack behavior in German televised debates

2025/09/15 by Jürgen Maier, Alessandro Nai · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Personality Traits and Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence

paper · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105578

openalex publication_date 2025/09/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

This study analyzes the impact of aversive personality on the use of negative campaigning in televised debates. The study combines data from content analyses of the attack behavior of 19 unique candidates with 47 appearances in 30 German televised debates between 2005 and 2023 and expert ratings of an aversive personality in those candidates. The results show that candidates with higher ratings for a "dark" personality were significantly more likely to use attacks. Our findings suggest that personality influences aggressive communication by candidates even in such a highly regulated and highly visible format as a televised debate.

Citations

• Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership.
• The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
• A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales
• Integrating Personality Structure, Personality Process, and Personality Development
• The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology
• Narcissism, confidence, and risk attitude
• A meta-analysis of the effects of viewing U.S. presidential debates

Discussions

• Do candidates with a „dark“ personality are more likely to attack in televised debates? You bet! New research with @alessandronai.bsky.social ! doi.org/10.1016/j.ac... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]