Introduction In democracies around the world, a perennial tension exists between the desire to achieve ideological goals while remaining within the confines of a legitimate democratic system. Research has yielded mixed results on the role that dark personality traits play in such processes, but a recent theory, the Dark Ego Vehicle Principle, sheds light on why some individuals engage in peaceful ideological activism, and may also help explain support for anti-democratic and violent behaviors to promote one's ideology. The Dark Ego Vehicle Principle postulates that those with higher levels of dark personality traits engage in ideological activism to satisfy their own ego needs (e.g., to get attention from others or to dominate or abuse others), rather than to support or promote their cause in good faith. Methods and results The present work expanded on this base, using multiple regression to show that for both Democrats (Study 1, N = 280) and Republicans (Study 2, N = 248), Dark Personality Traits, as well as Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation, were positively associated with support for anti-democratic actions and violent extremism, but commitment to prosocial party values were not. In the Republican sample, moderation analyses also showed that Needs Frustration strengthened the impact of Dark Personality Traits on support for violent extremism, but not anti-democratic actions; for Democrats, these moderations were not significant. Discussion These results strengthen the base of evidence supporting the Dark Ego Vehicle Principle.
Snook et al. (Tue,) studied this question.