The dark triad in helping professions – Comparison of teachers and pedagogy students

Abstract

The presented research is the part of a broader pilot study within exploration of the dark side of helping professionals; in this case we are focusing on current teachers and future teachers (pedagogy students). The aim of the current research was the exploration and comparison of the aversive personality traits that are inappropriate for performing helping professions. It is the concept called Dark Triad that includes machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy at their subclinical level. The Dark Triad has been explored in the sample of 172 participants (Mage=34,3 years; SD=10,7) including 72 teachers (42,9%) and 100 pedagogy students (57,1%). We have used Slovak version of the Short Dark Triad Questionnaire (SD3; Jones & Paulhus, 2014) which includes machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy subscales. The data were processed in SPSS 21 via analysis of variance (ANOVA). Significant differences in machiavellianism were found among current teachers and future teachers, students were scoring higher. Machiavellianism was identified as the most significant dark trait compared to narcissism and psychopathy in both samples. The results are not so surprising as teaching profession seems to provide opportunities to satisfy people´s needs for power, dominant status, authority and obtaining benefits from the others. For further intervention it is necessary to find a way how to deal with machiavellian people in the educational system who could influence their student´s personal and professional development.