Helpful or Not? Appraisal and Mechanisms of Prosociality in the Dark Triad.

The extent to which individuals high on Dark Triad (DT) traits perceive help from others is unclear. In Study 1, participants (N = 679) were presented with vignettes depicting either objectively high help or low help to assess their perception of helpfulness. Those with high levels of DT traits, specifically psychopathy and Machiavellianism, inaccurately perceived helpfulness across situations as compared to individuals scoring low on the DT traits. Study 2 (N = 1059) extended this finding and explored the perception of helpfulness and defection through an ultimatum game at different levels (high and low) of helpfulness. Results indicated that individuals high in psychopathy tended to overestimate others' helpfulness in objectively low-help scenarios.. Higher levels of Machiavellianism were associated with a lower likelihood of rejecting a high help offer in an ultimatum game, indicating an accurate perception of help. However, perception of help did not mediate the relationship between DT traits and defection. Future work can examine how individuals with high levels of DT traits behave in other prosocial situations.