Dark Triad of Personality Traits and Financial Crime: International Evidence

This study aims to investigate the impact of dark triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) on financial crime. The author runs a multiple regression analysis to examine the impact of the dark triad on financial crime. The results indicate a significant positive relationship between narcissism and financial crime, a significant negative relationship between Machiavellianism, and an insignificant relationship between psychopathy and financial crime. This paper highlights the importance of offenders’ profiles and personality traits in detecting and deterring financial crime. Also, this study emphasizes that personality traits are essential variables that should be considered during risk assessment and that psychometric data collection can be an important stage while recruiting individuals. To our knowledge, this is the first study empirically exploring the relationship between narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and financial crime.