This study was undertaken in an attempt to investigate the impact of family, threatened egotism, and reciprocity on a person’s use of intimate violence. Threatened egotism proposes that aggression is the result of high but unstable self-esteem, which is conceptualized as high self-esteem coupled with high narcissism. Self-report questionnaires were administered to randomly selected cluster samples of 423 college students, 147 males and 276 females. The mean age is approximately 22 with 93% indicating they are White and 7% non-White. While no support was found for threatened egotism, violence witnessed in the family of origin and reciprocity were found to significantly impact intimate violence. Analyses conducted separately for males and females indicate that these factors operate differently based on gender.

The current study was undertaken to explore the relationship between self-esteem, narcissism, and empathy with intimate partner violence perpetration among men in 2 samples: college students and inmates. The sample was analyzed both as an aggregate and separately. A negative relationship was hypothesized between intimate violence perpetration and both self-esteem and empathy. A positive relationship was expected between intimate violence perpetration and narcissism. A 2-way interaction was examined between self-esteem and narcissism as a test of threatened egotism, defined as high self-esteem coupled with high narcissism, which was not expected in the current study. Empathy was hypothesized to moderate the relationship between intimate violence perpetration and threatened egotism, such that low empathy coupled with high narcissism and high self-esteem was expected to result in increased intimate violence perpetration. Participants were 488 men (249 college students; 239 inmates). Surveys consisted of a demographic questionnaire, CTS2 for participants’ relationships, CTS for their parents’ relationship, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, entitlement and exploitative subscales of the NPI, and the IRI. Independent samples t-tests were used to explore differences in the 2 samples. Hierarchical multiple regression was undertaken in the aggregate sample as well as the college sample and inmate sample separately. For the aggregate sample significant main effects emerged for family violence, self-esteem, narcissism, and cognitive and affective empathy, as well as the 2-way interaction between self-esteem and narcissism. Results were similar for the college sample with the exception that affective empathy was not significant. For the inmate sample main effects emerged for family violence, narcissism, and affective empathy as well as the 2-way interaction between self-esteem and narcissism. The results appear to support the theory of threatened egotism, though further analysis indicates the findings are not so clear. Empathy did not moderate the 2-way interaction between self-esteem and narcissism.

Thesis(M. A. (Research Psychology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / Incidents associated with internet trolling and cyberbullying are a problem among adolescents. A quantitative research method was applied in this study to explore if attitudes towards cyberbullying can mediate the association between the Dark Tetrads of personality and internet trolling among undergraduate University students in South Africa.. A convenience sample (N = 249) of undergraduates was recruited, and data were collected using a structured, composite questionnaire, within a cross-sectional research design. The findings indicated that there was a small but statistically significant indirect effect, b = 0.4, BCa CI [0.015, 0.071]. A more nuanced analysis showed that only the mediation models involving psychopathy and everyday sadism as independent variables were statistically significant (p < .05). From the results, it can be concluded that internet trolling does mediate the relationship between the Dark Tetrads of personality and attitudes towards cyberbullying. However, the Dark Tetrad personality dimensions of Machiavellianism and narcissism are not significantly involved in the relationship.