Reducing the Overlap Between Machiavellianism and Subclinical Psychopathy: The M7 and P7 Scales

Machiavellianism (Mach) and subclinical psychopathy are two widely studied antagonistic personality traits with distinct theoretical conceptualizations. Mach is conceptualized by strategic deviousness, cynicism, and pragmatic morality, whereas subclinical psychopathy is conceptualized by impulsive antisocial tendencies, callousness, and rule-breaking. However, existing measures of the two traits are typically highly correlated and have very similar nomological networks. Notably, even though psychopathy scales should be more strongly positively associated with antisocial impulsivity and more strongly negatively associated with conscientiousness than Mach scales, existing Mach and psychopathy scales tend to be similarly related to these constructs. We created a new Mach scale, the M7, and a new psychopathy scale, the P7, by selecting items from existing Mach and psychopathy scales on the basis of the correlations of these items with antisocial impulsivity and conscientiousness. Across three studies (combined N = 4,607), the M7 and P7 showed acceptable to good psychometric properties in terms of closeness to unidimensionality, measurement precision, temporal stability, measurement invariance across language and gender groups, and convergent and discriminant validity (nomological network, self-other agreement, and interpersonal perceptions in group interactions). Most importantly, the new scales assess clearly distinct latent traits that are more in line with their theoretical conceptualizations than established scales are

A Process × Domain Assessment of Narcissism: The Domain-Specific Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire

Research on grandiose narcissism distinguishes between self-promotional processes (i.e., narcissistic admiration) and other-derogative processes (i.e., narcissistic rivalry; Back et al., 2013). Moreover, research has begun to assess and investigate narcissistic manifestations in different domains (e.g., communal narcissism). To integrate these two lines of research, we developed the Domain-Specific Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (D-NARQ), a 72-item narcissism questionnaire that contains a self-promotional process scale (narcissistic admiration) and an other-derogatory process scale (narcissistic rivalry) for four domains: intellectual ability, social dominance, communal care, and physical attractiveness. We investigated the psychometric properties of the D-NARQ in a large online study (N = 1,635). Model fit statistics were largely in line with the theorized factor structure. The D-NARQ scales had good to very good measurement precision, and their correlations with established narcissism scales, the Big Five personality traits, and comparative self-evaluations largely supported their convergent and discriminant validity

Narcissism and romantic relationships: The differential impact of narcissistic admiration and rivalry

Narcissism is known to be related to romantic success in short-term contexts (dating, early stage relationships) but also to problems in long-term committed relationships. We propose that these diverging romantic outcomes of narcissism can be explained by differential associations with agentic versus antagonistic dimensions of grandiose narcissism: Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry. Both dimensions serve the central narcissistic goal of gaining and maintaining a grandiose self-view, but do so by different processes: Admiration is characterized by the tendency to promote the positivity of one's self-view by seeking social admiration (assertive self-enhancement). Rivalry is characterized by the tendency to protect oneself from a negative self-view by derogating others (antagonistic self-protection). Across 7 studies (total N = 3,560) using diverse measures and methodological approaches (self-, peer, and partner reports, as well as interpersonal perception measures in video-based studies, face-to-face laboratory encounters, and online surveys), we show that the short-term romantic appeal associated with narcissism is primarily attributable to the dimension of Admiration, whereas the long-term romantic problems associated with narcissism are primarily attributable to the dimension of Rivalry. These results highlight the utility of a 2-dimensional reconceptualization of grandiose narcissism for explaining its heterogeneous romantic outcomes. The findings further underscore the idea that different facets of personality traits might impact different aspects of romantic relationship quality, depending on the stage of the relationship. Such a more nuanced view increases the predictive validity of personality traits in social relationship research

Relating Goal and Commitment Semantics

Abstract. Whereas commitments capture how an agent relates with another agent, (private) goals describe states of the world that an agent is motivated to bring about. Researchers have observed that goals and commitments are complementary, but have not yet developed a combined operational semantics for them. This paper makes steps towards such a semantics by relating the respective lifecycles of goals and commitments. We study how the the concepts cohere for one agent and how they en-gender cooperation between agents. We illustrate our approach via a real-world scenario in the domain of aerospace aftermarket services. We state how our semantics yields important desirable properties, including convergence of the configurations of cooperating agents, thereby delineat-ing some theoretically well-founded yet practical modes of cooperation in a multiagent system.

Proactive Communications in Agent Teamwork

Abstract. The capabilities for agents in a team to anticipate information-needs of teammates and proactively offer relevant information are highly desirable. However, such behaviors have not been fully prescribed by ex-isting agent theories. To establish a theory about proactive information exchanges, we first introduces the concept of “information-needs”, then identify and formally define the intentional semantics of two proactive communicative acts, which highly depend on the speaker’s awareness of others ’ information-needs. It is shown that communications using these proactive performatives can be derived as helping behaviors. Conversa-tion policies involving these proactive performatives are also discussed. The work in this paper may serve as a guide for the specification and design of agent architectures, algorithms, and applications that support proactive communications in agent teamwork.

A Process × Domain Assessment of Narcissism: The Domain-Specific Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire

Research on grandiose narcissism distinguishes between self-promotional processes (i.e., narcissistic admiration) and other-derogative processes (i.e., narcissistic rivalry; Back et al., 2013). Moreover, research has begun to assess and investigate narcissistic manifestations in different domains (e.g., communal narcissism). To integrate these two lines of research, we developed the Domain-Specific Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (D-NARQ), a 72-item narcissism questionnaire that contains a self-promotional process scale (narcissistic admiration) and an other-derogatory process scale (narcissistic rivalry) for four domains: intellectual ability, social dominance, communal care, and physical attractiveness. We investigated the psychometric properties of the D-NARQ in a large online study (N = 1,635). Model fit statistics were largely in line with the theorized factor structure. The D-NARQ scales had good to very good measurement precision, and their correlations with established narcissism scales, the Big Five personality traits, and comparative self-evaluations largely supported their convergent and discriminant validity

Simulating group decision making in baboons using agent-based modelling.

We present an agent-based model of the key activities of a troop of chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) based on the data collected at De Hoop Nature Reserve in South Africa. We analyse the predictions of the model in terms of how well it is able to duplicate the observed activity patterns of the animals and the relationship between the parameters that control the agent's decision procedure and the model's predictions. At the current stage of model development, we are able to show that across a wide range of decision parameter values, the baboons are able to achieve their energetic and social time requirements. The simulation results also show that decisions concerning movement (group action selection) have the greatest influence on the outcomes. Those cases where the model's predictions fail to agree with the observed activity patterns have highlighted key elements that were missing from the field data, and that would need to be collected in subsequent fieldwork. Based on our experience, we believe group decision making is a fertile field for future research, and agent-based modelling offers considerable scope for understanding group action selection

Symbolic Negotiation with Linear Logic

Negotiation over resources and multi-agent planning are important issues in multi-agent systems research. It has been demonstrated [19] how symbolic negotiation and distributed planning together could be formalised as distributed Linear Logic (LL) theorem proving. LL has been chosen mainly because of its expressive power for representation of resources and its computation-oriented nature. This paper extends the previous work by taking advantage of a richer fragment of LL and introducing two sorts of nondeterministic choices into negotiation. This allows agents to reason and negotiate under certain degree of uncertainty