Follow the Light Triad

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In psychology there is a way of viewing the world called the dark triad which is comprised of the three traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. In a personality test the higher you score on those traits the greater the likelihood you don’t care about others. This dark triad has been around since the early 2000s, and now researchers have devloped a similar study to find the opposite, a light triad scale (LTS). The LTS is measured by Kantianism, Humanism and Faith in Humanity; basically the greater you score on the LTS the better you are as a human being.

In addition to being both reliable and valid, it seems the LTS isn’t just an inversion of the dark triad test — it does actually measure different characteristics. “The absence of darkness does not necessarily indicate the presence of light,” the authors write in their paper, “… there appears to be some degree of independence between the Light and Dark Triad, leaving room for people to have a mix of both light and dark traits.”

Kaufman and his team also constructed what they call “portraits of the light vs. dark triad.” Participants who scored high on light triad traits tended to be older, female and have experienced less unpredictability in their childhoods. They also tended to report higher levels of: religiosity, spirituality, life satisfaction, acceptance of others, belief that they and others were good, compassion, empathy, openness to experience and conscientiousness.

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