Antisemitism as a dark-ego vehicle

Abstract According to the recently proposed dark-ego-vehicle principle (DEVP), individuals high in dark-personality traits (e.g., narcissism, psychopathy) tend to be attracted to certain kinds of (political) ideologies if and when these ideologies can be used to satisfy their dark needs. With the present pre-registered longitudinal study, we attempted to falsify the DEVP in the context of antisemitism. In this regard, we predicted positively directed relationships between certain dark-personality traits (i.e., grandiose narcissism, antagonistic narcissism, psychopathy) and antizionist antisemitism. Individuals from several samples from the US and the UK (N = 3,981) completed validated psychometric measures of antisemitic attitudes. This data was correlated with several variables which had already been assessed previously: individuals’ dark-personality traits and specific dark-personality-needs indicators (e.g., aggression, virtue signaling). The results showed a failed falsification of the DEVP: The vast majority of the correlations between the examined dark-personality traits and antisemitism were positively directed. This was not only true for antizionist antisemitism but also for the classical Judeophobic antisemitism. The overall pattern of the found relationships was in line with the DEVP and its assumption that individuals high in dark-personality traits, particularly in antagonistic narcissism and psychopathy, may be attracted to antisemitic ideology.