On the (number of) aversive traits it takes to approximate the common core of aversive personality

The Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad are the constellation of aversive traits that are most commonly assessed to study their common (aversive) and unique (non-aversive) features. Nonetheless, it is unclear whether these particular traits (in combination) indeed closely approximate the common core of all aversive traits. A close approximation of the aversive core, however, is crucial if one is strictly interested in an aversive trait's unique variance. Therefore, the present study aims to specify how many and which aversive traits jointly approximate the aversive core to a satisfactory extent. To this end, the aversive core was first estimated from 16 aversive traits and then correlated to the aversive cores extracted from all 63,002 possible combinations of two to eleven of these traits. Results showed that most combinations of four, or essentially any combination of at least six aversive traits, approximated the aversive core reasonably well, whereas the Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad lead to systematically poorer approximations compared to other combinations of three of four aversive traits.