Human nature encompasses a wide spectrum of characteristics, ranging from profound empathy to extreme selfishness. When psychologists map these traits across the globe, they notice significant variations from one region to the next. Some nations show higher average levels of self-centered, manipulative, and callous behaviors than others.
By analyzing data from hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, researchers are pinpointing which countries tend to harbor the darkest average personality profiles. This extensive body of research provides evidence that the political, economic, and cultural environments we live in are strongly linked to the darker sides of the human mind. The findings suggest that our surroundings correspond closely with how socially aversive traits are expressed on a national scale.
In psychology, the most commonly studied dark personality traits belong to a group known as the dark triad. This group of traits includes narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Narcissism involves a grandiose sense of self-importance, a deep need for admiration, and a tendency to act with entitlement. Machiavellianism is characterized by a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on manipulating others for personal gain. Psychopathy involves a lack of empathy, impulsive behavior, and a tendency to ignore the rights and feelings of others.
These traits exist on a spectrum, meaning that everyone possesses them to some degree. People with high levels of these characteristics often experience interpersonal difficulties, but they might also achieve short-term success in highly competitive work environments. The rationale for studying these traits on a global scale is to determine how broad societal factors relate to their development. By surveying hundreds of thousands of people around the world, researchers hope to understand the relationship between a nation’s cultural identity and the average personality of its citizens.
Two important cultural concepts in this area of study are individualism and collectivism. Individualistic cultures tend to prioritize personal goals, independence, and standing out from the crowd. Collectivistic cultures tend to prioritize group harmony, social obligations, and fitting in with the wider community. Other relevant factors include a country’s economic prosperity, the strictness of its laws, and the level of democracy established within its government.
In a 2026 study published in the journal Self and Identity, Macy Miscikowski and colleagues examined demographic differences in narcissism across 53 countries with a sample of over 45,000 participants. The researchers found that younger adults, men, and those who perceived themselves as having high social status reported higher levels of narcissism across almost all regions.
“Most of what we know about narcissism comes from studies conducted in the United States or a small handful of Western countries,” co-author William J. Chopik told PsyPost during a 2025 interview. “That makes it hard to know whether well-known patterns—like younger people, men, or higher-status individuals scoring higher in narcissism—are culturally specific or more universal. We wanted to address that gap by examining narcissism across 53 countries and asking not only whether levels differ across cultures, but whether the same demographic patterns hold up around the world.”
The researchers found that people from countries with a higher gross domestic product tended to report higher levels of narcissism. This suggests that wealthier societies reward environments where self-promotion and individual achievement are highly valued. Interestingly, Miscikowski and colleagues also found that individuals from more collectivistic cultures reported higher narcissism. The authors noted that the five countries with the highest overall narcissism scores in their massive sample were Germany, Iraq, China, Nepal, and South Korea. The five countries with the lowest narcissism scores were Serbia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
“One of the more surprising findings was that people from more collectivistic countries sometimes reported higher, not lower, levels of narcissism—particularly on the more agentic, admiration side,” Chopik noted. “This challenges the common assumption that narcissism is mainly a product of highly individualistic cultures. It suggests that narcissistic traits may serve different functions in different cultural contexts, such as navigating social hierarchies rather than standing out as unique.”
Chopik added that cultural stereotypes often miss the mark. “There’s an emerging literature about how the individualism/collectivism distinction is not as clean as people think—that collectivistic countries are these Pollyanna-ish utopias where everyone gets along. Rather, there are some examples in which collectivistic cultures are more competitive and could be more attuned to themselves and the hierarchies they find themselves in.”
This finding conflicts somewhat with older research that linked narcissism primarily to individualistic cultures. A 2003 study authored by Joshua Foster and colleagues, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, surveyed 3,445 participants globally. Foster and colleagues found that participants from the United States reported the highest levels of narcissism. The United States was followed by participants from Europe, Canada, Asia, and the Middle East. The researchers suggested that cultures emphasizing independence and celebrating uniqueness were more likely to be associated with narcissistic tendencies among their members.
The discrepancy between these two studies might stem from the way narcissism is measured or the specific populations sampled over different decades. It is possible that the behavioral expressions of narcissism differ depending on cultural norms. In individualistic countries, narcissism involves overt self-promotion and bragging. In collectivistic countries, it involves subtle strategies aimed at gaining social recognition within a tight-knit community without openly violating group harmony.
“One key takeaway is that narcissism isn’t just a ‘Western’ phenomenon, nor does it look wildly different across cultures,” Chopik explained. “Younger people, men, and those who see themselves as higher in social status tend to report higher narcissism almost everywhere we looked.”
Regardless of the exact global ranking, the United States is widely perceived as a highly narcissistic nation by both its own citizens and the rest of the world. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Joshua Miller and colleagues explored the perception of national character. Across a series of six experiments, the researchers tested how Americans view themselves and how foreigners view Americans. The authors found that older American adults and American college students rated the typical American as significantly more narcissistic than they perceived themselves or their close acquaintances to be.
When asked to rate specific groups of Americans, the participants rated younger Americans, American men, and professionals in high-visibility occupations as the most narcissistic. These high-visibility occupations included actors, politicians, and professional athletes.
The researchers also found that citizens of other countries, including China, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, rated Americans as more narcissistic than the citizens of their own respective regions. The authors suggested that America’s position as a global economic and military power, combined with a highly visible celebrity culture exported through international media, corresponds with these worldwide perceptions of arrogance.
Narcissism can also exist at the group level, a phenomenon known as national narcissism. This involves a defensive belief in the greatness of one’s nation that requires constant external recognition and validation from other countries. A 2021 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Anni Sternisko and colleagues examined how this defensive national pride relates to the spread of conspiracy theories. The authors collected data from 56 countries during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic to see who was most likely to share misinformation.
“We were interested in the role that conspiracy theories might play during the pandemic. The United Nations and the World Health Organization began using the term ‘infodemic’ during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 to communicate the risk that misinformation might play in addressing the pandemic,” co-author Jay J. Van Bavel previously told PsyPost. “I also wrote about the key role of misinformation and conspiracy theories, as well as collective narcissism, in my initial paper on COVID a few weeks later. This paper was a way to study those issues with a global sample and help understand what might predict the belief and dissemination of conspiracy theories during the pandemic.”
Sternisko and colleagues found a positive relationship between national narcissism and the tendency to believe and share conspiracy theories related to the pandemic. The authors noted that public health crises threaten an idealistic national image by exposing weaknesses in government leadership and healthcare infrastructure to a watching world. National narcissists adopt conspiracy theories to deny national failings or to deflect blame onto foreign enemies. This research provides evidence that countries with high levels of defensive national pride are particularly susceptible to the rapid spread of dangerous misinformation.
“People should understand that social identity plays a central role in how people construct beliefs,” Van Bavel explained. “This can, of course, be a good thing if you are part of a group that values accuracy and the well being of group members. Alternatively, it can be a bad thing if your identity involves inflated views of your group and an obsession with dominance or image management.”
“In this case, we found strong evidence across 56 different countries that this more narcissist form of collective identity is a very strong predictor of a bad outcome–the belief in conspiracy theories about the pandemic. And I want to underscore that this is a pretty big effect size, much larger than other factors we’ve explored in the domain of conspiracy theories and misinformation,” Van Bavel noted. “The single biggest caveat is that we have no clear evidence of causation… future research needs to find a way to experimentally manipulate collective/national narcissism.”
Psychopathic traits also show distinct regional patterns around the globe. A 2012 study authored by Craig Neumann and colleagues, published in Behavioral Sciences & the Law, assessed psychopathic traits in over 33,000 individuals across 58 nations. The researchers broke psychopathy down into four categories, which included interpersonal traits, affective traits, lifestyle traits, and antisocial traits. Interpersonal traits involve conning and manipulating others. Affective traits involve a lack of guilt and a failure to care about the feelings of others. Lifestyle traits involve impulsivity and risk-taking. Antisocial traits involve rule-breaking and physical aggression.
Neumann and colleagues found that individuals from the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia produced the highest scores on the interpersonal facet of psychopathy. In contrast, participants from North America and Oceania had some of the highest scores on the impulsive lifestyle facet. Western Europe produced the highest scores for affective traits, indicating a greater prevalence of emotional callousness.
The authors noted that higher maternal and infant mortality rates in a region were strongly correlated with higher interpersonal and antisocial psychopathic traits. This suggests that the overall physical well-being and health of a region tend to correspond with the hostile personality profiles of its citizens.
Machiavellianism, the third trait in the dark triad, has also been linked to regional socioeconomic conditions. A 2023 study published in Current Psychology by Yu Luo and colleagues compared the dark triad traits among participants in the United Kingdom, Greece, and China. These three countries differ substantially on human development indices. The United Kingdom ranks the highest in economic and social development among the three, followed by Greece, and then China. Participants answered survey questions agreeing or disagreeing with statements like wanting to get revenge on authorities or picking on weaker individuals.
Luo and colleagues found that Chinese participants scored the highest on average for Machiavellianism. The researchers also examined sex differences in these traits across the three nations. Men generally scored higher than women on all dark triad traits, but the magnitude of these sex differences varied heavily by country. The personality gap between men and women was largest in the United Kingdom, moderately sized in Greece, and smallest in China.
The authors proposed that in societies facing greater economic challenges, wealth inequality, and resource scarcity, women adopt more manipulative and competitive strategies to secure resources for themselves and their families. This intense environmental pressure corresponds with a narrower personality gap between men and women in less developed countries.
The study also found that narcissism positively predicted personal income, and this association tended to be stronger in China and Greece than in the United Kingdom. The authors suggested that acting more narcissistic helps people survive or thrive in highly competitive and unpredictable corporate environments.
The idea that difficult environments are connected to darker personalities is supported by evolutionary life history theory. This framework suggests that unpredictable and harsh environments are associated with individuals adopting fast life strategies. These strategies involve taking risks, acting impulsively, and prioritizing short-term gains over long-term social cooperation. A 2022 study published in Personality and Individual Differences by Peter Jonason and colleagues explored how childhood environments relate to dark triad traits in adulthood across 49 countries.
“There were several reasons to do this study,” Jonason told PsyPost during a 2025 interview. “First, there is limited understanding how ecological factors predict personality at all, let alone the Dark Triad. That is, most research focuses on personal, familial, or sociological predictors, but these are embedded in larger ecological systems… Second, most research on the Dark Triad traits focuses on individual-level variance but here we examined what you might call a culture of each trait and what might account for it.”
Jonason and colleagues paired country-level personality data with historical data on national homicide rates, life expectancy, and economic freedom. They looked at the environmental conditions that existed when the participants were approximately six, eleven, and sixteen years old. The researchers found that higher homicide rates and lower life expectancies during these formative childhood years were associated with higher levels of narcissism and Machiavellianism in adulthood. These findings provide evidence that dark personality traits emerge as psychological coping mechanisms designed to protect the individual in dangerous or unstable locations.
“When considering what makes people different from around the world, it is lazy to say ‘culture,’” Jonason noted. “Culture is a system that results from higher-order conditions like access to resources and ecological threats. If you want to understand why someone differs from you, you must consider more than just her/his immediate–and obvious–circumstances.”
“Do not assume that good parenting, safe schools, and successful social experiences are all that matter in determining who goes dark,” Jonason explained. “Larger factors, well beyond our control, have influence as well. By removing the human from the equation, we can better see how people are subject to forces well beyond their will, self-reports, and even situated in larger socioecological systems.”
He added that the team has ongoing ambitions to unpack these dynamics further. “We hope to pursue projects that try to understand the specific conditions that allow for not just personality, but also motives, morals, and mate preferences to be calibrated to local conditions… This is assuming we get some grant money to do so!”
A nation’s political and ethical environment also relates to the personal integrity of its individual citizens. A 2016 study authored by Simon Gächter and Jonathan Schulz, published in Nature, investigated the link between societal corruption and individual honesty across 23 countries. The researchers created an index of rule violations based on country-level data regarding political fraud, tax evasion, and institutional corruption. They then measured intrinsic honesty using an anonymous die-rolling experiment with 2,568 young participants.
In the experiment, participants sat in an isolated cubicle and were asked to roll a six-sided die in a cup. They were told to report the number they rolled to earn a corresponding monetary reward. Higher numbers resulted in higher payouts. Because the rolls were entirely private and unobservable, participants had the opportunity to cheat without being caught. The researchers estimated the level of cheating in a country by comparing the average reported numbers to the statistical probability of fair die rolls. In a perfectly honest group, all numbers would be reported equally.
Gächter and Schulz found that participants from countries with a high prevalence of rule violations, such as Tanzania, Morocco, and Guatemala, claimed significantly higher numbers than participants from countries with low rule violations, such as Austria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
The authors suggested that when cheating is pervasive in a society and often goes unpunished, people begin to view dishonesty in everyday affairs as acceptable. If politicians and business leaders set bad examples by engaging in corruption, ordinary citizens adapt their own moral compasses to match the degraded ethical standards of their surrounding environment.
The structure of a country’s government corresponds strongly with the personality dispositions of its people. A 2025 study published in Scientific Reports by Craig Neumann and colleagues examined whether different types of government relate to specific personality traits. The study involved a massive sample of over 200,000 individuals from 75 countries. The researchers used independent democracy indices to categorize each participant’s home country as an autocracy, a hybrid regime, a flawed democracy, or a full democracy.
“There has been a decline in democracy, due to the rise in authoritarian governments, with specific autocrats cited as the main culprits. However, new research shows that characteristics of citizens also play a role in the status of a democracy,” Neumann previously told PsyPost. “Relatedly, the nature of the place where people live can influence their personality. In our previous work, we found that persons across the globe with benevolent (‘light’) traits are much happier and have a positive self-image, compared to those with malevolent (‘dark’) traits who show an unhealthy psychological profile… So, putting all these pieces of information together led us to conduct a rigorous study.”
Neumann and colleagues compared the prevalence of malevolent traits against benevolent traits in these different political systems. Benevolent traits include a basic faith in humanity, a belief in the inherent dignity of others, and a tendency to treat people with kindness and honesty. Malevolent traits include callousness, manipulativeness, and a willingness to use people as a means to an end. The researchers found that as a government varied from an autocracy to a full democracy, the citizens reported significantly lower levels of malevolent traits and higher levels of benevolent traits. Citizens residing in autocratic countries reported the highest levels of malevolent dispositions.
The authors noted that ordinary people play an active role in democratization. Societies that value self-expression, interpersonal trust, and tolerance tend to feature democratic institutions. Individuals with high levels of malevolent traits tend to support authoritarianism and aggressive social dominance.
“Citizens living in countries with more democratic practices have positive views and are more trusting of others and have higher well-being,” Neumann noted. “Simply put, fully democratic societies have citizens who get along better with their fellow citizens and by showing benevolence toward other people they end up feeling better themselves, have higher well-being, and democratic society functions better. The collaborative nature of a full democracy is a win-win situation for everyone.”
Co-author Scott Barry Kaufman added, “the dark triad gets a lot of play but we really shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of people are light triad and that democracies allow light triad traits to flourish.” The researchers suggested a bidirectional relationship, where harsh authoritarian environments are tied to malevolent traits in citizens, and those same citizens then vote for or support autocratic leaders who share their aggressive personalities.
“The converse of our positive findings is that with democratic backsliding, there is less freedom of course, citizens may become more malevolent toward others, which may lead to worse societal conditions,” Neumann warned.
The study also found that higher levels of benevolent traits were strongly associated with greater overall life satisfaction and personal well-being among the citizens. Surprisingly, the data showed that people residing in less democratic regions tended to report higher instances of religious or spiritual connection. “A big surprise was that as democracy declines citizens appear to seek more spiritual, religious experiences, suggesting that this may be a viable coping strategy when daily life is full of undemocratic strife,” Neumann said.
It is important to avoid assuming that high country-level scores mean every individual in that nation has a dark personality. Personality traits exist on a broad spectrum, and the vast majority of people around the world do not meet the criteria for a diagnosed personality disorder. Even in the most autocratic or corrupt nations, there are many caring, altruistic, and honest individuals. The data highlight broad statistical averages rather than fixed rules about any specific person.
“A common misinterpretation is to treat these findings as rankings or judgments about entire countries or cultures,” Chopik explained. “That’s not what the data are meant to do. These are average differences with substantial overlap between countries, and individuals within any culture vary far more than cultures do from one another.” Group-level differences are often quite small when compared to the wide variation of individual personalities that exist within any single local community.
These studies rely heavily on self-reported data, which can introduce personal biases. Participants might answer questions in ways that make themselves look better to the researchers, or cultural norms might dictate how openly people admit to negative or aggressive behaviors. Language differences and translation issues also alter how participants interpret personality questionnaires. A phrase that implies healthy confidence in one language might imply rude arrogance in another. Many of the studies rely on convenience samples, such as local university students or internet users, who might not perfectly represent the entire population of their respective countries.
The cross-sectional nature of this research means that the data represent a single snapshot in time. Correlational data cannot prove that a specific political system or economic condition directly causes a person to develop a dark personality. The relationship is highly complex and reciprocal.
Future research should track individuals over decades to observe how personality traits shift in response to major economic booms, sudden political revolutions, or unexpected public health crises. Investigating the specific behavioral cues that people use to judge the narcissism of other cultures could also improve our understanding of international stereotypes and global diplomacy.
“A natural next step is to move beyond mean differences and examine how narcissism operates in daily life across cultures—how it relates to relationships, work, and well-being in different contexts,” Chopik said. “One thing worth emphasizing is that narcissism isn’t inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Some aspects, like admiration, can be linked to confidence and motivation, while others, like rivalry, are more clearly associated with interpersonal conflict.”
The study, “National Narcissism predicts the Belief in and the Dissemination of Conspiracy Theories During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From 56 Countries”, was authored by Anni Sternisko, Aleksandra Cichocka, Aleksandra Cislak, and Jay J. Van Bavel.
The study, “Milieu effects on the Dark Triad traits and their sex differences in 49 countries”, was authored by Peter K. Jonason, Stanisław K. Czerwiński, Francesca Tobaldo, Jano Ramos-Diaz, Mladen Adamovic, Byron G. Adams, Rahkman Ardi, Sergiu Bălțătescu, Yeow Siah Cha, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Sofián El-Astal, Katherine Gundolf, Tomislav Jukić, Emil Knezović, Kadi Liik, John Maltby, Agim Mamuti, Taciano L. Milfont, Rodrigo Moreta-Herrera, Joonha Park, Jarosław Piotrowski, Adil Samekin, Habib Tiliouine, Robert Tomšik, Charles Umeh, Kees van den Bos, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Anna Włodarczyk, Illia Yahiiaiev, Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, and Constantine Sedikides.
The study, “Cultural moderation of demographic differences in narcissism”, was authored by Macy M. Miscikowski, Rebekka Weidmann, Sara H. Konrath, and William J. Chopik.
The study, “Intrinsic Honesty and the Prevalence of Rule Violations across Societies”, was authored by Simon Gächter and Jonathan F. Schulz.
The study, “Individual differences in narcissism: Inflated self-views across the lifespan and around the world”, was authored by Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, and Jean M. Twenge.
The study, “Country-level correlates of the Dark Triad traits in 49 countries”, was authored by Peter K. Jonason, Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, Jarosław Piotrowski, Constantine Sedikides, W. Keith Campbell, Jochen E. Gebauer, John Maltby, Mladen Adamovic, Byron G. Adams, Anissa Lestari Kadiyono, Kokou A. Atitsogbe, Harshalini Y. Bundhoo, Sergiu Bălțătescu, Snežana Bilić, Joel Gruneau Brulin, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Alejandra Del Carmen Dominguez, Sonya Dragova-Koleva, Sofián El-Astal, Carla Sofia Esteves, Walaa Labib M. Eldesoki, Valdiney V. Gouveia, Katherine Gundolf, Dzintra Ilisko, Emanuel Jauk, Shanmukh V. Kamble, Narine Khachatryan, Martina Klicperova-Baker, Emil Knezovic, Monika Kovacs, Xuejun Lei, Kadi Liik, Agim Mamuti, Carlos Rodrigo Moreta-Herrera, Taciano L. Milfont, Chin Wei Ong, Evgeny Osin, Joonha Park, Boban Petrovic, Jano Ramos-Diaz, Goran Ridic, Abdul Qadir, Adil Samekin, Artur Sawicki, Habib Tiliouine, Robert Tomsik, Charles S. Umeh, Kees van den Bos, Alain Van Hiel, Osman Uslu, Anna Wlodarczyk, and Illia Yahiiaev.
The study, “Narcissism and United States’ Culture: The View From Home and Around the World”, was authored by Joshua D. Miller, Jessica L. Maples, Laura Buffardi, Huajian Cai, Brittany Gentile, Yasemin Kisbu-Sakarya, Virginia S. Y. Kwan, Alex LoPilato, Louise F. Pendry, Constantine Sedikides, Lane Siedor, and W. Keith Campbell.
The study, “Psychopathic Traits in Females and Males across the Globe”, was authored by Craig S. Neumann, David S. Schmitt, Rachel Carter, Iva Embley, and Robert D. Hare.
The study, “Sex differences in the Dark Triad are sensitive to socioeconomic conditions: the adaptive value of narcissism in the UK, Greece, and China”, was authored by Yu L. L. Luo, Yulia Kovas, Lizhong Wang, Anastasios Stalikas, Theodoros A. Kyriazos, Foteini-Maria Gianniou, Maxim V. Likhanov, and Kostas A. Papageorgiou.
The study, “Citizens in democratic countries have more benevolent traits, fewer malevolent traits, and greater well-being”, was authored by Craig S. Neumann, Scott Barry Kaufman, and Leanne ten Brinke.
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