ИСТИНА

The Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) have been associated with the desire of status, power and social dominance. Following the reasoning, the Dark Triad may also influence the social and political activity of students. The study concerned the relationship between students’ social activity and their Dark Triad scores. The socially active students were those selected for the participation in a youth political forum by experts (University administrative staff and the forum organizes). We compared the mean values and variance of the Dark Triad and the Big Five traits in two groups of students: the first group included 124 socially active students, who represented their universities at the political forum (M=20,96; SD=2,41), the second group was 559 students of the psychological and biological departments of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (M=20,16; SD=1,74). Results showed that socially active students have higher levels of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and a total score of the Dark Triad, as well as higher levels of Extraversion, Consciousness and Openness.