A study claiming that psychopaths and others with “dark tetrade” personality traits are attracted to crypto have been criticized as “meaningless” for having shown a very weak correlavity by an expert in psychology from the University of Otago.
Researchers with history mainly in marketing and advertising of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) interviewed 566 people on their attitudes towards crypto and correlated the results with four specific personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavelli and sadism.
The results were the first common by the American sun, and were largely unionized by the consumer media, with the title of New York post crying “Bitcoin fans are psychopaths who do not care about anyone” and lounge affirmation that “impulsive psychopaths like crypto”.
Bitcoin fans are psychopaths who don’t care about anyone, shows the study pic.twitter.com/ytgculcef
– New York Post (@nypost) April 12, 2022
But speaking in Cointelegraph, Professor Martin Sellbom of the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago – an international expert on personality disorders and the evaluation of the personality – criticized the results of the study as being essentially devoid of meaning.
“The effects they report, for example, the strength of the relationships between these so-called” dark tetrades “features and the attitude and the intention to buy the cryptocurrency are very low, almost without meaning, in my opinion.”
The personality test of the short black triad widely used (SD-3), which assesses the features of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism from a maximum score of five was used to assess the personalities of the participants.
The results of the study show that participants’ scores for psychopathy and narcissism were lower than the average levels determined by the OpenPytrics psychometric assessment group. Participants obtained a score of 2% below the average of psychopathy and 16.7% lower than the average of narcissism, however, the machevillism scores were 3.6% higher.
But Professor Sellbom said that, in any case, this research line is “non -informative on psychopathy and narcissism”, adding:
“The measurement devices used in this literature do not understand all the manifestations of these disorders.”
The authors have widened their results in an article for conversation, declaring that narcissists like crypto “because of their great faith in the future” and because of “confidence that their own life will improve”.
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Apparently, psychopaths have been attracted to crypto because they “fear that they fail to invest in awards that others live” and Machiavellians like crypto because “they are wary of politicians and government agencies”.
Other features, such as positivity and belief in conspiracy theories, have also been measured as features which “could connect dark tetrade judgments on the crypto”.
Among those questioned, only 26% held cryptocurrencies and those who did not do so, almost 64% said they would be “interested” to invest.
Sellbom said that the methodology for binding traits, such as FOMO, to psychopathy was wrong as collected a sample both in terms of interest in crypto and psychometric results at the same time, from the same person only once, is “roughly non -informative”, before adding that the conclusions that researchers have reached “cannot be supported in a simple way”.
“By examining the same results, my interpretation would be the relationship between dark tetrade traits and attitudes towards and purchase the intention of cryptocurrency is low, and it is unlikely that these traits allow a lot of understanding of those who engage in the purchase of cryptocurrency.”
It should be noted that the researchers, themselves, said in the report that they are not there to propose that bitcoins are psychopaths, how certain media have quickly declared.
“We do not suggest that all crypto buyers have dark tetrade traits. Instead, we study a subset of people interested in the crypto who have these traits. »»
Discussing the limits of their work, the researchers said that even if they evaluated the interest of the participants to invest in actions, obligations or the crypto, the study could have set a control variable by measuring their intention to engage in these types of investments.
“Many experts in psychopathy and narcissism question this so-called literature on dark personality,” said Professor Sellbom, “because researchers do not really study these personality disorders, which are much more complex than what the measures used suggest.”
The authors of the study are Brett Martin, Marketing professor, Quet; Dr Di Wang, principal speaker at the Quet School of Advertising and Marketing; Jun Yao, senior lecturer in marketing, Macquarie University; Carolyn Strong, professor of marketing and strategy, Cardiff University; And Polymeros Chrysochou, Marketing professor, Aarhus University.
Given the history of the authors in marketing and advertising, it seems possible that they understand how to supervise the results of a study so as to use mass media.
