Do you wish you were taller? You May Be A PSYCHOPATH: People Dissatisfied With Their Height Are More Likely To Have Dark Personality Traits, Study Finds
- People who want to be taller tend to have more “Dark Triad” traits, a study claims
- These personality traits include psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism
Many people just want to be a few inches taller.
But it’s very much a matter of being careful what you desire, as a new study suggests that people with such desires are more likely to have darker personality traits.
Known as the “Dark Triad,” these traits include psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.
The research suggests that people who are relatively short may exhibit hostile behavior in an attempt to compensate for their height deficit.
“Shorter people, especially those who wish they were taller, are more characterized by traits that make them more likely to show off, engage in confrontation and be interested in power,” said lead author Peter K. Jonason of the University of Padua in Italy.
Beware: People dissatisfied with their height are more likely to have darker personality traits, a new study has found (stock image)
People with psychopathic traits have a lack of empathy, impulsiveness, and a disregard for social norms and rules, while narcissists have an inflated sense of self-importance, entitlement, and a need for admiration.
Machiavellianism, meanwhile, pertains to someone who is manipulative, cynical, and lacking in morality.
Jonason added, “One of the reasons these traits have become so popular to study is the claim that they may be adaptive – if socially undesirable – solutions for status/partner/survival attainment, calibrated on both dispositional characteristics such as the ability to compete as the context. people grew up in (mainly) and current circumstances (less).’
Short men generally had more narcissistic traits than short women, but there was no significant difference between the sexes in terms of psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
“We expected these relationships to be stronger in men given evolutionary and Freudian considerations, but we found little evidence for differentiation of these correlations by sex,” Jonason said.
The researchers used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to recruit 367 US adults for their study.
They then asked them to complete the Dirty Dozen Dark Triad Questionnaire, which is designed to assess levels of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.
The researchers also asked the participants about their actual height and how much they agreed with the statements “I wish I were taller” and “I’m happy with my height.”

The research suggests that people who are relatively short may exhibit hostile behavior in an attempt to compensate for their height disadvantage (Pictured: Christian Bale as gentle killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho)
Their findings revealed that shorter people and those who wanted to be taller tended to show more psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
The question is why sHorter people tend to have more dark features?
The authors said: ‘These relationships are best understood from an evolutionary framework, suggesting that when humans cannot be physically formidable, they may instead be psychologically formidable.’
In other words, if someone is physically inferior or weaker, they try to find a psychological advantage to get back on a level playing field.
This may also provide benefits in survival and mating, the researchers suggest.
For example, shorter men may demand respect, gain resources, and impress romantic partners with their personality traits, while shorter women may use trickery to appear more attractive or gain protection and resources.
The new study is published in Personality and individual differences.