The Dark Triad of personality and attitudes toward cognitive enhancement.

BACKGROUND: Cognitive enhancement (CE) refers to the voluntary improvement of human cognitive capabilities. Few studies have examined the general attitude of the public towards CE. Such studies have suggested that the use of CE is considered largely unacceptable by the public. In parallel, past research indicates that individuals scoring high on the Dark Triad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) and competitiveness have atypical views of ethical questions. In this study, we examined (a) whether attitudes towards CE are associated with individual differences in the Dark Triad of personality as well as in trait and contextual competitiveness and (b) whether the Dark Triad moderates the effect of trait and contextual competitiveness on attitudes towards CE. METHOD: US employees (N = 326) were recruited using Mechanical Turk. Participants completed a web survey. Data were analyzed by means of (robust) hierarchical regression and (robust) ANCOVAs. RESULTS: The Dark Triad of personality and one of its subscales, Machiavellianism, predicted positive attitudes towards CE. Neither trait competitiveness nor contextual competitiveness were linked to general attitudes towards CE, but the DT was a positive moderator of the association between contextual competitiveness and positive attitudes. CONCLUSION: Our findings extend the incipient knowledge about the factors relating to favourable views of CE by highlighting the role of dark personality traits in shaping such views. Our study further shows contextual factors can play a differentiated role with respect to such attitudes depending upon dark personality traits. Implications for policy-making are discussed.

How perceived substance characteristics affect ethical judgement towards cognitive enhancement.

Some individuals seek to enhance their cognitive capabilities through the use of pharmacology. Such behavior entails potential health risks and raises ethical concerns. The aim of this study was to examine whether a precursor of behavior, ethical judgement towards the use of existing biological cognitive enhancers (e.g., coffee, legal and illegal drugs), is shaped by the perceived characteristics of these cognitive enhancers. Students and employees completed an online questionnaire which measured perceived characteristics of 15 substances presented as potential cognitive enhancers and a measure of ethical judgement towards these cognitive enhancers. Results of mixed model regression analyzes show that ethical judgement is more favourable when cognitive enhancers are perceived as being legal, familiar, efficient, and safe for users' health, supporting all hypotheses. Results further show that 36% of variance (in the null model) lies at the level of cognitive enhancers and 21% at the level of participants. In conclusion, cognitive enhancers vary widely in terms of ethical judgement, which is explained by the perception of the mentioned characteristics. Implications regarding prevention and policy-making are discussed.