The Dark Triad and Bullying in Adolescence: A Three-Wave Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

Few have studied the longitudinal associations between the Dark Triad and bullying in youth and none have examined these relations using analytic techniques that permit separating between- from within-person variability. Random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling was used with three waves of data from a randomly selected sample of 514 Canadian adolescents aged 15 – 18 to assess the Dark Triad and bullying over time. Controlling for sex and parental education, at the between-person level, random intercepts for Machiavellianism and psychopathy correlated positively with bullying. At the within-person level, moment-to-moment stability was found for narcissism and Machiavellianism. Residual within-time correlations mirrored bivariate associa- tions, indicating that Machiavellianism and psychopathy shared consistent links with bullying. Cross-lagged effects were found for both disposition- and perpetration-driven pathways.