MACHIAVELLIANISM, NARCISSISM, PSYCHOPATHY AND SADISM AS PREDICTORS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

A huge adoption of social media platforms into our lives has raised the red lantern over the topic of social media dependency, especially among young adults. This research explored the extent to which dark personality traits namely Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, Sadism predict the occurrence of social media addiction among university students as well as the relationship between study variables.  A quantitative, cross-sectional correlational study design was used in present research where 350 male and female undergraduate and postgraduate students (aged 18-26 years) were recruited using convenience sampling. Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) scale with 28 items created by Paulhus et al. (2020) and Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) with 6 items by Andreassen et al. (2016) were to be filled by respondents. The data was analyzed by SPSS and the Pearson product-moment correlation and the linear regression analysis were employed. The findings were delighted that all four aversive traits (machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism) were found to have a considerable and affirmative connection to social media addiction. Moreover, Machiavellianism proved as the best predictor of social media addiction and the next predictor was sadism and psychopathy whereas the least predictor was narcissism. These findings indicated that aversive personality traits are important dispositional vulnerability constructs to addictive social media use.