Aim
This work is made up of two parts. The first part aims to give a general overview of psychopathy and anti-social personality disorder. The second part goes into more depth on the conceptual and empirical studies of the three correlated personality constructs, until now defined as the Dark Triade, but considering them independently.
Methods
We consulted information available in literature through the PubMed site and Google Scholar without filtering by year. Searches were made using the keywords “psychopathy”, “psychopathy and anti-social personality disorder” and “dark triad”.
Results and discussion
We highlight not only the specific peculiarities, but also similarities and differences that help the reader better understand that the two terms, psychopathy and anti-sociality, are not synonyms although often used as such. We also offer a definition of the concept of Dark Triad, outlining both its “undesirable” and functional aspects.