The Dark Triad and the Detection of Parental Judicial Manipulators. Development of a Judicial Manipulation Scale

Abstract

This research examines the relationship between dark triad and the use that some parents make of their children in order to attack the other parent after a couple break-up. We examined whether parents who are willing to lie about issues concerning the other parent and their children during a couple break-up process show higher levels of dark triad traits. Across two different samples of divorced participants (N = 1085 and N = 249), we measured dark triad traits and willingness to engage in judicial manipulation. The objective of this study was to build a judicial manipulation scale to measure willingness to lie and use children to harm the other parent that could be used in professional practice. Results show significant correlations for judicial manipulation and dark triad traits and confirm the psychometric properties of reliability and validity of a proposed scale. We found that dark triad traits are adequate indicators of judicial manipulation. We discuss the importance of the scale to help the judicial system to determine which parent is the most appropriate to be designated as the legal custodial parent.