Unveiling the fragile façade: A scoping review and meta-analysis of the Vulnerable Dark Triad

The Vulnerable Dark Triad (secondary psychopathy, vulnerable narcissism, and borderline personality) was proposed in 2010 as a counterpart of the Dark Triad and combines socially undesirable behaviors with emotionally vulnerable traits. Despite being proposed more than a decade ago, no study (to our knowledge) has sought to map the existing evidence. Thus, we performed a scoping review with a meta-analysis of materials published about the Vulnerable Dark Triad. We searched materials in the following databases: PsychARTICLES, PsycINFO, PubMed, and ScienceDirect, using Google Scholar as a complement. We found a total of 200 materials, of which 27 were included in our qualitative and meta-analysis procedure. Our results indicate that all Vulnerable Dark Triad traits are intercorrelated (secondary psychopathy-vulnerable narcissism r¯ = 0.44; secondary psychopathy-borderline personality r¯ = 0.49; vulnerable narcissism-borderline personality r¯ = 0.56). Furthermore, emotional instability is the vulnerable triad core. All traits are positively associated with impulsive behaviors, difficulties in emotional regulation, and higher rejection sensitivity.