Are short, bitter people actually more likely to be psychopaths? Start with the click bait, end with the science.

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Conflict of interest statement: I am slightly shorter than the average American woman. But I'm adorable, so I score low on the Dark Triad??

This blog post started with me giggling at click-bait headlines, but THEN I realized this is one of those rare articles that use data analyses that we teach in Psych Stats.

The journey began when I saw this on Twitter:

Screen shots of the FOX News program The Five, warning us against psychotic short people.

Hilarious, right? Not to be outdone, the NY Post ALSO needed to cover this study: 

New York Post headline: "Shorter, bitter people are more likely to be psychopaths, study"
 https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2023/02/27/short-people-more-likely-to-be-psychopaths-study/amp/

I'm wheezing.

Immediately, this was a great example of clickbait reporting. The research used The Dark Triad as the theoretical underpinning, and The Dark Triad is like what Mindfulness was 10 years ago in psych research. It is just everywhere.

BUT...then I realized this is a very easy-to-read study that you could share with advanced UGs, no problem.

What does the original research state?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922004950

Correlations:

A correlation table from the original article.

Also, some ANOVA and regression, making this article accessible to upper-level UGs who have taken Psych Stats.

The results section from the original article.

ANYWHO: 

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