In times of growing concerns about climate change, an increasing number of people engage in environmental activism. Environmental activism involves collective civic actions that impact environmental issues, focus on system-level changes, and go beyond personal practices, such as recycling (Alisat & Riemer, 2015). Environmental activism can have significant effects on environmental improvement (e.g., reduction in CO2 emissions; Pacheco-Vega & Murdie, 2020). Thus, it is important to understand which individual differences are associated with this behavior. The resulting knowledge could be used for recruiting, developing, and motivating activists. Whereas several studies have examined associations between the Big Five personality characteristics and environmental activism (e.g., Soutter et al., 2020; Terrier et al., 2016), the potential “dark side” of environmental activists’ personality has been neglected. The goal of this study, therefore, was to examine associations between environmental activism and two sets of aberrant personality constructs – the dark triad and left-wing authoritarianism –, above and beyond the Big Five characteristics. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by advancing knowledge on individual differences associated with environmental activism.

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