Behind the Screen: Investigating {ChatGPT}’s Dark Personality Traits and Conspiracy Beliefs

{ChatGPT} is notorious for its untransparent behavior. This paper tries to shed light on this, providing an in-depth analysis of the dark personality traits and conspiracy beliefs of {GPT}-3.5 and {GPT}-4. Different psychological tests and questionnaires were employed, including the Dark Factor Test, the {MACH}-{IV} Scale, the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, and the Conspiracy Mentality Scale. The responses were analyzed computing average scores, standard deviations, and significance tests to investigate differences between {GPT}-3.5 and {GPT}-4. For traits that have shown to be interdependent in human studies, correlations were considered. Additionally, system roles corresponding to groups that have shown distinct answering behavior in the corresponding questionnaires were applied to examine the models’ ability to reflect characteristics associated with these roles in their responses. Dark personality traits and conspiracy beliefs were not particularly pronounced in either model, with little differences between {GPT}-3.5 and {GPT}-4. However, {GPT}-4 showed a pronounced tendency to believe in information withholding. This is particularly intriguing given that {GPT}-4 is trained on a significantly larger dataset than {GPT}-3.5. Apparently, in this case, an increased data exposure correlates with a greater belief in the control of information, potentially due to dataset composition. An assignment of extreme political affiliations increased the belief in conspiracy theories. Test sequencing affected the models’ responses and the observed correlations, indicating in-session consistency.