Abstract

Research suggests that men and women differ on mean levels of Dark Triad personality constructs such as Machiavellianism, but few studies have investigated whether or not these differences are due to actual latent trait differences or bias in measurement. Further, recent research suggests important challenges associated with existing measures of MACH in terms of overlap with psychopathy and matching expert descriptions. The present study took a recently developed measure of Machiavellianism (the Five Factor Machiavellianism Inventory; FFMI), based on the five-factor model, and examined its invariance across gender. Strong (or scalar) factorial invariance was established, indicating that latent factor means can be compared between men and women using this measure. Mean-level differences showed that men had higher levels of latent factors related to antagonism and social dominance. In terms of total score, men reported significantly higher mean levels of Machiavellianism. The findings of the present study lend support to the notion that mean level differences in Machiavellianism across gender are not artifacts of measurement bias.

摘要

研究表明，男人和女人在黑暗三合会人格构造（例如马基雅维主义）的平均水平上存在差异，但很少有研究调查这些差异是否是由于潜在的性格特征差异或测量偏差造成的。此外，最近的研究表明，在与精神病重叠和匹配专家描述方面，与现有MACH措施相关的重大挑战。本研究在五因素模型的基础上，采用了最近开发的马基雅维主义（五因素马基雅维主义库存； FFMI）的测量方法，并检验了其性别间的不变性。建立了强（或标量）阶乘不变性，表明使用此度量可以比较男性和女性的潜伏因素均值。平均水平差异表明，男性具有与对抗性和社会支配性有关的潜在因素。就总分而言，男性报告的马基雅维利主义平均水平明显更高。本研究的发现支持这样的观点，即跨性别的马基雅维利主义的平均水平差异不是测量偏差的产物。