Purpose of the Questionnaire

The aim of the questionnaire is to better understand the dark side of human nature. It measures the socially undesirable traits of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. The Dark Triad test is often used by police and courts, in psychiatric wards and evaluations, and even in large corporations.

Questionnaire Analysis

Over the past decade, interest in the dark side of human nature has increased exponentially. To better understand this dark side, researchers Jonason and Webster (2010) developed and validated a brief questionnaire based on the existing test by Paulhus and Williams (2002), consisting of 12 items measuring the Dark Triad: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

Scoring and Statistical Analysis

The scoring of the questionnaire is as follows: it consists of 12 questions, with four questions corresponding to each of the three latent traits — Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism. Participants respond on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all to 5 = very much) to statements that reflect (1) narcissism, (2) psychopathy, and (3) Machiavellianism. High scores do not necessarily correlate with clinical diagnoses. According to studies, adult men tend to score higher than women, likely because men are more inclined to benefit from using manipulative and exploitative strategies, which are characteristic of the DDQ-12 traits (Jones & Paulhus, 2002).

Validity and Reliability

The DDQ-12 is a reliable measure of socially undesirable human traits. Results showed that internal consistency was good for the Machiavellianism (α = 0.80) and Narcissism (α = 0.80) subscales, and moderate for the Psychopathy subscale (α = 0.64). The overall reliability of the Dirty Dozen [DDQ-12] was quite high, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87.

References

Tegos, D. (2017). Workplace bullying: personal characteristics and workplace outcomes (Master’s thesis, University of Piraeus).
De Buck, A., Pauwels, L. J., Hardyns, W., & Ponnet, K. (2021). Testing Measurement Invariance of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen in a Belgian Adult Sample. Psychologica Belgica, 61(1), 377.
Jonason, P. K., Li, N. P., & Czarna, A. Z. (2013). Quick and dirty: Some psychosocial costs associated with the Dark Triad in three countries. Evolutionary Psychology, 11(1), 147470491301100116.
Jonason, P. K., & McCain, J. (2012). Using the HEXACO model to test the validity of the Dirty Dozen measure of the Dark Triad*. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(7), 935–938.