Machiavellianism V Attitude Inventory

1. Abstract

The Machiavellianism V Attitude Inventory (commonly known as the Mach V) is an ipsative, forced-choice self-report instrument developed by social psychologists Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis to quantify an individual’s orientation toward interpersonal manipulation, cynical worldview, and pragmatic morality while systematically eliminating social desirability bias. Stemming from their seminal work on the personality dimensions inspired by Niccolò Machiavelli, the Mach V was designed to resolve psychometric vulnerabilities discovered in its predecessor, the 20-item Likert-scale Mach IV, in which self-evaluative responses correlated substantially with social approval tendencies. Composed of 20 triads (60 discrete statements total), the Mach V requires respondents to identify the statement that is “most true” (or most like them) and the statement that is “least true” (or least like them) within each triad. Each triad carefully matches one item measuring Machiavellian orientation with non-Machiavellian buffer items equated on empirical ratings of social desirability. The instrument operationalizes three core theoretical dimensions: manipulative interpersonal tactics, cynical views of human nature, and utilitarian morality lacking conventional ideological commitments. Psychometrically, the Mach V demonstrates significant resistance to intentional and unconscious faking, showing near-zero correlations with traditional social desirability scales (such as the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale). Although its ipsative and triad-based structure introduces specialized psychometric challenges—notably constraining classical Cronbach’s alpha estimations of internal consistency and classical factor analysis—the Mach V exhibits robust construct, convergent, and behavioral predictive validity, consistently delineating individuals who exploit ambiguous, face-to-face social environments for instrumental gain.

2. Keywords

Machiavellianism, Mach V, Richard Christie, Florence Geis, forced-choice triad, social desirability bias, Dark Triad, interpersonal manipulation, cynicism, ipsative measurement, personality assessment, behavioral deception, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Machiavellianism V Attitude Inventory was formulated by Richard Christie (1918–1992) and Florence L. Geis (1938–1993), primarily based within the Department of Social Psychology at Columbia University, New York, with additional conceptual and empirical contributions from colleagues including David Berger, Kenneth J. Gergen, and Stanley Schachter.

Richard Christie served as Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, where he pioneered the empirical operationalization of political and interpersonal ideology, authoritarianism, and manipulative strategies. Florence L. Geis, who completed her doctoral research under Christie’s mentorship and subsequently joined the faculty at the University of Delaware as Professor of Psychology, conducted foundational laboratory paradigms investigating nonverbal demeanor, bargaining games, and group influence tactics among high- and low-Machiavellian individuals. Academic inquiries regarding the historical development and archival test records of the instrument are maintained within the psychological archives of Columbia University and referenced in publications supported by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Mach V Attitude Inventory is the rigorous measurement of Machiavellianism—a generalized strategy of dealing with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, and emotionally detached manner—free from the confounding effects of normative self-presentation. Following the construction of earlier iterations (Mach I through Mach IV), Christie and Geis observed that while the Mach IV scale effectively captured ideological agreement with Machiavellian tenets, respondent endorsement was substantially influenced by the normative evaluation of the statements. Items framing human nature as weak, deceitful, or exploitative routinely elicited negative reactions driven by respondents’ desires to appear socially virtuous, empathic, and cooperative.

To overcome this measurement artifact, the Mach V was developed with the explicit objective of measuring the latent construct using a forced-choice format. By presenting three statements equated along social desirability vectors, the instrument neutralizes the tendency of respondents to simply select socially sanctioned answers. The purpose spans several specialized domains:

• Experimental and Social Psychological Research: Differentiating “High Machs” from “Low Machs” in controlled social interaction experiments, laboratory economic games (such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Dictator Game, and coalition-formation tasks), and studies of interpersonal deception, negotiation tactics, and leadership dynamics.
• Organizational and Industrial Assessment: Investigating organizational citizenship behavior, corporate malfeasance, whistleblowing propensities, counterproductive work behaviors (CWB), political maneuvering, and negotiation efficacy across complex corporate hierarchies.
• Clinical and Forensic Personality Profiling: Serving as a key historical and empirical anchor within the broader Dark Triad of personality (alongside subclinical psychopathy and narcissism), assisting researchers in charting the boundaries between cold instrumental manipulation and antisocial impulsivity.
• Methodological Research: Providing an empirical benchmark for ipsative measurement, social desirability control methods, and forced-choice item modeling in personality inventory construction.

5. Psychological Construct

Machiavellianism, as operationalized by the Mach V, comprises a constellation of cognitive beliefs, affective dispositions, and behavioral behavioral strategies. Christie and Geis derived the conceptual boundaries of the construct directly from the core philosophical treatises of Niccolò Machiavelli, predominantly The Prince (Il Principe) and The Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio). The Mach V encapsulates three interconnected operational dimensions:

1. Interpersonal Tactics and Manipulation

This dimension assesses the strategic endorsement of deception, flattery, pragmatic dissimulation, and cognitive maneuvering in social interactions. High Mach individuals view others not as relational ends in themselves, but as instrumental means toward personal objectives. Illustrative items within this sub-dimension evaluate the belief that it is wise to flatter important figures, that the best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear, and that one should conceal the true motives behind one’s actions unless full transparency serves a functional utility. Conversely, low Mach individuals prioritize radical transparency, candor, and absolute honesty regardless of situational expediency.

2. Cynical View of Human Nature

The second core dimension probes the individual’s philosophical beliefs regarding the intrinsic character, trustworthiness, and competence of humanity. High Machs maintain a pervasive, cognitive cynicism: they perceive human beings as fundamentally weak, cowardly, gullible, self-indulgent, and motivated purely by short-term self-interest. They endorse sentiments echoing P. T. Barnum’s adage that “there’s a sucker born every minute” and presume that individuals will inevitably break commitments or reveal a vicious streak when an advantageous opportunity presents itself. Low Mach individuals, in contrast, demonstrate humanistic optimism, viewing people as inherently benevolent, rational, honorable, and deserving of unconditional trust.

3. Abstract and Pragmatic Morality

The third dimension reflects the rejection of conventional, universalized moral standards in favor of utilitarian, consequence-driven pragmatism. High Machs exhibit emotional detachment from traditional normative ethics, utilitarian expediency, and moral relativism; rules, laws, and ethical maxims are treated as flexible guidelines rather than binding moral absolutes. They subscribe to the perspective that the construction of monumental achievements justifies the exploitation or subjugation of laborers, and that a capable person driven by personal gain is ultimately more socially useful than an ineffective individual motivated by altruistic goodwill. Low Machs consistently subordinate utilitarian efficacy to moral imperatives, asserting that honesty is the best policy in all circumstances and that personal action must only be undertaken when its moral righteousness is beyond doubt.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual framework of the Mach V rests upon the synthesis of classic political philosophy, social-cognitive psychology, and early trait theories of personality. When Christie and Geis formulated the inventory, they identified that Machiavelli’s writings did not simply outline historical statecraft, but rather posited a distinct, coherent implicit personality theory regarding human behavior and social exchange.

The “Cool Syndrome”

At the center of Christie and Geis’s theoretical architecture is what they coined the “Cool Syndrome”. This model posits that High Machs operate with low affective involvement in interpersonal relationships. By maintaining emotional detachment, High Machs are insulated from social influence, normative guilt, interpersonal empathy, and moral outrage. When interpersonal situations become emotionally charged, Low Machs become consumed by empathy, interpersonal ethics, or ideological principles, which degrades their cognitive calculation of optimal outcomes. In contrast, High Machs maintain detached cognitive focus, objectively analyzing the power distribution, structural vulnerabilities, and exploitable leverage in the situation.

Structural Determinants of Machiavellian Success

Christie and Geis theorized that high Machiavellianism does not confer a universal behavioral advantage across all social domains; rather, its manifestations are moderated by specific environmental and situational structures. They posited three critical boundary conditions under which High Machs consistently outperform Low Machs:

1. Face-to-Face Interaction: High Machs leverage nonverbal poise, persuasive rhetoric, and personal charm to disarm and manipulate interaction partners directly. In impersonal, highly mediated contexts, this tactical advantage diminishes.
2. Latitude for Improvisation: The operational environment must possess ambiguous rules, unstructured social scripts, or discretionary decision-making power. In highly regulated, bureaucratically rigid systems where behavior is bound by strictly enforced formal protocols, the exploitative latitude of the High Mach is constrained.
3. Arousal of Irrelevant Affect: Situations involving high emotional stakes, ethical dilemmas, or normative expectations induce affective distraction in Low Machs, enabling the emotionally unencumbered High Mach to manipulate the interaction to their strategic benefit.

7. Validity

Empirical evaluation of the Mach V has yielded extensive validity data, establishing its construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related efficacy across diverse laboratory and field settings.

Construct and Convergent Validity

The construct validity of the Mach V is supported by strong convergent relationships with instruments evaluating related constructs within the personality domain. The Mach V demonstrates moderate-to-high correlations with the Mach IV ($r = .50$ to $.70$), confirming that both instruments tap the same latent ideological core, while diverging sharply in their vulnerability to response biases. In modern personality inventories, Mach V scores correlate positively with subclinical psychopathy ($r = .35$ to $.50$) on the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP) and facets of the NEO Personality Inventory, characterized primarily by low Agreeableness (specifically low Trust, Straightforwardness, Altruism, and Compliance) and low Conscientiousness (low Dutifulness).

Discriminant Validity

The definitive psychometric achievement of the Mach V lies in its discriminant validity against measures of social desirability. Whereas the Mach IV frequently exhibited negative correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale ranging from $-.30$ to $-.50$ (indicating that high scores were suppressed by social desirability concerns), the Mach V’s forced-choice triad architecture reduced these correlations to near zero ($r = -.05$ to $.08$, statistically non-significant). Furthermore, the scale exhibits negligible correlations with general cognitive intelligence ($g$), confirming that Machiavellianism represents a dispositional and motivational orientation rather than superior cognitive capacity. It also maintains clear discriminant separation from overt neuroticism and clinical manifest anxiety scales.

Predictive and Behavioral Validity

The behavioral validity of the Mach V was conclusively established through the classic experimental paradigms detailed by Christie and Geis (1970):

• The Ten-Dollar Game: In three-person bargaining games designed to divide a ten-dollar reward where any two players could form a coalition and exclude the third, High Machs (classified via the Mach V) secured coalitions significantly more frequently, walked away with disproportionately higher shares of the monetary payout, and rarely allowed affective alliances to compromise their economic outcome.
• The “Con Game”: When paired in face-to-face interactions with confederates or low Mach participants, High Machs successfully persuaded, bluffed, and manipulated others without displaying detectable nonverbal leakage or physiological distress.
• Laboratory Deception Studies: Exerpting high Mach individuals in experimental settings involving induced rule-breaking demonstrated that when confronted by an interrogator, High Machs maintained direct eye contact, sustained longer gaze durations, and exhibited lower observable anxiety while lying compared to Low Mach counterparts.

8. Reliability

Evaluating the reliability of the Mach V requires consideration of its ipsative, forced-choice structure, which alters standard psychometric assumptions underlying internal consistency metrics.

Internal Consistency Caveats

In traditional Likert-scale instruments, Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) serves as the default index of internal consistency. However, because each triad in the Mach V forces an intra-individual choice across distinct dimensional statements that have been mathematically balanced for social desirability, item responses within a triad are interdependent. Consequently, traditional internal consistency estimates for the Mach V tend to range lower than those observed for the normative Mach IV. Reported Cronbach’s alpha and split-half reliability coefficients for the Mach V typically fall between $.60$ and $.75$ across collegiate and adult populations. Psychometricians note that traditional reliability metrics underestimate the true operational reliability of forced-choice triads due to the violation of local independence assumptions and the artificial suppression of item-intercorrelation matrices.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability assessments have demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability over diverse longitudinal intervals. Over test-retest windows ranging from four to ten weeks, stability coefficients routinely cluster between $r_{tt} = .70$ and $r_{tt} = .82$, indicating that the Mach V captures an enduring, crystallized personality disposition rather than a fluctuating emotional or cognitive state. When evaluated over multi-year periods in adult organizational cohorts, stability metrics remain consistent with standard trait-level personality dimensions.

9. Factor Analysis

The underlying factor structure of the Mach V has been the subject of extensive psychometric investigation, reflecting the broader statistical dialogue regarding the factor analysis of ipsative and forced-choice measurement models.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial Exploratory Factor Analyses conducted by Christie and Geis confirmed that the item pool did not conform to a purely unidimensional latent trait. Instead, factor solutions consistently identified three to four secondary factors:

1. Tactical Deception and Flattery: Items capturing deliberate behavioral concealment, strategic misinformation, and insincere praise.
2. Pessimistic Cynicism: Items postulating intrinsic dishonesty, gullibility, and opportunistic defect among human beings.
3. Autonomous Utilitarianism: Items endorsing the supremacy of outcome over conventional ethical rules.

Because the forced-choice format produces an ipsative data matrix where the sum of selections across options is constrained to a fixed total, the covariance matrix possesses mathematical dependencies (negative average item covariances). As demonstrated in subsequent psychometric reviews (e.g., Corral & Calvete, 2000), applying traditional unweighted least squares or principal axis factoring without adjusting for the triad format often creates artifactual factors or suppresses secondary loadings.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Modern IRT

Modern psychometric re-analyses utilizing Thurstonian Item Response Theory (Thurstonian IRT) have resolved many historical anomalies of the Mach V. When modeled as forced-choice comparative judgments, Confirmatory Factor Analyses reveal acceptable model fit indices ($ ext{CFI} ge .90$,$ ext{TLI} ge .90$,$ ext{RMSEA} le .05$) for a hierarchical tripartite model, wherein a overarching general Machiavellianism factor accounts for common variance, supported by specific sub-factors representing manipulative tactics, cynical worldview, and pragmatic morality.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Machiavellianism V Attitude Inventory (Mach V).
• Authors: Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis (1968, 1970).
• Format: Forced-choice triad questionnaire (20 triads, comprising 60 statements total).
• Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes.
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents (reading level: grade 10+).
• Response Modality: For each of the 20 triads, the respondent must indicate:
  • One statement that is Most True (or most like them).
  • One statement that is Least True (or least like them).
  • The remaining statement is left unselected (neutral).
• Composition of Triads:
  • Every triad includes one keyed Machiavellian item (scored positively or negatively) paired with two non-Machiavellian items.
  • The Mach item and one non-Mach buffer item are matched to have equivalent empirical social desirability ratings based on normative consensus panels.
  • The third item in the triad serves as an additional baseline or contrasting social desirability buffer to balance choice probabilities across extreme ends.
• Scoring Methodology:
  • Within each triad, the respondent’s selection pattern dictates the score for that triad (ranging from 1 to 7, or transformed linearly).
  • Selecting the Mach item as “Most True” yields maximum points (e.g., 7 points if positively keyed, 1 point if negatively keyed).
  • Selecting the Mach item as “Least True” yields minimum points (e.g., 1 point if positively keyed, 7 points if negatively keyed).
  • If the Mach item is unselected, points are assigned based on which of the two non-Mach buffer items was endorsed as “Most True” or “Least True” (typically 3, 4, or 5 points), reflecting subtle directional preferences relative to social desirability.
  • Raw scores across all 20 triads are summed, often adding a constant (such as +20) to establish a standardized baseline scale ranging from 40 to 160, with a theoretical midpoint anchored at 100.
  • Score Interpretation:
    • Scores > 100: Classified as “High Mach” (pragmatic, detached, opportunistic, cynical, socially persuasive).
    • Scores < 100: Classified as “Low Mach” (empathic, morally conventional, idealistic, trusting, interpersonal).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Machiavellianism V Attitude Inventory was developed between 1965 and 1968 at Columbia University and formally published in book format in 1970 within Christie and Geis’s foundational volume, Studies in Machiavellianism (Academic Press). Additional dissemination occurred via the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in their reference compendium Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (Robinson & Shaver, 1969; Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 1991).

Copyright and Usage Policy: The Mach V was created primarily for academic, non-commercial scientific research. The original authors placed the scale structure and scoring keys within the academic literature to encourage ongoing empirical inquiry. As such, researchers and educators may utilize the instrument for non-commercial academic investigations, theses, dissertations, and classroom demonstrations without royalty fees, provided appropriate bibliographic attribution is given to the original authors. Reproduction for commercial assessment tools, proprietary enterprise platforms, or revenue-generating psychological services requires permission from the copyright holders or their institutional successors.

12. References

• Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-174450-2.50006-7
• Christie, R., Geis, F. L., & Berger, D. (1968). The Mach V scale: A forced-choice measure of Machiavellianism (Unpublished manuscript). Department of Social Psychology, Columbia University.
• Corral, S., & Calvete, E. (2000). Machiavellianism: Dimensionality of the Mach IV and its relation to self-monitoring in a Spanish sample. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 3(1), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1138741600005156
• Geis, F. L., & Christie, R. (1971). Machiavellianism and the manipulation of interpersonal encounters. In A. H. Hastorf & A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive Social Psychology. Elsevier.
• Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00505-6
• Rauthmann, J. F. (2012). The Dark Triad and interpersonal perception: Similarities and differences in the eye of the beholder. Journal of Individual Differences, 33(2), 73–82. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000077
• Robinson, J. P., Shaver, P. R., & Wrightsman, L. S. (1991). Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-590241-0.50005-4
• Vleeming, R. G. (1979). Machiavellianism: A review of the literature. Psychological Reports, 44(2), 619–644. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1979.44.2.619

13. Items of the Scale