Casey's Profile: Part 4, Her Machiavellianism

The last “toxic trait” of the Dark Triad is Machiavellianism. In psychiatry Machiavellianism is defined as

the endorsement of manipulative strategies and tactics as a personality syndrome. A high score on the Mach scale indicates that the respondent has a conception of human nature as fallible and weak, and stresses the use of expedient procedures in social relations.

Marilee Strong states that individuals with a high Mach scale “are schemers who use every means at their disposal – flattery, manipulation, deceit – to gain advantage over others.” And “Other people are just pawns in their game, objects to be used for their own gratification.”
As with psychopathy and narcissism there is a test for Machiavellianism. (Again, it is interactive.) We step even further away from the external observations of the person, and have to rely more on how the individual would respond in this test. For that reason, this test, as completed by outside individuals, will have the greater room for error and bias. But as we have done on the two previous tests, we will attempt to be conservative in our responses, as neutral as possible. The test consists of 20 questions with 5 possible responses to each, ranging from 1 – strongly disagree, 2 – disagree, 3 – neutral, 4 – agree and 5 – strongly agree. Whenever unsure, we will default to neutral. In addition, for those questions that there is confidence in what her response would be (based solely on her behavior), I have chosen only 2 – disagree or 4 – agree, staying away from the “strongly” or extreme answers.

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