Validating a New Short Measure of the Dark Tetrad

Abstract

Interest in dark personality traits has gained an increasing amount of attention in the past few decades. With the demand for studying these traits, there is a lack of a valid short measure for the four dark personality traits known as the Dark Tetrad. This area is of significance to the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O) as individuals in positions of leadership have been shown to possess one or more of the dark personality traits. This leaves researchers with the question of how to recognize, predict, and develop best practices to minimize or eliminate counterproductive work behaviors from leaders and their subordinates. This purpose of this study was to provide researchers with a reliable, valid short measure of the Dark Tetrad that can be used to further research in the respective areas of organizational and employee development. Results from the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the hypothesis that the model would replicate a 7-factor behavioral model, yielding 29-items for the measure. Additionally, the results also supported the hypothesis that all constructs were moderately correlated with each other.