engleski

Modeling Short Dark Tetrad (SD4): Preliminary findings on Croatian version

In the past 20 years, the popularity of the so- called dark traits in the area of individual differences has been exponentially rising. Firstly, the Dark Triad was introduced, consisting of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, and relatively shortly after that, the Dark Tetrad which includes also sadism was proposed. There are several instruments capturing these traits ; and the most promising instrument seems to be the newly developed Short Dark Tetrad (SD4). The aim of the present study was to examine structure of the SD4 that measures all four dark traits with seven items per trait. Structure was examined using latent variable modeling, with two competing models found in the literature on the measures of Dark Triad tested, which were also previously tested in modeling SD4. First of them was strict confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) model, in which items loaded only on their respective trait or factor and factors were interrelated. The second one, bifactor model, included general “dark” factor (on which all items loaded), and four specific factors (on which only their respective items loaded). Data was collected online, on a convenience sample of 439 participants (18.5% male ; age range: 18-64, Mage = 25.42, SDage = 7.94). The bifactor model had better fit indices (CFI = .90, TLI = .88, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .07) compared to strict CFA model (CFI = .85, TLI = .83, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .08). In strict CFA model, all loadings were greater than .30, with most of them greater than .50. When it comes to bifactor model, factor loadings for the Machiavellianism and narcissism items were stronger in case of their respective factor compared to general factor. Psychopathy and sadism items loaded on general factor to greater degree, indicating that general factor mostly reflected item content of these two dark traits. Although some of the fit statistics fell somewhat below conventional acceptable fit threshold, their values are highly similar to those from the original validation study, as well as the pattern of factor loadings for tested models. Due to our sample composition, invariance across gender could not be tested, so this question remains open for further research, as well as the relationship of each dark trait with external correlates. Nevertheless, our preliminary findings indicate that Croatian version of SD4 is valid and comparable to the original version.

narcissism ; Machiavellianism ; psychopathy ; sadism ; structural models

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