Gendered Sadism: Examining Measurement Invariance of Everyday Sadism Scales Across Genders

During the last two decades, interest in aversive personality traits increased. Among non-forensic personality features, everyday sadism is said to reflect the most aversive one. A plethora of studies found males to score higher on average in everyday sadism. However, valid comparisons of test scores require that measurement invariance of the test holds between the groups under scrutiny. Using four samples (ntotal = 2,909 [70% female]), we tested for gender-related measurement invariance of all currently available everyday sadism self-report measures. We found partial scalar invariance for the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies (regardless of the inclusion of a method factor), scalar invariance for the Assessment of Sadistic Personality (irrespective of the inclusion of a method factor) and the Comprehensive Assessment of Sadistic Tendencies, and partial metric invariance for the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale. The everyday sadism subscale from the Short Dark Tetrad did not even exhibit configural invariance; the respective subscale from the Mixed Short Dark Tetrad yielded partial scalar invariance only when a method factor was included. These findings have important implications for gender-specific expressions of everyday sadism that need to be considered in scale development and the interpretations of test scores.