Assessing the ABCDs of Machiavellianism: Development and Validation of the M4 Scale Using Ant Colony Optimization

Machiavellianism (Mach) is a personality trait characterized by cold rationality, cynicism, duplicity, and the strategic and egotistical pursuit of goals. Despite recent advances in the measurement of Mach, most Mach scales show limited content validity because they have not systematically integrated recurring Mach themes in the areas of affect (A), behavior (B), cognition (C), and desire (D). To overcome this and other issues, we developed a new Mach scale, the M4. We created the M4 by using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) to select 16 items from a pool of 92 newly generated and expert-rated Mach items. In two studies with German-speaking participants (N1 = 765; N2 = 1,288), the M4 total score showed high reliability, high convergent validity with established Mach scales and M4 informant reports, and a nomological network that was, in some aspects, more in line with the theoretical conceptualization of Mach than the nomological networks of most established Mach scales. Furthermore, commonality analyses indicated that the M4 is a better predictor of incentivized cheating behavior than five other recently developed Mach measures. Hence, the M4 might help us advance the assessment of Mach and study it in a way more consistent with the Mach construct.