http://personality-testing.info/tests/MACH-IV.php

I took it. I’m not a saint.

I’m apparently more trusting and not manipulative.

I got 56 out of 100

Your score was 54 of 100.

This puts you in the category of the low Machs, people who will hold out for the goodness of the world and avoid manipulation. Not the people Machiavelli would approve of.

59 out of 100, a low-Mach as well.

WARNING:

I find the inclusion of this question suspicious:

People suffering from incurable diseases should have the choice of being put painlessly to death.

This is suspicious to me, as this has little to do with Machiavellism. It is on the terrain of right to self-determination, i.e. personal freedom of choice. It is also strangely worded (“put to death”?).

So I start to wonder: is this test a shill to try to forge a connection between evil Machiavellist personalities and a pro-euthanasia viewpunt?

Note that it is completely unclear who is behind this test. It asks if it may use your answers “for research purpose” but nowhere it is mentioned which research institute is conducting this research. That is odd.

I was not comfortable with that one either but then I remembered, when entering the test:

This test was developed by Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis in the 1960’s

...I had just become a teen at that time by a single year so I understood just how long ago this test was created AND the social setting as well.

LaMa - 28 January 2012 03:10 AM

WARNING:

I find the inclusion of this question suspicious:

People suffering from incurable diseases should have the choice of being put painlessly to death.

This is suspicious to me, as this has little to do with Machiavellism. It is on the terrain of right to self-determination, i.e. personal freedom of choice. It is also strangely worded (“put to death”?).

So I start to wonder: is this test a shill to try to forge a connection between evil Machiavellist personalities and a pro-euthanasia viewpunt?

Note that it is completely unclear who is behind this test. It asks if it may use your answers “for research purpose” but nowhere it is mentioned which research institute is conducting this research. That is odd.

That or they are conducting research on euthanasia, and rather than asking people flat-out, are tucking it into the test as a whole, to try and get more accurate results. I’ve seen it done before.

45 out of 100.
The euthinasia question ignores the fact that not all incurable diseases are painful!

I am not “trusting” and very savvy about other people (street smart)... so the broad generalizations used to evaluate and simplistic evaluation given at the end seem to be a poor indicator to me…

Your score was 60 of 100.

This puts you in the category of the low Machs, people who will hold out for the goodness of the world and avoid manipulation. Not the people Machiavelli would approve of.

I’m happy enough with that, although there was hardly a single question there I felt could be answered properly with the choices provided.

Paul Taylor - 29 January 2012 09:09 AM

Your score was 60 of 100.

This puts you in the category of the low Machs, people who will hold out for the goodness of the world and avoid manipulation. Not the people Machiavelli would approve of.

I’m happy enough with that, although there was hardly a single question there I felt could be answered properly with the choices provided.

I found that too.  There were quite a few questions where I didn’t agree with any of the answers so i just picked the closest one.  I ended up with a 55.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism

In psychology
Main article: Machiavellian intelligence

Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person’s tendency to deceive and manipulate other people for their personal gain. In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis developed a test for measuring a person’s level of Machiavellianism. This eventually became the MACH-IV test, a twenty-statement personality survey that is now the standard self-assessment tool of Machiavellianism. People scoring above 60 out of 100 on the MACH-IV are considered high Machs; that is, they endorsed statements such as, “Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so,” (No. 1) but not ones like, “Most people are basically good and kind” (No. 4). People scoring below 60 out of 100 on the MACH-IV are considered low Machs; they tend to believe, “There is no excuse for lying to someone else,” (No. 7) and, “Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives” (No. 11). Christie, Geis, and Geis’s graduate assistant David Berger went on to perform a series of studies that provided experimental verification for the notion of Machiavellianism.

Machiavellianism is one of the three personality traits referred to as the dark triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy. Some psychologists consider Machiavellianism to be essentially a subclinical form of psychopathy,[5] although recent research suggests that while Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlap, they are distinct personality constructs.[6]

In 2002, the Machiavellianism scale of Christie and Geis was applied by behavioral game theorists Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Kevin McCabe and Vernon L. Smith[7] in their search for explanations for the spread of observed behavior in experimental games, in particular individual choices which do not correspond to assumptions of material self-interest captured by the standard Nash equilibrium prediction. It was found that in a trust game, those with high MACH-IV scores tended to follow homo economicus’ equilibrium strategies while those with low MACH-IV scores tended to deviate from the equilibrium, and instead made choices that reflected widely accepted moral standards and social preferences.

Machiavellianism has been found to be negatively correlated with the Agreeableness (r = -.47) and Conscientiousness (r = -.34) dimensions of the Big Five personality model (NEO-PI-R).[6]