Dark Triad Dirty Dozen

[8] The DTDD was developed due to the absence of a single, concise test which measured the three dark triad traits simultaneously.

Another issue with measuring all of dark triad traits by different tests was that it would involve too many items, making administration time-consuming and potentially fatiguing among test-takers, leading to less accurate responses.

[1] As such, Jonason and Webster sought to develop a short and easily administrable measure of the dark triad by adapting items from traditional, existing measures of each dark triad construct, namely the Mach IV for Machiavellianism, the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale-III (SRP-III) for psychopathy, and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) for narcissism.

Since Jonason and Webster identified a “problem” item that was contributing to lower internal consistency reliability, it was rephrased in the final version of the DTDD.

Jones and Paulhus explain that this sex difference may emerge because males, more than females, tend to benefit more from using manipulative, exploitative strategies characteristic of the dark triad traits.

[1] The DTDD has been translated and adapted for other cultures and languages, including French-Canadian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish versions.

[19] As an alternative brief measure, Jones and Paulhus have developed the 27-item Short Dark Triad (SD3) in 2014, consisting of 9 items for each of Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism subscale.

It has been found that the convergent validity of the SD3 is superior to the DTDD in relation to existing measures of dark triad subscales in multiple studies.

[5] Specifically, the DTDD does not account for disinhibition (i.e. impulsivity), which may explain why it has weaker correlations with relevant Big Five personality traits such as Agreeableness and Conscientiousness compared to established measures of psychopathy.

[22] This study concludes that at least among university student aged men, the DTDD is better understood as a measure of two factors; narcissism and “Machiavellianism-psychopathy”, where Machiavellianism is conceptualised as the subclinical form of psychopathy.