mindhits

Dark Triad Test (SD3)

Twenty-seven items measuring Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy as normal-range traits.

Start the assessment

27 questions across 3 scales, about 7 minutes|Published scoring key from Short Dark Triad (SD3), 27 items, not invented

Authors: Jones, D. N. & Paulhus, D. L. (2014), Assessment, 21(1), 28-41

Licence: Published in the article appendix and distributed by the authors for research use. Confirm with the authors for commercial use.

What the SD3 measures

Machiavellianism

A strategic, manipulative approach to other people: planning, alliance-building, and keeping leverage in reserve.

High. You think several moves ahead in social situations. Information is something you keep track of, conflict is something you time rather than avoid, and you are comfortable with the idea that other people can be worked around.

Low. You take situations at face value and say what you think. Social strategy of this kind feels like effort you would rather not spend, and it may not occur to you that others are spending it.

Narcissism

Grandiosity, entitlement and a need for admiration. This is the subclinical trait, not the clinical disorder.

High. You believe you belong at the front, you are comfortable saying so, and recognition matters to you more than you would usually admit. You are probably better in a room than you are in a queue.

Low. You do not claim much for yourself and attention is not something you seek. Compliments may be mildly uncomfortable.

Psychopathy

Callousness, impulsivity and thrill-seeking, measured as a normal-range trait. Not a clinical assessment of anything.

High. Risk does not deter you the way it deters other people, retaliation comes easily, and other people's distress registers less. Consequences tend to feel distant until they arrive.

Low. You avoid unnecessary risk, you are affected by other people's feelings, and payback holds little appeal.

What answering the SD3 looks like

Question 1 of 27

How much do you agree?

It's not wise to tell your secrets.

  • 1Strongly disagree
  • 2Disagree
  • 3Neither agree nor disagree
  • 4Agree
  • 5Strongly agree
One item at a time, keyboard or mouse. Every one of the 27 items is worded this way, and your place is saved as you go.

What the SD3 is

Paulhus and Williams proposed the Dark Triad in 2002, arguing that three traits studied separately in different literatures were overlapping enough to be worth studying together, and distinct enough not to collapse into one. That paper set off a decade of work.

The practical problem was length. Measuring all three with the established instruments meant the Mach-IV, a narcissism inventory and a psychopathy scale, which together run to well over a hundred items. Jones and Paulhus built the SD3 to fit all three into 27, publishing it in Assessment in 2014 after screening an initial pool of 41 items.

The appendix of that paper carries the final 27 items along with an instruction that the subscale headings be removed before administration and the order preserved. Both are followed here.

How the SD3 is scored

  1. 27 answers

    Each answer you give is a number on the published response scale.

  2. 3 scales

    Answers belonging to the same scale are added together.

  3. A band

    Each total is read against the bands printed for that scale.

Nine items per trait on a five-point agreement scale, with five items reverse-keyed and flipped before summing. Each subscale runs from 9 to 45. The bar shows the position inside that range, not a percentile.

Scoring runs in your browser from your own answers. It is deterministic, so the same answers always produce the same result, and no part of it is generated, estimated or inferred.

How accurate the SD3 is

The authors report alphas ranging from .68 to .74 across the three subscales, with intercorrelations between .22 and .40. For nine-item scales measuring traits people have reason to understate, that is reasonable.

The intercorrelations are the interesting number. They are high enough to show the three traits travel together and low enough to show they are not one construct, which is the whole argument for the Triad.

Self-report is the obvious weak point for traits like these. The original validation used informant reports alongside self-reports precisely because of it, and that check is not available to you here.

Who the SD3 is for

Worth taking if

  • Curiosity about a widely discussed model, measured properly rather than by a quiz
  • Seeing how the three traits separate in your own profile instead of being lumped together
  • Anyone who has read about the Dark Triad and wants the actual instrument

Not the right tool for

  • Diagnosing anybody, including yourself
  • Assessing another person, which is where instruments like this get misused most
  • Hiring, screening or any decision made about someone else

What the SD3 cannot tell you

These are normal-range personality traits, not clinical categories. No score here diagnoses narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathy or anything else.

The items are transparent in their direction, which makes the scale easy to answer the way you would like to appear. In research that is handled with informant ratings; here it is handled by you being honest.

The three subscales correlate with each other, so a high score on one often comes with a moderately raised score on another.

Scores are positions within the scale, not percentiles against a norm group.

This is a self-assessment questionnaire, not a diagnostic instrument and not medical advice.

Take the SD3 now

27 questions, about 7 minutes. Your answers are scored on this device and stored on this device. There is no account to create and nothing is sent to a server. Progress saves as you go, so a long assessment can be finished across more than one sitting.

Start Dark Triad (SD3)

No sign up, ever. Every item in this assessment comes from Short Dark Triad (SD3), 27 items, and the page above tells you exactly how each score is worked out before you answer anything.

Dark Triad (SD3): frequently asked questions

What is the Dark Triad?

Three socially aversive personality traits that research finds travel together: Machiavellianism, which is strategic manipulation; subclinical narcissism, which is grandiosity and entitlement; and subclinical psychopathy, which is callousness and impulsivity. Paulhus and Williams grouped them in 2002.

Does a high score mean I am a psychopath?

No. The scale measures normal-range variation across the general population, which is what subclinical means. Clinical psychopathy is assessed by trained professionals using entirely different instruments, usually with interview and file review rather than self-report.

What is the difference between the SD3 and the Dirty Dozen?

Both are short Dark Triad measures. The Dirty Dozen uses 12 items, the SD3 uses 27. In the SD3 paper the authors report higher alphas for the Dirty Dozen but argue the SD3 maps better onto the full-length instruments it is meant to replace.

Can you cheat on a Dark Triad test?

Easily, in either direction. The items say what they mean. That is a known limit of self-report for traits like these, and it is why the original validation study used informant ratings alongside them.

How long does the SD3 take?

About seven minutes for 27 statements, each rated on a five-point agreement scale. Five of them are reverse-keyed, so agreeing with everything will not produce a high score on all three traits.

Is the Short Dark Triad free to use?

The 27 items are printed in the appendix of the published paper, which is how they are reproduced here. The authors distribute the scale for research use; confirm with them before using it commercially.

Where these questions come from

All 27 items, their order and the five reverse-keyed items were read from the appendix of the authors' own published paper, along with the instruction to remove the subscale headings before administration. Check the source.

Related assessments