Machiavellianism correlates with social dominance but opposes right-wing authoritarianism

Evidence

The Machiavellianism scale had a low mean interitem correlation of . and an alpha =.72. Whatever its items measure, its summed score correlated . with SDO and − . with RWA. The hefty relationship with social dominance got its heft from such “Mach” items as “The biggest difference between most criminals and other people is that criminals are stupid enough to get caught”; “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear”; “Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so”; and “All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than important and dishonest” (with which High SDOs disagree). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1012

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why would Machiavellian manipulation correlate positively with SDO but negatively with RWA? Does the conscientious, rule-abiding character of RWA actively conflict with cynical manipulation?
• SHARE: For a colleague into the dark triad literature — a clean empirical dissociation of Machiavellianism from RWA but not SDO.