Situational and Dispositional Social Cues That Define the Machiavellian Orientation

Abstract Situational and dispositional social cues present in high and low Machiavellian individuals were investigated in an attempt to distinguish these two types. Students from a coeducational university in the southeastern United States were administered the Mach V Scale, Rotter I-E Scale, Lennox-Wolfe Self-Monitoring Scale, and the Bem Androgyny Scale in small groups. Results of a stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that five variables combined to yield a successful discrimination between the groups. The classification analysis revealed successful classification of 85% of the high Mach individuals, although only 50% of the low Mach individuals were correctly classified. These findings suggest the need to reexamine the characteristics of the low Mach individual in order to define them more clearly.