Conspicuous consumption (purchase of expensive goods and services in order to visibly demonstrate buying power) is a frequent and widely spread type of consumer behavior. Besides its economic dimension, conspicuous consumption certainly also has its - for now under studied - psychological dimension. So far, it has been reported that positive attitude towards conspicuous consumption is associated with conformity, high esteem of authority, social anxiety, Machiavellism, and ruthless self-advancement. In this study, using a sample of 272 high school students (aged 16-18) we studied predictive relationship between narcissism and materialism, and the attitude towards conspicuous consumption. The data indicated that materialism was a significant predictor of the attitude towards conspicuous consumption, quite in line with some previous research. In spite of a significant correlation between narcissism and materialism, narcissism was not a significant predictor of the attitude towards conspicuous consumption. Thus, this study has widened nomological network of the attitude towards conspicuous consumption and clearly delineated two seemingly similar psychological constructs: materialism and the attitude towards conspicuous consumption.

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The ongoing research on socially toxic behaviors has been dominated by the Dark Triad approach. However, there are other theoretical approaches on antagonistic personalities that are not incepted by the Dark Triad approach. The goal of the present study was to investigate empirical overlap between the Dark Triad and Amorality constructs. Our data indicated that there is a substantial overlap between the two constructs, save for the Narcissism component of the Dark Triad which is somewhat distinct from the common Dark Triad/Amorality space. When Impulsivity was included into the analyses it disjointed the relatively monolithic Dark Triad/Amorality structure that was observed by the earlier analysis; indicating that the Dark Triad and Amorality do not unreservedly belong to the same measurement space. Thus, theoretically and empirically separable traits (amalgamated in the Drak Triad, Amorality, and Impulsivity constructs) combine in an intricate fashion to form distinctive patterns of socially malignant behaviors.

Introduction: Alexithymia represents a personality trait construct encompassing difficulty identifying and describing feelings, distinguishing between feelings and the related physical sensations, and an externally oriented cognition. A self-report 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) is a commonly used tool to measure alexithymia. It has been translated into more than 20 different languages, crossing the cultural and language barriers. TAS-20 has a factorial structure: factor 1 assesses difficulty identifying feelings; factor 2 assesses difficulty describing feelings; factor 3 assesses externally oriented thinking. Objective: The objective of the study was to validate a Serbian translation, including the factorial structure, of the TAS-20. Methods: TAS-20 was expertly translated from English to Serbian and given to a bilingual non-clinical sample fluent in both English and Serbian (n=47, age 18-60). The subjects were assigned to complete Serbian version (TAS-20-SRB) at week one, and the English version (TAS-20-ENG) at week two (7-14 days apart). The collected data were analysed using a paired samples correlations and paired samples ttest. Results: There were no statistically significant differences in paired samples comparisons of means of total score and scores on each of three factors of TAS-20-ENG and TAS-20-SRB (p>0.05). The results of correlations of total scores and scores on factors show the statically significant correlations (p< 0.001), and also that the correlations were very high (from 0.87 to 0.95). Conclusion: Bilingual subjects showed temporally and quantitatively congruent scores on both TAS-20 and TAS-20-SRB, suggesting that the Serbian translation of TAS-20 was valid, and that the factorial structure remained stable.