The psychology of spite and the measurement of spitefulness.

Abstract

Spite is an understudied construct that has been virtually ignored within the personality, social, and clinical psychology literatures. This study introduces a self-report Spitefulness Scale to assess individual differences in spitefulness. The scale was initially tested on a large sample of 946 college students and cross-validated on a national sample of 297 adults. The scale was internally consistent in both samples. Factor analysis supported a 1-factor solution for the initial pool of 31 items. Item response theory analysis was used to identify the best performing of the original 31 items in the university sample and reduce the scale to 17 items. Tests of measurement invariance indicated that the items functioned similarly across both university and national samples, across both men and women, and across both ethnic majority and minority groups. Men reported higher levels of spitefulness than women, younger people were more spiteful than older people, and ethnic minority members reported higher levels of spitefulness than ethnic majority members. Across both samples, spitefulness was positively associated with aggression, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and guilt-free shame, and negatively correlated with self-esteem, guilt-proneness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Ideally, this Spitefulness Scale will be able to predict behavior in both laboratory settings (e.g., ultimatum games, aggression paradigms) and everyday life, contribute to the diagnosis of personality disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, and encourage further study of this neglected, often destructive, trait.

Cooperation in a risky world

“…One week before the experimental session, all the registered participants received an email with a personal code and a link to two online tasks—the risk preferences test by Gneezy and Potters () and the Social Value Orientation (SVO) Slider Measure by Murphy, Ackermann, and Handgraaf ()—to be completed at least 24 hr before the laboratory session. These tests were followed by an unrelated psychological questionnaire—a 17‐item Spitefulness Scale by Marcus, Zeigler‐Hill, Mercer, and Norris ()—so as to cloud the expectations that the participants could have formed about the tasks in the experimental session . These tasks were incentivized and presented in random order.…”

A Big Tent of Dark Personality Traits

“…Marcus, Zeigler‐Hill, Mercer, and Norris () recently developed a self‐report spitefulness scale. In the initial validation samples, this scale was moderately correlated with measures of the Dark Triad personality traits.…”

The dark side of personality: Science and practice in social, personality, and clinical psychology.

“…In addition, Miller et al (2010) suggested that researchers consider a second constellation of personality features that were both dark and emotionally vulnerable, which they referred to as the Vulnerable Dark Triad (i.e., borderline personality features, vulnerable narcissism, and secondary psychopathy). We are supportive of attempts to broaden the examination of dark personality features beyond those included in the Dark Triad (or recent expansions such as the Dark Tetrad or Vulnerable Dark Triad), including characteristics that have received relatively little previous attention, such as spitefulness (Marcus, Zeigler-Hill, Mercer, & Norris, 2014) and statusdriven risk taking (Visser, Pozzebon, & Reina-Tamayo, 2014). However, we believe that it is simply too early in the process of understanding these dark personality features to attempt to identify the precise number of dark personality features that exist.…”