The Development and Validation of a New Machiavellianism Scalet Jason J. Dahling* The College of New Jersey, Department of Psychology, Social Sciences 121, 2000 Pennington Rd, Ewing, NJ 08628 Brian G. Whitaker Morehead State University, Department of Management, Marketing, and Real Estate, 313B Combs Bldg., Morehead, KY 40351 Paul E. Levy The University of Akron, Department of Psychology, Arts & Sciences, 3rd Floor, Akron, OH 44325-4301 A new measure of Machiavellianism, the Machiavellian Personality Scale (MPS), was developed and validated over two studies. Machiavellianism is conceptualized as one's propensity to distrust others, engage in amoral manipulation, seek control over others, and seek status for oneself Study I developed and tested the factor structure of the scale, whereas Study 2 provided evidence for the convergent, divergent, and criterion-related validity of the MPS. The results of these studies sup- ported the a priori factor structure of the MPS and indicatedthat it is a valid predictor of such out- comes as job satisfaction, task performance, and counterproductive work behaviors. Keywords: Machiavellianism; deviance; counterproductive work behavior; political behavior The notion of Machiavellianism' has its roots in the "dark side" (Griffin & O'Leary- Kelly, 2004) of management and leadership. Christie and Geis (1970) originally developed tThis article was accepted under the editorship of Russell Cropanzano. *Corresponding author: Tel: 1-609-771-2582. E-mail address: dahling@tcnj.edu. Journal of Management, Vol. 35 No. 2, April 2009 219-257 DOI: 10.1177/0149206308318618 © 2009 Southern Management Association. All rights reserved. 219