Page Title

Race Effects on the Employee Assessing Political Leadership: A Review of Christie and Geis' (1970) Mach IV Measure of Machiavellianism

October 31, 2005 

"Dating back 500 years to the days of Niccolo Machiavelli, leadership behaviors have been widely discussed.  Machiavelli's perspectives are well known, most notably such generalizations as 'the end justify the means' and the belief that unethical behavior is acceptable, even necessary, if it helps attain goals or protect political position.  The contemporary understanding of Machiavellianism begins to make sense when one examines the origins of the Mach IV, based on Niccolo Machiavelli's book, The Prince (1513/1902).  This book was written after Machiavelli had been stripped of his political power and essentially shunned by the political leaders of his time.

Richard Christie developed the 20-item Mach IV in 1970.  It has not been revised since that time and is intended to assess adults ages 18-65 years.  The Mach IV was developed to measure political personality orientation of leaders in organizations.  Political personality, as defined by Christie and Geis (1970), is a disposition in which formal and informal power is used to control and/or manipulate others.

Christie and his colleagues developed a psychological construct, based on their readings, which defined the political leader.  Four general characteristics emerged from their research:  1.  A relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships (lack of empathy for others).  2.  A lack of concern with conventional morality (utilitarian rather than moral view).  3. A lack of gross psychopathology (instrumentalist rather than rational view of others).  4. Low ideological commitment (focus on task completion rather than long-range ideological goals).

After the personality characteristics were defined, Christie and his colleagues set out to qualitatively discover if individuals with these characteristics actually existed.  Using the model outlined above, they interviewed peers about the people who were responsible for their training.  The qualitative interviews revealed findings consistent with the political behavior construct.  In order to further develop the political personality construct, Christie et al. began researching ancient and contemporary political writings.  Two themes emerged over and over again: first, human beings are basically weak and fallible; and, second, if people are so weak, a rational man should take advantage of the situation to maximize his own gains.

In order to assess the reliability of the Mach IV, the measure was administered to nine samples.  The mean split reliability was .79.  At the time of the test development, Christie et al. did not have access to the technology to factor analyze the 71 original items for a sample of 1196 respondents.  Currently in leadership research, the type of reliability reported when using the Mach IV is generally the internal consistency, or coefficient alpha, of the measure.

In order to establish validity of the Mach IV, Christie et al. examined convergent and discriminate validity with several established personality measures.  Other measures they compared with the Mach IV included intelligence tests (Medical college Admissions, Intelligence aptitude scores), measures of authoritarianism, measures of political preference, measures of racial attitudes, measures of philosophies of human nature, measures of personality, measures of motivation, measures of anxiety, measures of psychopathology, ad finally measures of general cantankerousness.  Christie found no significant correlations between the measures listed above and the Mach IV, giving him evidence of the discrimination ability ad construct differentiation of the measure.

Data for the Mach IV were obtained in the mid 1960s.  In 1963, Christie was able to survey people on a national basis using the services of the National Opinion Research Center.  The surveys were done using an interview and resulted in 1,492 respondents that closely resembled the national population.  This sample yielded interesting factor analysis results - identifying five dimensions of Machiavellianism, rather than three.

Recent research has investigated the validity and reliability of the Mach IV.  Several investigators have studies the underlying constructs that comprise Machiavellianism, with mixed results.  It has become unclear just what the Mach IV actually measures.  Panitz (1989) found, after completing factor analysis, that the measure had no construct validity and further indicated empirical difficulties in the number and nature of dimensions underlying the scale.  Hunter, Boster, and Gerbing (1982) conducted a confirmatory factor analysis that identified four component beliefs of the Machiavellian: flattery, rejection of honesty, rejection of the belief that people are moral, and the belief that people are vicious and untrustworthy. In their analysis, the contrasted the constructs above with dogmatism, self-esteem, and locus of control, ultimately nullifying the idea that a Machiavellian score is a casual dispositional variable.  However, a few researchers have found the Mach IV to be psychometrically sound and cites its construct validity.  Ramanaiah, Byravan, and Detwiler (1994) examined the construct validity of the Mach IV by testing the differences of the NEO Personality Profiles of the Machiavellian.  Aziz and Meeks (1990) understood the weakness of the Mach IV when they created a new scale, the Machiavellian Behavior, or Mach-B scale.  Instead of basing their measure on cognitive constructs, they developed a measure that behaviorally assesses specific interpersonal situations.

There are many opportunities for research of political behavior using the Mach IV and other measures of political traits and skills.  In order to fully understand how Machiavellianism relates to other variables in organizational behavior literature, a meta-analysis of Machiavellianism using the Mach IV would be beneficial.  If researchers want to cognitively measure political personality and behavior, as was Christie and Geis's intention, it is essential that they maintain Machiavelli's original and complete constructs.

Because of the social and political nature of organizations, a recent call was made to the organizational behavior and leadership field for empirical evidence of the value and impact of political sills in organizations and its relationship to effectiveness (Ammeter et al, 2002; Mintzber, 1983; Pfeffer, 1992).  In order to advance management knowledge of political personality, political behavior and interpersonal political skills, it is suggested that researchers use a combination of measures (Revised mach IV, Political Skills Inventory and Mach B).  Future research should determine whether leaders are born to be political (trait-like) as the Mach IV and Christie and Geis (1970) suggest.  Or, is political behavior a combination of political communication skills that result in political behavior as Aziz and Meeks (1990) and Ferris et al (2003) suggest (Moss, 2005, p. 26-33)?"

Reference:  Moss, J. (2005).  Race effects on the employee assessing political leadership: a review of Christie and Geis' (1970) Mach IV measure of Machiavellianism.  Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2005, Vol. 11, No.2.

Back to Top >

Created: 2007-08-28, Updated: 2009-02-17