The Cross-cultural adaptability of the short dark tetrad (SD4): psychometric properties across latent variable models and gender in Romanian samples

Abstract The Short Dark Tetrad (SD4; Paulhus et al., European Journal of Psychological Assessment , 37 (3), 208–222, 2021) is a self-report measure of antagonistic or ‘dark’ traits. It assesses Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. The present study investigated the psychometric properties of the Romanian version of the SD4 in two undergraduate samples from a Romanian university ( N = 729). Four models were evaluated and tested using confirmatory, bifactor, and exploratory approaches. Multiple-group analysis was used for gender invariance testing. Spearman’s correlations assessed the measure’s criterion-related validity, specifically, associations with social dominance and sexual risk behavior, expecting positive correlations for all antagonistic traits, stronger for psychopathy. The results showed that a reduced 12-item confirmatory model is the best fit to the data. The hypothesis of a general “dark” factor of personality, tested through the bifactor model, was not supported. The exploratory model showed several cross-loadings, especially for Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Correlations with social dominance were similar across traits, while correlations with sexual risk behavior were highest for psychopathy, though only slightly higher than for sadism. In conclusion, several issues relevant to model fit and construct validity challenge the generalizability of the SD4 to the Romanian context and call for an alternative approach to the assessment of antagonistic traits across linguistic and cultural contexts.