Machiavellianism Achievement and Gender Roles

The focus of the current study was to find a relationship between Machiavellianism and achievement motivation. Gender, gender-role orientation, and college major were also introduced as variables. Two-hundred and forty university students majoring in either business or psychology completed various self-report measures. Results based on correlations and an analysis of variance produced the following results: Women of both majors had higher Machiavellian scores than males of both majors; business majors had a higher desire to work hard and were more competitive than psychology majors (especially males); scores on the Machiavellian scale positively correlated with competitiveness for females. For males, Machiavellianism correlated negatively with a desire to work hard. Masculine and androgynous gender-typed participants had higher achievement scores than feminine or undifferentiated participants; there were no differences in achievement based on gender. Interactions among the variables and implications for future research are discussed.