Socioeconomic Achievement and the Machiavellian Personality

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that education moderates the relationship between interpersonal manipulativeness (Machiavellianism) and social attainment, data from a national sample (N = 1482) were reanalyzed. The results indicated that, for men with above-average educations, Machiavellianism is associated with higher levels of occupational prestige and larger incomes. However, for men with below-average educations, Machiavellianism is inversely related to occupational attainment, and unrelated to income attainment. Estimates of a structural equation model of the attainment process further support this interpretation, even after controls for race, age, social origins and education are applied. Extension of these analyses to status attainment among women revealed that Machiavellianism appears to have a facilitative effect upon women's attainment, but no evidence of an interaction effect was found. It is suggested that this pattern of results may reflect differences in the process of attainment in white-collar and blue-collar occupations.

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