Social strategies test

This Brain Quiz questionnaire observes three tendencies in the way relationships are approached: seeking admiration, using relationships as a means of getting something, and keeping a distance from what other people feel. It has 24 items, takes about seven minutes, and displays the score and its result band for free, with no account and no email address; the reading of the three axes comes with the subscription.

Where do these three tendencies come from? In 2002, Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams proposed studying together three personality traits that had until then been measured separately, under the name "dark triad": narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, taken in the sense used by personality researchers, that is, as dimensions present to varying degrees in the general population, not as disorders. Their paper shows that the three traits overlap in part without merging. A review of ten years of research, published in 2013 by Adrian Furnham, Steven Richards and Delroy Paulhus, sums up what is known about their links with work, relationships and behaviour. Two short questionnaires became standard for measuring them: the Dirty Dozen by Peter Jonason and Gregory Webster (2010), with twelve items, and the Short Dark Triad by Daniel Jones and Delroy Paulhus (2014), with twenty-seven.

Why not use those names? Because they refer to research constructs, not people, and read out of context they sound like verdicts. Brain Quiz chose to name what the items actually observe: seeking admiration describes the taste for being noticed, recognised and placed above others; relationships as leverage describes choosing words, alliances and information according to a goal; emotional detachment describes the distance from what other people feel and the ease of moving past it. These are behaviours and preferences, not labels, and the result never says "you are" this or that.

What does this questionnaire measure? Three axes of eight items each, with one reverse-scored item per axis. Each axis is reported separately, as a percentage, with no ranking between the three. The useful reading is the profile: high admiration-seeking with low detachment describes someone who likes to be seen but stays sensitive to others; high leverage with low admiration describes a calculated, discreet approach. The same tendencies do not show in the same way depending on how they combine.

Are these tendencies good or bad? Neither in themselves. The 2013 review reports that, at high and lasting levels, these traits are associated with more conflict and less commitment in close bonds, but also that how they show and what they lead to vary a great deal with the context, particularly at work. What this questionnaire can offer is to make a way of approaching relationships visible, so that you can decide what it costs you and what it brings you.

How is the score calculated? Each answer is worth 0 to 4 points, multiplied by the weight of the question, between 1 and 3. The three axes carry the same total weight, and the overall score is rescaled to 100. It reads as an index of how present the three tendencies are in your answers. Weights and band thresholds were set by the Brain Quiz editorial team. They come from no population calibration, and the methodology page says so in the same terms.

The items were written for Brain Quiz. No published scale is reproduced, in whole or in part: neither the Short Dark Triad nor the Dirty Dozen, whose reuse conditions have not been established. The references cited document the field explored, not the source of the items.

What this questionnaire does not say. It only collects what you report about yourself, at one point in time, and a questionnaire on this topic lends itself particularly well to answers that flatter one's self-image. It says nothing about your real intentions or your moral worth, and a high score does not point to a personality disorder: it can neither establish nor rule out a condition. If these tendencies weigh on your relationships, or if people close to you bring them up, a psychologist remains the right person to turn to, and this questionnaire can serve as a starting point for that conversation.