A Machiavellian is someone who believes that the end justifies the means and who views other people as tools to achieve their own goals. The concept of Machiavellianism has attracted considerable...Show moreA Machiavellian is someone who believes that the end justifies the means and who views other people as tools to achieve their own goals. The concept of Machiavellianism has attracted considerable theoretical inquiry into the underlying processes that give rise to the construct. During this process multiple theories on the factorial structure of Machiavellianism have come into existence and many of the factor theories have found support. This thesis compares the factor structure of Machiavellianism using the original Machiavellianism measurement tool, the MACHIV. We utilized a large open-source data set (N= 73,486) from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project. We used structural equation modeling to compare a one-factor (Machiavellianism), two-factor (Views and Tactics) and three-factor (Antagonism, Agency and Planfulness) model. We found that all three of the models fit the data poorly but the one-factor model fits this data and measurement tool best, with no significant difference between the two- and three-factor models. The one-factor model fit best when using the original data, positively recoded data and when compared to uncorrelated (orthogonal) factor models. The poor fit indices on the one-factor model indicate that although the one-factor model fits better than the alternative models, alternative factor theories are needed to better explain the variance among individuals on the MACH-IV.Show less