A psychometric investigation of the Assessment of Sadistic Personality

This study reports on a new measure of subclinical sadism: The Assessment of Sadistic Personality (ASP). We investigated dimensionality, invariance, and convergent validity of the ASP using a sample of 638 Canadian university students. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the factor structure of the ASP. Metric invariance was supported, and consistent with past findings, evidence for scalar invariance was not found, with men scoring higher than women on the ASP and Short Dark Triad. The ASP correlated in expected directions with the Dark Triad, the HEXACO traits, and the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 variables. Validation of the ASP is important to assess how sadism relates to both general and pathological models of personality, and to inform clinicians and researchers of socially malevolent behaviours that can be predicted using the ASP. Findings suggest the ASP is a concise, unidimensional measure of subclinical sadism appropriate for use in research settings.