# Development and initial validation of the toxic personality scale: exploring reliability, structure, and convergent validity

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scale to measure toxic personality traits and shows it is reliable and valid for use in research and clinical settings.

## Contribution

The paper presents the development and validation of a new unidimensional Toxic Personality Scale (TPS) with strong reliability and convergent validity.

## Key findings

- The TPS is unidimensional with six items and good internal consistency.
- The TPS showed a significant positive relationship with narcissism.
- The TPS is a valid and reliable tool for assessing toxic personality traits.

## Abstract

Toxic personality traits, which encompass behaviours and attitudes that negatively impact interpersonal relationships and personal well-being, have gained increasing attention in psychological research. However, a significant gap remains in developing reliable and culturally relevant measures to assess these traits.

This study addressed a research gap by developing a new measure for determining toxic personality traits, the Toxic Personality Scale (TPS), and evaluating its reliability and validity across two samples of young Turkish adults.

To develop the scale, two studies were conducted. Study 1 included 389 undergraduate students (78.66% male, 21.34% female) aged 18 to 48 years (M = 21.45, SD = 4.16). Study 2 involved 158 participants (72.78% female, 27.22% male) aged 18 to 35 years (M = 21.28, SD = 2.62). Participants completed the TPS and the Short Dark Triad through an online survey.

The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the TPS scale was unidimensional, with six items demonstrating a good internal consistency reliability estimate. The TPS also showed a significant positive relationship with the measure of narcissism.

The findings suggest that the TPS is a valid and reliable tool for assessing toxic personality traits. These results support the TPS as a valuable instrument for use in both research and clinical settings to better understand and identify toxic personality traits in individuals.