Desire for Status Scale

What it measures

Measures the strength of an individual's motivation to acquire external markers of success, including wealth, social standing, and power. Higher scores reflect a greater drive to signal achievement through visible, status-conferring outcomes.

Scale items

• Status is a good sign of success in life.
• Accumulating wealth is an important goal for me.
• I want to be rich and powerful someday.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Originally developed as the Desire for Status subscale of the Machiavellian Personality Scale (MPS; Dahling et al., 2009), which models Machiavellianism as comprising four first-order factors: distrust of others, amoral manipulation, desire for control, and desire for status. Adapted for consumer behaviour research by Ratner and Hamilton (2015), who administered it to cross-national samples (U.S., India, and China) recruited via online panels.

Citation

Dahling, J. J., Whitaker, B. G., & Levy, P. E. (2009). The development and validation of a new Machiavellianism scale. Journal of Management, 35(1), 219–257.