Initial development and preliminary study of the social mentalities scale − Brief form

Introduction

The Social Mentalities Scale (SMS) was developed to assess six motivational systems associated with the evolutionary perspective of human interactions. With 75 items SMS may be viewed as a long instrument with limitations such as time consumption, response fatigue and/or declining data quality. To address these issues, this study describes the development of the Social Mentalities Scale − Brief Form (BF-SMS) in a community sample.

Methods

The total sample (N = 471, M = 35.6, SD = 15.5), was divided in two subsamples (n = 236 and n = 235) where Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used.

Results

EFA suggested a six-factor solution (X² = 10820.397, df = 2775, p < 0.001), and the final CFA suggested an adequate model fit (CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.053, [.044, 0.061], p < 0.001). The final form SMS-BF remained with 26 items and all subscales correlated positively with SMS subscales.

Conclusions

The SMS-BF may be an alternative for the SMS supplanting the identified limitations of the long forms. Further studies may address convergent, divergent and discriminant validities in other samples.