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.