Where Do You Stand on the Seven Deadly Sins and Virtues?

Theologians have long thought that our inner core has tendencies to sin and to do good. Psychologists instead talk about the dark triad, composed of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. These malevolent traits are balanced by the bright side of personality, focusing on happiness, optimism, and altruism. As in virtually all of the arts, fascination with the dark side in psychology outweighs attempts to define and measure the good in humanity. The question is whether personality can be mapped onto the tendency to sin or possess virtues.

Psychology Tackles Sins and Vices

In a new paper by Norwegian Business School’s Adrian Furman and colleagues (2026), a new self-rating questionnaire designed to improve existing measures addresses this question. Previously, the Vices and Virtues Scale tested vices only and used single-item ratings for each sin. By expanding the instrument to the positive qualities and combining self-ratings into longer scales, the authors believed their new approach would produce a more reliable instrument with two 7-item scales.

Conceptually, quantifying sins and virtues into a reliable measure also allows for these qualities to be compared to scores on standard personality instruments believed to relate to the tendency to be good versus the tendency to be bad. Here’s where the dark triad comes in with the added quality of sadism, making the cluster of qualities into the dark tetrad.

One qualification worth mentioning here is that personality psychologists are starting to complain that the dark triad-tetrad is too simplistic a notion to have validity. The terms themselves are too subjective, and the cluster may not always group into a neat three- or four-item bunch. Even so, each quality can be examined in relationship to sins and virtues.

Translating into lay terms, Machiavellianism becomes “crafty,” narcissism translates into “special,” psychopathy into “wild,” and sadism into “mean.” Theory would predict that each of these individually or as a group would relate to sinfulness and virtue.

Test Yourself: The Seven Sins and Virtues Questionnaire

In a pilot study, the authors tested the statistical structure of their new measure, called the “Self-Rated Sins and Virtues (SSRV)” scale. Here are the items which you can try rating yourself on a 0 to 100 scale:

Sins

Pride: conceit, immodesty, vainglory

Greed: avarice, covetousness, ravenous

Lust: inordinate, illicit sexual desire, appetitive

Envy: jealousy, possessive, resentful

Gluttony: drunkenness, indulgent, excessive

Wrath: anger, irritation, annoyance

Sloth: laziness, idleness, energy-less

Virtues

Humility: modesty, humbleness, meekness

Charity: compassion, consideration, morality

Chastity: celibacy, self-restraint, control

Gratitude: gratefulness, thankfulness, recognition

Temperance: restraint, abstinence, moderation

Patience: tolerance, forbearance, self-control

Diligence: conscientiousness, industriousness, effortfulness

On average, of the 300 in the sample (average age 48), men scored 38 on sins and women scored 33. Everyone scored higher on virtues, with men at 55 and women at 59 (a significant difference).

The statistical case had strong support, and the 14 items fit into two 7-item scales. Additionally, people scoring high on psychopathy were more likely to admit to their sins and deny their virtues. The authors noted that, “It may be that psychopaths are indeed proud of this high sinfulness, not a virtuous profile” (p. 6).

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The second study, using a similar demographic sample, tested how scores on these two scales would relate to theoretically related personality traits. The authors translated the dark tetrad questionnaire into another measure called “High Potential Trait Indicator (HPTI).” Expanding from the dark tetrad, the HPTI allows the assessment of conscientiousness, adjustment, curiosity, courage, ambiguity tolerance, and competitiveness. These validity-testing scales included ideology and self-esteem.

From these analyses, the authors concluded that their instrument did what it was supposed to statistically, and also related in expected ways to the HPTI. Overall, both studies showed that the highest self-rated sin was pride, and the highest virtue was gratitude. Optimistic people and older people in the sample were more likely to rate themselves as lower on sins than virtues.

People low in conscientiousness, adjustment, and courageousness rated themselves higher on sins and lower on virtues. Competitive people were more likely to admit to sinning, and curious people saw themselves as more virtuous. The authors noted that the competitiveness finding is interesting and makes sense; sinning may seem less sinful in someone who wants to get ahead. Beware of the competitive person, then, as it’s likely someone with few guardrails on cutting you off to gain advantages.

Putting Your Sins and Virtues to the Test

The SSRV was quick to administer (less than three minutes); it provides a handy tool for giving yourself a morality check. Impression management and social desirability always lurk in the background in any self-report measure, but particularly one with such loaded terms as having “illicit sexual desires.” Furman and his colleagues were relatively skeptical of some of their findings, noting that how people rate themselves doesn’t always conform to how they behave. However, in your heart of hearts, with no one entering your ratings into a database, you can use this measure to translate your strengths and weaknesses potentially into qualities you can better balance in your future behavior.

To sum up, morality tends to be a little-used concept in psychology. By turning the perhaps vague ideas of sins and virtues into concrete self-ratings, you can gain the fulfillment that comes with seeing the light rather than the dark in yourself.