Connecting Dark Personality Research With Workplace Issues

Dark personality in the workplace has become an increasingly important topic over the last two decades. Probably with the acceptance that not all workplace behavior is positive and that, for example, abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000) and incivility (Cortina et al., 2001, 2017; Yao et al., 2022) are prevalent in the workplace the interest in personality as an antecedent of those phenomena has risen (see Mackey et al., 2021, for a review). In this special issue, we collected contributions relating to dark traits, especially the dark triad including narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, as well as related workplace constructs (e.g., abusive supervision, power motives, stressors). Similar to the prevalent literature, most papers focus on narcissism, and again similar to prevalent research, there is a strong focus on the leadership area (Braun, 2017). While follower dark personality is problematic (Schyns et al., 2019), researchers and practitioners are concerned about the disproportionately negative impact of leaders high in dark personality traits (e.g., Braun et al., 2018).

Several of the contributions in this Topical Issue highlight the need for research in the workplace to acknowledge developments in personality research and consider different forms such as dimensions of vulnerable or collective narcissism (Gauglitz, 2021; Harms, 2022; Palmer et al., 2021; Schyns et al., 2022). The contributions also highlight the need for validated and equivalent measurement, so that results across studies using different approaches are comparable (Palmer et al., 2021).

The contributions stem from different countries (e.g., Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States), highlighting that dark personality in the workplace is a global issue. Different methodological approaches used across studies (e.g., experience sampling, cross-sectional survey, time-lagged design, and experimental vignette approaches) showcase the breadth of methods relevant to studying dark personality in the workplace.

Taken together, this set of studies helps researchers and practitioners answer some open questions regarding the role of dark personality in the leadership process. Below are the specific contributions of each paper for our understanding of dark personality in the workplace.

Overview of Contributions

In his review paper “Bad Is Stronger Than Good”, Peter Harms (2022) reviews models and measures of dark personality in the workplace. Here, the author focuses on models such as the Dark Triad and the Hexaco. His review comprises short as well as traditional, longer assessments and alternative approaches. In terms of methodological issues, he urges to consider external factors such as age and gender in the relationship between dark personality and outcomes, as well as the question of from which point onwards fark personality becomes problematic. Finally, the author recommends future research on dark personalities in the workplace.

Kaspar Schattke and Ariane S. Marion-Jetten (2021) research the relationships between employees’ and leaders’ power motives – the extent to which they desire power for dominance, prestige, or leadership. Two empirical studies identified positive relationships between power motives and the dark triad: Dominance is most strongly related to Machiavellianism and moderately to narcissism and psychopathy, whereas prestige is related strongly to narcissism. Weak relationships were identified between prestige and Machiavellianism as well as between leadership and narcissism. The studies demonstrate downstream implications for workplace behavior and leadership.

Theresa Fehn and Astrid Schütz (2022) focus on the interplay between leader narcissism – while differentiating narcissistic rivalry and admiration – and follower behavior in predicting intentions to engage in abusive supervision. In an experimental vignette study, in which they relied on a real-life sample of German leaders, they found that narcissistic rivalry, but not admiration, predicted abusive supervision intentions. Moreover, they found that this effect was stronger when followers behaved dominantly compared to when followers behaved submissively or constructively.

Annika Nübold, Suzanne van Gils, and Hannes Zacher (2022) challenge the state of the research with a novel theoretical lens on the dark triad from a within-person perspective. They examine dark triad states which capture momentary expressions of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and situational factors at work which may trigger such states. In two diary studies, daily role conflict (but not ambiguity) positively predicted the daily expression of dark triad states across five and ten workdays. However, daily self-control depletion did not explain the relationship between experiences of conflict and dark triad states.

In her spotlight, Iris K. Gauglitz (2021) focuses on different forms of narcissism and leadership, particularly leader emergence effectiveness. While research on dark personality in the workplace tends to focus on grandiose narcissism, the author introduces other forms, such as vulnerable, pathological, and communal narcissism, and outlines their relevance for leadership.

The spotlight by Barbara Wisse and Diana Rus (2022) addresses a much-debated question: How do organizations and their members best respond to leaders with dark personalities? They conceptualize negative outcomes as the result of an interplay between elements in three domains (i.e., leaders, followers, and the context) and present a range of systemic interventions targeted at each of these domains. Their strategies focus on shifting behavior or dynamics toward constructive processes, suppressing behavior or dynamics related to destructive processes, and severing ties that reinforce unwanted dynamics.

Another spotlight by Birgit Schyns, Urszula Lagowska, and Susanne Braun (2022) reports a study comparing grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and their relationship with different dimensions of motivation to lead (MTL; affective, calculative, normative, and avoidance), taking up the suggestion by Gauglitz in another spotlight that leadership research needs to expand to include different forms of narcissism. They also included narcissistic organizational identification as a moderator. According to their results, grandiose narcissism is more relevant for motivation to lead, and narcissistic organizational identification (NOI) moderates only the relationship between vulnerable narcissism and affective MTL, so that vulnerable narcissism is related negatively to affective MTL for individuals with low or moderate (but not high) NOI.

Finally, the opinion paper by Joshua C. Palmer, Gang Wang, Gonzalo Molina-Sieiro, and R. Michael Holmes (2021) raises issues regarding how to measure narcissism in the workplace on a micro (i.e., referring to employee narcissism and its effect on workplace behavior) as well as macro-level (i.e., the effects of executive narcissism on leader behaviors, firm strategy, and firm performance). They compare the advantages and disadvantages of different measurement options. At the same time, they make recommendations to overcome issues, such as thoroughly validating them and examining comparability across measures. Similar to Gauglitz, they recommend investigating different forms of narcissism in future research.