E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Schwarzinger The Dark Triad of Personality in Personnel Selection
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-61334-618-1
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-61334-618-1
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
This book explores the theoretical basis and state of the art of research on narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy. It also answers complex questions on the structure of the Dark Triad and its measurement for practical applications. Learn about how people high in these characteristics can, on the one hand, experience individual career success and show adaptive performance in specific fields and situations and, on other hand, present severe risks to others in the workplace with abusive and destructive leadership and counterproductive behavior. In addition, the author summarizes the legal and professional guidelines when assessing the dark personality characteristics of job applicants, examines the acceptance and social validity of such assessments, evaluates the available instruments, and makes recommendations for practical applications and further research.
With the focus on practical applications, the book presents the development, quality, and application of a test to capture the Dark Triad in the workplace designed for use in organizations. Concrete recommendations are given on how to use the characteristics narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy in personnel selection.
Researchers and practitioners interested in applying the dark triad in personnel work will find this book full of valuable information on how to undertake legally compliant processes and how to utilize the great potential the Dark Triad personality characteristics have in making decisions on aptitude.
Zielgruppe
Organizational psychologists, supervisors, coaches, mentors, personnel and business consultants, managers, educationalists, and students.
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Weitere Infos & Material
|7|2 (Dark) Personality, Work Performance, and Professional Success
Before I explore the focal topic of the Dark Triad of personality in Chapter 3, I would like to devote this chapter to an overview of the different approaches to the question of what constitutes human personality in general, the dark side of personality, and the job-related application of “bright” and “dark” characteristics. Because of the breadth and depth of these lines of research, I do not claim completeness. Nevertheless, an overview of the commonly studied major personality traits and how they affect work performance as well as the concepts and classifications chosen in clinical psychology for the most common personality disorders is important as a basis for understanding the structure of the Dark Triad, its kinship relations, and previous profession-related findings. In addition, I present various conceptualizations of job performance and job success, to define the criteria for assessing the aptitude-diagnostic suitability of personality traits and the Dark Triad. 2.1 From Physiognomy to the Five-Factor Model and the DSM-5
The study of the human personality looks back on a long and varied history that has failed to produce a singular and unambiguous system comparable to that of natural scientific theory, “not to mention [the absence of] a periodic table of the psychic elements” (Schuler, 2014a, p. 143). It is therefore not surprising that, through the ages, personality has been defined quite differently depending on the time and language background (Amelang & Bartussek, 1997). This ranges from early attempts to address differences in character traits from the “outside,” that is, from someone’s appearance or behavior, examples being Lersch’s phenomenological personality theory and – already linked to aptitude-diagnostic expectations – Lavater’s physiognomic interpretation of character (Schuler, 2014a); to investigations from the “inside,” using modern neuroscientific or molecular genetic methods (see Asendorpf, 2009). 2.1.1 “Normal” Personality and Personality Disorders Today, a multitude of personality theories still exist side by side. The most widespread and accepted view resulted from empirical research on personality using a trait-based approach to differentiate and classify personality by (empirically) reducing it to a few statistically independent dimensions. There is currently widespread agreement that human personality |8|in the normal range can be described completely with varying degrees of expression on these broad dimensions – between three and seven depending on the author – which can be explained by fewer higher-order factors or can be divided into two central aspects and further subfacets (Guenole, 2014). Research on hierachical models also managed finding two higher-order factors, designated alpha and beta (Digman, 1997) or stability and plasticity (DeYoung et al., 2002), and a general factor of personality (e.g., Erdle & Rushton, 2010; Musek, 2007) as well as confirming the usefulness of finer-grained subfacets (e.g., DeYoung et al., 2007) – especially for application-related questions. Below, I will come back to this approach in my treatment of the Dark Triad of personality. Neuroimaging or molecular genetic methods increasingly confirm the assumptions of the trait-based approach and point out specific differences for personality factors in brain anatomy (e.g., DeYoung et al., 2010). The findings described, however, refer to the so-called “normal” area of personality. Although there are some connections between this area and mental disorders – and the latter are sometimes simply seen as extreme manifestations of human character traits (see Moscoso & Salgado, 2004) – classification schemes have emerged in clinical psychology which are virtually independent of this area. These include the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM for short (DSM-5; APA, 2013), and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, ICD for short (ICD-11; WHO, 2019). The ICD is much more broadly based on diseases in general, whereas the DSM focuses exclusively on mental diseases, which is why it can also map more disturbance patterns and more finely broken-down diagnostic criteria. The ICD-11, in the section on personality disorders check lists only general characteristics of the group (though, for example, neither narcissism nor psychopathy is further explained or their diagnostic criteria detailed). Section 3.1.1 of this volume provides some criteria for narcissistic personality disorder according to DSM-5 as an example of such a classification scheme. A diagnosis can be made, for example, using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Disorders (SCID-5-CV; First et al., 2019). However, only persons with a corresponding license, such as psychotherapists, are authorized to officially diagnose and treat personality disorders. In contrast to the dimensional view of distinctive traits outlined above, the DSM and the ICD agree in their focus on typical clinical profiles manifested by certain symptoms: a categorical model of mental disorders. Yet, the domains of clinical and normal personality are not completely independent of each other, as evidenced in conceptual work, for example, on the Big Five and DSM disorders (Widiger et al., 2002) or on the meta-analytically confirmed correlation patterns for these domains (Samuel & Widiger, 2008a) as well as the shared latent dimensions of both sides and proposals for a common version under a hierarchical model (Markon et al., 2005). In the clinical field, the “phenomenological view” (or categorical view) is therefore increasingly being supplemented by a dimensional one (e.g., Eaton et al., 2011). This is why the DSM also includes an approach to a dimensional conceptualization of personality disorders in Part III of its latest version (DSM-5) – although the previous categories remain in the main part of the DSM-5. In my reflections on dark personality traits in Section 2.3.1, I discuss the DSM-5 and the new dimensional approach contained therein in more detail. But first, I want to present a concise outline of the state of the art of research on normal personality traits and then (in Section 2.2) its possible applications in personnel psychology. |9|2.1.2 The Big Five and the Absence of Dark Factors The so-called Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM) by Costa and McCrae (1985) with its five broad bipolar dimensions (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) is today generally accepted as a frame of reference. The synonym Big Five is also used for this model or its components (Goldberg, 1993). I discuss the development of this model in more detail in the following, as it is possibly one of the principal reasons for the long disregard of dark characteristics. The question is: Why are the dark traits not part of the classic, broad personality models such as the Big Five? As early as 1933, Thurstone first reported on an FFM, and other well-known authors such as Cattell or the Guilfords found solutions like today’s Big Five (Digman, 1996). A milestone in personality structure research was the lexical approach of Allport and Odbert (1936) to extract personality descriptions from a standard dictionary. On this basis, Cattell (1947) initially identified 35 trait clusters, which Fiske (1949) reduced to five factors (Wiggins & Trapnell, 1997). Tupes and Christal (1958, 1961) first found a clear and generalizable factor-solution in Cattell’s variable clusters that consisted of five traits: enthusiasm/extraversion, tolerance, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture (Wiggins & Trapnell, 1997), which is why they are called the “true fathers” of the Big Five (Goldberg, 1993, p. 27). By the late 1980s and 1990s, there was a “near-consensus on the number and nature of the basic dimensions of personality differences” (Lee & Ashton, 2006, p. 182), and with the spread of the first inventory based on the five factors, the “hegemonic position” of the FFM was manifested (Schuler & Höft, 2006, p. 117). But why are there no dark characteristics in such an elaborate model? Spain et al. (2014) attribute this to a lack of dark personality aspects...
