A dark force for good as well as bad in the organisation? Investigating the relationship between Dark Triad personality traits, self-control, and workplace outcomes

Whitehead, Martin (2024) A dark force for good as well as bad in the organisation? Investigating the relationship between Dark Triad personality traits, self-control, and workplace outcomes. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The ‘Dark Triad’ (DT) comprises three common but distinct malevolent personality traits: - Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Understanding the motivations and behaviours of Machs, Narcs and Psycs, all of which have deficits of self-control and are associated with negative traits, is important because they are dominant in leadership and management positions. Yet little is known about workplace outcomes associated with high DT individuals - positive and negative - and causal mechanisms underlying their behaviours. This research project seeks to address this gap. The thesis comprises five papers which present the findings from 10 on-line experiments involving more than 5,700 respondents made up entirely of experienced working professionals. Paper 1 presents two correlational studies. Papers 2-5 comprise eight RCTs which investigate how four situational and affective mechanisms linked to self-control (moral disengagement, boredom, flattery and positive affect), influence DT behaviour, in relation to negative outcomes (Papers 2 & 3) and positive outcomes (Papers 4 & 5). Dark Triad people are difficult to influence, notwithstanding their low self-control. We bored them, flattered them and put them in a good mood. None of these mechanisms changed their moral decision-making. As expected, we found that people high in DT traits are prone to unethicality. They have a high propensity to morally disengage, both before and after acting unethically. We found that for ‘normal’ people, guilt, but not shame, has a trade-off relationship with post-moral disengagement which suggests it plays a regulatory response role to assuage guilt. However, for people high in DT traits the trade-off is not seen, which implies that something else drives DT’s tendency to post-morally disengage. We speculate may be the need to retain consistency with the pre-moral disengaging self. Boredom negatively influences moral awareness but had no effect on moral decision-making (cheating) and does not affect high DT people differently to low DT people, which will be welcome news to management. Flattery induces positive affect and promotes co-operation but has no effect on either of creativity or ethicality, nor does it affect DT people differently to ‘normal’ people. Management should look to exploit the association of flattery with co-operation. Our results show the limits of flattery. We speculate that flattery works through a mix of affect and cognition, with the exaggerated praise from the flatterer inducing positive affect, but knowledge of the flatterer’s ulterior motive invokes a rational cognitive response which sees the flattery for what it is – i.e. disingenuous – and as a result flattery-induced positive affect is diluted and fails to act as ‘pure’ positive affect capable of stimulating cognitive fluidity necessary for enhanced creativity and increased unethicality. Positive affect promotes co-operation, but not for those with high DT traits. This suggests that for DT people cognitive models of self-control are more persuasive than strength models. This aligns with our conclusions about self-control in DT people based on our study of moral disengagement. Positive affect also influences people to cheat, but not at a level more than they otherwise would. These findings suggest that positive affect can overcome basic intrinsic self-control that we all have to help us avoid the low levels of potential guilt associated with small-risk unethical activities (and DT people to overcome inhibitions to co-operate), but it is not sufficiently strong an influence to deal with higher levels of inhibition, or anticipatory guilt associated with more extensive unethicality. Our results also confirm that following an unethical act, people feel more positive (‘cheater’s high’). Moreover, we show that this effect is partially mediated through post-moral disengagement, which is a novel result, suggesting that moral disengagement is an important mechanism initiated following a moral breach to help a person to rationalise their behaviour and deal with negative moral emotions - primarily guilt – but we now know that it also makes them feel good. We show that DT moderates the relationship path between post-moral disengagement and positive affect, such that a mediation model is applicable, but only for cases of high DT. Consequently, a person high in DT traits receives a “double whammy” of cheater’s high – primarily from the act of cheating, and secondly by morally disengaging. This goes some way to explain why DT people cheat – apart from any financial gains it feels good to do so, thereby giving managers more to think about in terms of how they can deter unethical behaviour by high DT individuals. There remains some darkness around the Dark Triad. They have no special creative abilities, they are poor at cooperating, and are highly unethical. In short, they are not nice people. So why are DT individuals so (apparently) successful? We speculate that they succeed in large part because they are skilled in the ‘dark arts’ of impression management. We found that Machs and Narcs use flattery and ingratiation. We suggest that this ‘skill’, combined with self-confidence and tenacity, are what do the trick. We hope that future research will probe this further. Based on our findings we outline several implications for management, and specify practical steps that managers can take in seeking higher performance from DT staff which relate to recruitment, training and dyadic working practices. We also highlight relevant traits and emotions associated with DT people that could be targeted including moral identity, self-esteem and guilt. At the conclusion of each paper, we set out limitations and recommendations for future work.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Martin Whitehead
Library of Congress subject classification:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Sets:	Departments > Psychological and Behavioural Science
Supervisor:	Krpan, Dario and Dolan, Paul
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4704

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