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Trait Psychopathy, Job Performance, and Career Success: A Multisource Approach

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Abstract

The present chapter aims to expand the trait-based approach to psychopathy by distinguishing between potentially adaptive and maladaptive features of psychopathic personality in the workplace. Answering the calls for a facet-level approach to psychopathy, we hypothesized that fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity would exhibit differential relations with organizationally important criteria. Moreover, we addressed suggestions to investigate moderating variables. To do so, we explored (mal)adaptive effects on job performance and extrinsic career success. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a multidimensional assessment of psychopathy and used a multisource business sample of 184 manager-superior dyads. Our results supported the differential relations of both factors: self-centered impulsivity had maladaptive effects on job performance, whereas fearless dominance possessed adaptive potential—but only under specific conditions, namely, high enterprising job characteristics or the combination of low self-centered impulsivity and high educational level. Further, fearless dominance was positively associated with extrinsic career success when the educational level was high, indicating successful intelligence-based socialization into society. We discuss the results of our more nuanced approach to psychopathy by demonstrating that the (mal)adaptive effects of the different traits offer an intriguing new perspective for understanding job performance and career success.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bonn, Bonn, NRW, Germany

    Gerhard Blickle, Nora Beckert & Hannah A. Genau-Hagebölling

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  1. Gerhard Blickle
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  2. Nora Beckert
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  3. Hannah A. Genau-Hagebölling
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Correspondence to Gerhard Blickle .

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  1. IR Globe Cross-Cultural Inc, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Adebowale Akande

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Blickle, G., Beckert, N., Genau-Hagebölling, H.A. (2023). Trait Psychopathy, Job Performance, and Career Success: A Multisource Approach. In: Akande, A. (eds) Globalization, Human Rights and Populism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17203-8_35

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