Ernest O'Boyle
Ernest O'Boyle is the first author of the 2012 Journal of Applied Psychology meta-analysis of the dark triad and work behaviour. With Donelson Forsyth, George Banks and Michael McDaniel, he pooled 245 independent samples and 43,907 people and found all three traits linked to more counterproductive work behaviour, and Machiavellianism and psychopathy linked to lower job performance.
Who they are
O'Boyle is a researcher whose work used on this site is a quantitative synthesis of other people's studies. The sources read for this publication are an abstract and a publisher-side summary of the paper, which give the study and its authors but no biography. This page therefore states no institution or career history.
The paper has four authors, and its conclusions belong to all four. The site credits the first author in the text of the article, following the house rule of crediting the first author of a study.
Key papers
A meta-analysis of the Dark Triad and work behavior: A social exchange perspective (O'Boyle, Forsyth, Banks and McDaniel, 2012), Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(3), 557-579. doi:10.1037/a0025679.
The analysis covered research published between 1951 and 2011 on Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy, drawing on 245 independent samples with a combined 43,907 participants. The outcomes were counterproductive work behaviour and job performance.
Key ideas
Conduct is where the three traits agree. All three were associated with more counterproductive work behaviour, meaning conduct that harms the organisation or the people in it. Authority and culture moderated the links, so the associations were not the same in every setting.
Performance is where they differ. Machiavellianism and psychopathy were associated with lower job performance. The abstract as read for this publication does not report a separate job performance result for narcissism, so none is stated here.
The traits are related but distinct. The authors treat the three as correlated enough to be a family and different enough to be studied separately, which is the reason the publication's article reports the traits one at a time.
Limits of what was read. The page rests on an abstract and a summary, not the full text, so effect sizes are not reported here. The paper is a synthesis of mostly self-report studies, and an association across 245 samples does not establish that a trait causes the conduct.
Sources
- O'Boyle, E. H., Forsyth, D. R., Banks, G. C., & McDaniel, M. A. (2012). A meta-analysis of the Dark Triad and work behavior: A social exchange perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(3), 557-579. doi:10.1037/a0025679. Read at the abstract in the authors' accepted manuscript and a publisher-side summary.