Do bad guys get ahead or fall behind? Relationships of the Dark Triad of personality with objective and subjective career success
Daniel Spurk, Anita Keller and Andreas Hirschi ask whether people high in the dark triad get ahead or fall behind at work. They studied early-career employees in Germany, a sample representative for age and education from the private sector, and set narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy against salary, holding a leadership position and career satisfaction, controlling for gender, age, tenure, organisation size, education and working hours. Narcissism was positively related to salary, Machiavellianism to leadership position and career satisfaction, and psychopathy was negatively related to all three outcomes. The authors conclude that the traits have both bright and dark sides in careers. This page cites the study for those associations.
Daniel Spurk, Anita Keller and Andreas Hirschi ask whether people high in the dark triad get ahead or fall behind at work. They studied early-career employees in Germany, a sample representative for age and education from the private sector, and set narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy against salary, holding a leadership position and career satisfaction, controlling for gender, age, tenure, organisation size, education and working hours. Narcissism was positively related to salary, Machiavellianism to leadership position and career satisfaction, and psychopathy was negatively related to all three outcomes. The authors conclude that the traits have both bright and dark sides in careers. This page cites the study for those associations.
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Spurk, D., Keller, A. C., & Hirschi, A. (2016). Do bad guys get ahead or fall behind? Relationships of the Dark Triad of personality with objective and subjective career success. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(2), 113-121. doi:10.1177/1948550615609735