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Psychopathy and leadership effectiveness: Conceptualizing and testing three models of successful psychopathy
Abstract and Figures
Research on the relationship between psychopathy and leadership effectiveness has adopted very different perspectives on psychopathy. To advance this field of research, the current paper introduces an overarching framework of “successful psychopathy” (Lilienfeld et al., 2015) to the leadership domain, comprising three conceptual models (the differential-severity model, the moderated-expression model, and the differential-configuration model) and their “hybrid” forms, which are combinations of two or three models. We test the three alternative conceptual models and four hybrid models in two independent samples of leader-subordinate dyads (N1 = 178 and N2 = 668) whereby leaders’ self-reported psychopathy is related to a range of subordinate-rated effectiveness criteria, including three performance dimensions and charismatic leadership. A recurrent pattern of findings across both studies provides evidence for differential effects for the various psychopathy subdimensions, whereas little support was found for the models assuming curvilinear and/or moderated effects. Implications for research on leader psychopathy are discussed.
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... Some of its constituent traits may be beneficial for employees [4]. There is extensive evidence to suggest that the effects of psychopathy are complex and sometimes contradictory, and models that distinguish between psychopathy's central traits are needed [5]. In addition, recent work on the prevalence of psychopathy in the work environment has highlighted the limitations of using a taxonomic rather than dimensional approach [6]. ...
... Although often referred to in terms of a clinical or forensic 'type' , psychopathy is best conceptualised in terms of continuous traits, which are present at sub-clinical levels in the normal population [17]. That is, the traits that make up psychopathic personality can be measured in the non-clinical or non-forensic population and it is only in extremes or in combination that they meet the clinical definitions of psychopathy [5]. Because psychopathic traits appear to be positively related to leadership emergence [2], psychopathy, along with Machiavellianism and narcissism (the so-called Dark Triad) has been the subject of increasing research attention in recent years. ...
... Yet the effects of psychopathic personality on various work outcomes are often inconsistent or of small overall size [21], and this may be due to psychopathy typically being measured globally, using overall scores rather than constituent traits. A recent study tested several potential models of 'successful' psychopathy, which reflect the idea that psychopathy can be associated with beneficial outcomes [5]. Of the tested models, the differential configuration model, in which the varying effects of psychopathy are due to different configurations of its central traits, emerged as the most well supported. ...
Background
Psychopathy in managers is often measured on global scales and associated with detrimental outcomes for subordinates, such as bullying and reduced well-being. Yet some features of psychopathy, like boldness, appear to have beneficial outcomes. Using the triarchic model of psychopathy, we differentiate between adaptive and maladaptive traits in managers and model their effects on employee engagement and burnout. In addition, we test the extent to which authenticity, known to ameliorate the effect of some negative experiences on well-being, might mediate the influence of managers’ perceived psychopathic traits on employee well-being.
Methods
In a two-wave study, full-time employees (N = 246) reported on their manager’s psychopathic traits (boldness, meanness, disinhibition), their own authenticity and, six weeks later, their engagement and burnout.
Results
In support of our hypotheses, manager boldness enhanced engagement and reduced burnout while meanness and disinhibition reduced engagement and increased burnout. Additionally, employee authenticity was a partial mediator of the effect of managerial psychopathy on engagement and burnout.
Conclusions
Perceived psychopathic traits in managers have the potential to influence whether employees feel able to be their authentic selves at work, which consequently affects their well-being. A work culture that values authenticity can directly improve well-being and help employees to deal with managerial behaviour that stems from maladaptive psychopathic traits. We also highlight the importance of discriminating between constituent psychopathic traits to identify the potentially adaptive nature of the boldness element of psychopathy.
... In parallel with the aforementioned leadership research literature, there has been research into the prevalence of seriously destructive leadership malpractice from a psychological perspective inclusive of psychopathy (Barelds, Wisse, Sanders & Laurijissen, 2018;Landay, Harms & Credé, 2019;Mathieu, Neumann, Hare, & Babiak, 2014;Vergauwe et al., 2021), narcissism (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2017;Fatfouta, 2019) and megalomania (Seifried, 2018;Seifried, Katz, & Pfleegor, 2015). Psychopathy is a clinical construct defined by a cluster of personality traits and characteristics including grandiosity, egocentricity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions, lack of empathy or remorse, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a tendency to ignore or violate social norms (Mathieu et al., 2014). ...
Background
A mounting body of research literature is highlighting the prevalence of serious malpractice by persons in leadership positions. Arguably, too many of those appointed to a leadership position believe that they have the right to act in any way that they choose. They believe that the title of ‘leader’ affords them the licence to act with little regard for others. But just because a person has been appointed to a leadership position, this does not automatically make them a leader. Nor does it imply that everything they do is leadership. Thus, the impetus for this article is the acknowledgement that it's time to clearly distinguish what truly constitutes leadership from that which is its antithesis – leadership malpractice. Not to do so only allows serious leadership malpractice to become normalised as acceptable leadership activity.
Research Aim
Therefore, the aim of this article is to first use research literature to describe the growing concern about the prevalence of malpractice by persons in leadership positions and then to illustrate how such malpractice can be naturally eradicated when leadership is seen, fundamentally, as a relational phenomenon. The purpose of this article is thus to provide a new theoretical perspective of leadership, one that will help to distinguish between that which is and is not leadership.
Findings
A close inspection of the extremely damaging and injurious outcomes produced by leadership malpractice shows that these mirror those caused by persons with extremely harmful psychosocial disorders. Despite any short-term gains, the research shows that leadership malpractice can ultimately cause serious and enduring poisonous effects on the individuals, families, organizations, communities, and even entire societies they lead. Furthermore, rules, regulations and policies have proven powerless. Seemingly, one cannot mandate true leadership; its manifestation must be inherent within our leadership theory.
Practical implications
In response, this article first explores the foundational values, principles and norms underpinning true leadership practice and then presents a new way to understand leadership from a transrelational perspective which naturally eradicates malpractice by those in leadership positions.
Social implications
Given that worldwide research has demonstrated how leadership malpractice causes seriously toxic personal, organisational and social outcomes, this article seeks to provide a theoretical rather than a technical or practical way of redressing this untenable situation. By inference, when leadership is practiced properly, when it is based upon apporpriate foundational values and principles, then malpractice is ended and workplaces become safe, gratifying and productive.
Originality
This article makes a significant contribution to the expanding area of research that is exploring the benefits to be gained by theorising leadership as a relational phenomenon.
The topic of dark side personality at work has received considerable research attention over the past decade, and both qualitative and quantitative reviews of this field have already been published. To show the relevance of dark personality in the work context, existing reviews have typically focused on systematically discussing the different criteria that have been linked to dark traits (e.g., job performance, work attitudes, leadership emergence, etc.). In contrast, and complementing this earlier work, the current review paper summarizes the available literature on this topic by structuring it in terms of the nature of the relationships studied rather than in terms of the types of outcome variables. Doing so, the focus shifts from “What are the outcomes of dark traits?” to “How are dark traits related to work outcomes?” Scrutinizing the nature of these relationships, we specifically focus on four types of effects (i.e., nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal) that highlight the complexity of how dark side traits operate in the work context. Structured this way, this review first provides a conceptual underpinning of each of these complex effects, followed by a summary of the empirical literature published over the past 10 years. To conclude, we present an integration of this field, provide suggestions for future research, and highlight concrete assessment challenges. Dark side traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) predict a range of undesirable work outcomes. To better understand these effects, we propose paying closer attention to nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal effects. This requires fine‐grained assessments, repeated measurements, and knowledge of the job context. Specific assessment guidelines are provided which can be used in the context of employee screening and coaching. Dark side traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) predict a range of undesirable work outcomes. To better understand these effects, we propose paying closer attention to nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal effects. This requires fine‐grained assessments, repeated measurements, and knowledge of the job context. Specific assessment guidelines are provided which can be used in the context of employee screening and coaching.
Research on emotion recognition ability (ERA) and psychopathy produces divergent outcomes: While some studies find ERA deficits in persons with psychopathy, others find heightened emotional abilities. In this study, we seek to disentangle these inconclusive findings by employing different measures of psychopathy, analyzing them globally as well as on a facet level, and drawing on a newly developed non-linguistic measure of ERA. We hypothesize that ERA moderates the relation between psychopathy facets representing disinhibition and meanness and counterproductive work behavior directed towards individuals (CWB-I). In a multi-source design with a sample of 477 working adults with at least one coworker rating, we found no relations between the psychopathy facets and nonlinguistic ERA. We did find a moderation effect indicating that individuals high in psychopathy with lower ERA exhibited more CWB-I. Our results suggest that psychopathy does not inherently affect ERA; rather, further cognitive and affective processes need to be taken into account. ERA’s mitigating effect might help explain why not all individuals high in psychopathy behave aggressively.
The vast majority of vocational research adopts a variable-centered approach. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that the population under study is homogeneous, and that therefore we can use a set of “averaged” parameters to describe it. Person-centered methods are a family of methods that relax this assumption of population homogeneity, viewing the individual as holistic and paying more attention to how specific configurations of variables, present in different subgroups of the population, act in concert to shape behavior. Despite the potential advantages of person-centered research, the adoption of this approach by vocational researchers has been relatively slow for both conceptual (e.g., What exactly is person-centered research?) and methodological (e.g., Which methods?) reasons. In response to these issues, the goal of the present article is to showcase the role and relevance of person-centered methods for vocational research. Having discussed different conceptualizations of the term “person-centered” we present a structured overview of the most relevant person-centered techniques. This overview includes a description of the formal characteristics of each technique, as well as an overview of existing applications of these techniques in the literature. Finally, we provide a balanced discussion of both the advantages and challenges associated with the person-centered approach.
Significance
Conscientiousness (C) is the most potent noncognitive predictor of occupational performance. However, questions remain about how C relates to a plethora of occupational variables, what its defining characteristics and functions are in occupational settings, and whether its performance relation differs across occupations. To answer these questions, we quantitatively review 92 meta-analyses reporting relations to 175 occupational variables. Across variables, results reveal a substantial mean effect of ρ ¯ M = 20 . We then use results to synthesize 10 themes that characterize C in occupational settings. Finally, we discover that performance effects of C are weaker in high-complexity versus low- to moderate-complexity occupations. Thus, for optimal occupational performance, we encourage decision makers to match C’s goal-directed motivation and behavioral restraint to more predictable environments.
According to the triarchic model, psychopathy encompasses 3 distinct dispositional constructs: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. Although the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure was designed to assess these 3 constructs, researchers have developed alternative triarchic scales using both omnibus measures of general personality and existing psychopathy scales. The components of the HEXACO model of personality may be especially capable of characterizing the dimensions of the triarchic model of psychopathy. The current study used a consensus-rating approach to create triarchic scales using items from the HEXACO-100. Data from 3 community and college student samples were used to examine the internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity of these newly developed HEXACO-Triarchic scales. The scales consistently demonstrated good internal consistency and displayed promising convergent and discriminant validity with theoretically predicted criterion variables. The lone exception was that HEXACO-Meanness and HEXACO-Disinhibition were similarly related to other triarchic measures of meanness. The implications of these findings for the integration of the HEXACO and triarchic models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Debate continues about whether the likelihood ratio test (TML) or goodness-of-fit indices are most appropriate for assessing data-model fit in structural equation models. Though potential advantages and disadvantages of these methods with large samples are often discussed, shortcomings concomitant with smaller samples are not. This paper aims to (1) highlight the broader small sample issues with both approaches to data-model fit assessment, (2) note that what constitutes a small sample is common in empirical studies (approximately 20% to 50% in review studies, depending on the definition of “small”), and (3) more widely introduce F-tests as a desirable alternative than the traditional TML tests, small-sample corrections, or goodness-of-fit indices with smaller samples. Both goodness-of-fit indices and comparing TML to a chi-square distribution at smaller samples leads to over-rejection of well-fitting models. Simulations and example analyses show that F-tests yield more desirable statistical properties – with or without normality – than standard approaches like chi-square tests or goodness-of-fit indices with smaller samples, roughly defined as N < 200 or N:df < 3.
Both scholars and the popular press have expressed concern regarding the potential prevalence of individuals with psychopathic tendencies in corporate leadership positions and the negative effects they may have on both individual workers and their organizations as a whole. However, research to date has been inconclusive as to whether such individuals are more likely to emerge as leaders or if they are (in)effective leaders. In order to clarify the state of the literature, we conducted a meta-analysis on the association between psychopathic personality characteristics and leadership emergence, leadership effectiveness, and transformational leadership. Our results, based on data from 92 independent samples, showed a weak positive correlation for psychopathic tendencies and leadership emergence, a weak negative association for psychopathic tendencies and leadership effectiveness, and a moderate negative correlation for psychopathic tendencies and transformational leadership. Subgroup analyses on methodological factors did not indicate any differences from the main results. However, moderator analyses showed a gender difference in these associations such that psychopathic tendencies in men were weakly positively correlated with leadership emergence and effectiveness and negatively correlated with transformational leadership, while psychopathic tendencies in women were negatively associated with effectiveness and transformational leadership, and largely unassociated with emergence. Additionally, small but consistent curvilinear associations were found for all leadership criteria. Overall, these results suggest that concern over psychopathic tendencies in organizational leaders may be overblown, but that gender can function to obscure real effects.
Individuals high in psychopathy are often portrayed as more likely to display antisocial behaviour in the workplace and to demonstrate lower job performance. Current research on the impact of trait psychopathy in the workplace is characterized by divergent findings of moderate versus weak effects. We aim to address two potential causes for these discrepant results: mono-source bias and the failure to consider the situational factors that can activate psychopathy. In addition, we used the triarchic model of psychopathy, which incorporates the meanness dimension, a conceptualization of predatory orientation. Our multi-source design disconfirmed concerns that the effects of psychopathy are merely based on mono-source bias. More specifically, we found that the predatory orientation of managers high in psychopathy and especially high in the trait of meanness was behaviourally activated by high levels of ascendency prospects and prospects for income increases. High psychopathy, mediated by consideration towards subordinates and moderated by high ascendency prospects and high prospects for income increases, was associated with low supervisory job performance ratings. Implications and limitations of our findings and directions for future research are discussed.
Despite widespread assumptions that psychopathy is associated with serious and repeated law-breaking, individuals with psychopathic personality traits do not invariably become chronic criminal offenders. As a partial explanation for this finding, Lykken (1995) ventured that a fearless temperament underlies both psychopathic traits and heroic behavior, and that heroic individuals’ early exposure to effective socializing forces such as warm parenting or healthy self-esteem often fosters a characteristic adaption that tends to beget “successful” behaviors, thereby differentiating heroes from convicts. In this study, we investigate relations between psychopathy, principally its fearless dominance dimension, pride, and prosocial and antisocial behavior in a community sample (N = 339). Fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity components of psychopathy yielded differential relations with authentic and hubristic pride (Tracy and Robins, 2004), such that fearless dominance was significantly positively correlated with both facets of pride while self-centered impulsivity was significantly negatively correlated with authentic pride and significantly positively correlated with hubristic pride. Further, authentic pride moderated (potentiated) the relation between fearless dominance and transformational leadership, one of the two outcome measures for prosocial behavior employed in our investigation. Authentic pride did not moderate the relations between fearless dominance and either our other measure of prosocial behavior (heroism) or antisocial behavior, nor did positive parenting moderate the relations between psychopathy components and social behavior. Unexpectedly, hubristic pride significantly moderated the relation between impulsive-antisocial features and antisocial behavior in a protective manner.
Over the last 15 years, there has been growing fascination among scholars in studying “dark behaviors” and “dark traits,” especially as they are expressed in organizational contexts. One taxonomy of dark traits that has garnered special interest is the dark triad (DT), which is comprised of three toxic and malevolent traits: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. This chapter offers a review of DT research, with a particular focus on research relevant to the organizational sciences.Webegin with a definition of personality in general and the traits of the DT in particular, including a discussion of the clinical and subclinical variants of these traits. We then review literature linking the DT traits to an array of organizational outcomes, discuss how the DT traits may be assessed, and conclude with recommendations for future work. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Volume 5 is January 21, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
An expanding number of methodological resources, reviews, and commentaries both highlight endogeneity as a threat to causal claims in management research and note that practices for addressing endogeneity in empirical work frequently diverge from the recommendations of the methodological literature. We aim to bridge this divergence, helping both macro and micro researchers understand fundamental endogeneity concepts by: (1) defining a typology of four distinct causes of endogeneity, (2) summarizing endogeneity causes and methods used in management research, (3) organizing the expansive methodological literature by matching the various methods to address endogeneity to the appropriate resources, and (4) setting an agenda for future scholarship by recommending practices for researchers and gatekeepers about identifying, discussing, and reporting evidence related to endogeneity. The resulting review builds literacy about endogeneity and ways to address it so that scholars and reviewers can better produce and evaluate research. It also facilitates communication about the topic so that both micro- and macro-oriented researchers can understand, evaluate, and implement methods across disciplines.