[Singapore, 9 July 2014] - Research on the Dark Triad; a term used to discuss a trio of socially undesirable personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism, has increased exponentially over the last decade.

It is an area of research that has important implications for society as a whole.

In the workplace, narcissism has been linked to unethical behaviour in top management and a great need for power. Corporate psychopaths feel diminished level of responsibility and can adversely affect productivity. Machiavellianism is associated with less organisational, supervisor and team commitment, along with a tendency to be perceived as abusive by subordinates and to focus on maintaining power and using manipulative behaviours.

In a new psychology paper, a team of researchers examined how these personality traits are associated with preferences for a particular type of work environment. Led by Dr Peter K Jonason from the University of Western Sydney, the team of four including two academics from SMU’s School of Social Sciences, Associate Professor of Psychology Norman Li and Assistant Professor Serena Wee found that psychopaths will be more interested in realistic and practical careers, narcissists will be more interested in artistic, enterprising, and social careers, and Machiavellians will be more interested in avoiding careers that involve caring for others.

“Increasingly, we are seeing unethical corporate behaviour and scams on a large scale, and most likely, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind many of these and other problems, lie individuals who are high on narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy -- people who are adept at hijacking the trust of co-workers and shareholders for their own personal gains. Our research here, and in other projects aims to uncover, step-by-step, what these Dark Triad individuals are all about,” said Prof Li.

Explaining the goals of the research, Dr Jonason said, “Nearly all research on the Dark Triad traits assumes these are patently and ubiquitously bad for individuals because they are bad for the group-at-large. We feel this obscures people's ability to think clearly about the role of "dark" personality traits in people's lives and society.”

“Further, by trying to understand the role of the Dark Triad traits in the workplace, we seek to provide more effective matches between personality and environment to make various operations (e.g., work) in people's lives go more smoothly. Understanding the kinds of work these individuals prefer and where we might find them could benefit the hired and hiring,” he added.

To achieve a clearer picture on how these traits facilitate the structuring of one’s environment, they conducted two cross-sectional studies online and looked at almost 700 individuals from various countries, jobs and age groups. One study used samples from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk whereas the other study used directly obtained sample of employees from various companies.

Overall, their study showed those high on the Dark Triad traits may structure their social environment through idealized career preferences.

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