Dark Personality Traits in Organizations: Findings among Hungarian Employees

Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy, collectively known as the Dark Triad of personality is in the focus of scientific interest nowadays. In the last two decades, several studies were published on the field of organizational psychology about the work related correlates (like career choice, work attitudes, work-related success, leadership style) of the dark personality traits. The aim of the current study is to examine the relationship between the dark triad and some work-related outcomes. Using a Hungarian employed adult sample (N=1350) we investigated the association of the Dark Triad personality traits (measured by the Short Dark Triad questionnaire, SD3) with some (work-related) demographic data. Our results showed that the three dark traits are positively related to one other. It is also true for all of the dark triad scales that men score higher on them than women. According to the work-related correlates, on the higher levels of the corporate hierarchy we found higher scores on all of the dark triad traits. Controlling to the age of the participants, subclinical narcissism showed positive relationship with the frequency of job changes along the career. This study confirmed the relationship between dark triad traits, corporate position and workplace turnover in the Hungarian context.