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APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2012 doi: 10.1111/apps.12002
Do your Dark Side Traits Fit? Dysfunctional Personalities in Different Work Sectors Adrian Furnham* University College London, UK
Gillian Hyde and Geoff Trickey PCL Tunbridge Wells, UK
This study investigates differences in “dark side” traits between those in the public and private sectors, as well as between managers in three distinct industries. In all, 5,693 British adults were tested, roughly half of whom clearly worked in public sector jobs and half in the private sector. We also tested three groups of people (total 1,102) working in very different sectors: finance, insurance, and emergency services. They all completed the Hogan Development Survey (HDS; Hogan & Hogan, 1997), which is a measure of dysfunctional personality styles or potential management derailers. It has 11 dimensions and three higher order factors. Multivariate and univariate analyses of co-variance (controlling for sex, age, and social desirability) and logistic regressions showed many significant differences, with private sector employees scoring higher on the factor Moving Against/Cluster B and lower on the factor Moving Away/ Cluster A. The analysis of the three groups showed that those in the emergency services differed on most traits while Finance and Insurance industry personnel were very similar.
INTRODUCTION There has been much speculation, but few studies, on the psychological differences between those who choose to work in different sectors; particularly differences between the private and public sector workers (Brewer & Brewer, 2011; Buelens & van den Broeck, 2007; Christensen & Wright, 2011; Flynn & Tannenbaum, 1993; Lyons, Duxbury, & Higgins, 2006). This study focuses on the “dark side”, or dysfunctional personality traits, looking at possible differences between adults working in different sectors and industries. It seems that work psychologists have been less interested in examining sector differences, preferring to try to find “universal” relationships between trait variables and work outcomes in all organisations. Yet there is a litera* Address for correspondence: Adrian Furnham, Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK. Email: a.furnham@ucl.ac.uk © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.