One personality to rule them all?

(We're reporting from this month's Division of Occupational Psychology conference at the Digest. This post is from regular editor Alex Fradera, and the report will also feature in March issue of The Psychologist magazine.)

Until recently I was pretty ignorant of the idea of a general factor of personality, a situation which undoubtedly hurt my psychology-nerd cred. I'm back on track now, thanks to an afternoon spent in Rob McIver's symposium on the matter.

The general factor of personality, or GFP, is analoguous to g, the intelligence quotient that predicts to differing degrees the multiple intelligences - verbal, musical, numerical -that sit below it. (The symposium reminded us that whereas Spearman posited g in the 1900s, and Thurstone the differential intelligence model in the twenties, it took until the 1950s for Phillip Vernon to reconcile the models).

While practitioners who use personality emphasise its differential qualities - many facets, no one right profile - the academics who advocate GFP say that on the contrary, there is such a thing as having lots of personality, and that this global factor is meaningful, predicting a range of life outcomes. Critics say this may be down to statistical artefacts, such as an individual's desire for social desirability influencing all their questionnaire responses. So this symposium took us into the science, and particularly what it means for practitioners.

The first session, given by Rainer Kurz of Saville Consulting, was the most technical in focus, introducing a way to get a GFP simply by summing raw scores on each Big Five personality measure. It's an intuitive approach that in his dataset of 308 mixed roles proved as valid in predicting job performance as the standard approach (extracting the 'first unrotated principle component') while avoiding some fiddly statistical issues. However, the GFP was not comprehensive, as after partialling out its variance he found significant influences of personality subcomponents remained, notably assertiveness and achievement. This suggests the add-up method doesn't quite account for their influence. He concluded that this was a promising recipe but the approach will take refining.

His colleague Rob McIver chose to put aside notions of 'the ideal GFP' to explore total personality scores that predict success on a particular capability-set - in most cases, a job. Rather than relying just on factor extraction or the add-it-all-up approach, this starts by developing and shaping tests to pre-fit the criterion you care about.

McIver's data drew on external raters who had judged various facets of workplace effectiveness for the same individuals described by Kurz in his earlier presentation. The individuals had also completed seven different personality tests, and McIver explained how he generated a total personality score for each one using a criterion approach: personality dimensions were mapped onto effectiveness based on logic and previously reported relationships, meaning some dimensions were weighted heavily and others not at all if judged irrelevant to effectiveness. McIver showed how their own questionnaire, developed from the ground up around these effectiveness factors, produced the most powerfully predictive total scores, with an r up to .32.

McIver went further, producing a personality super-score for each participant by totalling all seven tests together. Would it work, given that many of these questionnaires were not developed with this effectiveness framework in mind? It turns out that united they stand, pretty well, with a validity of .27, thanks in some part to the criterion-based pruning and weighing. McIver concluded that this approach may be more profitable than searching for one true GFP.

Between these two talks Rob Bailey of OPP took the floor to question whether, in any case, true GFPs could truly be useful for practitioners. He points out that the literature tends to describe the general factor as reflecting people who are relaxed, sociable, emotionally intelligent, satisfied with life, and altruistic - and that a low score means the opposite of these things. He challenged the symposium to imagine cases where such information could be provided to an individual in any constructive fashion, compared to the conventional profiling approach.

Bailey then went to the data, in this case taken from over 1,200 individuals paid to complete a 16-factor personality questionnaire, the absence of career implications giving them little incentive to 'fake nice' and apply spin to their results. His component analysis suggested the personality data could reduce to two factors, not fewer, and he showed how opting to use the dual factors rather than the 16 original ones weakened the ability to predict variables such as job satisfaction, dropping coverage from 9.3% of the variance to 7.5%.

He concluded that granularity, not fat factors, may be a better bet for predictive power, and also cautioned that the differences he finds (no single factor, more value in the parts than a whole) may result from using a personality measure that isn't built to the specifications of the Big Five, and that in fact dependence on that model may be under-valuing the diversity, and thus relevance, of personality itself.

When the dust settled, the questions remained, but the issue of the GFP will undoubtedly be one we will revisit.

Further reading:

van der Linden, D., te Nijenhuis, J., & Bakker, A. (2010). The General Factor of Personality: A meta-analysis of Big Five intercorrelations and a criterion-related validity study Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 315-327 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2010.03.003

The dark side of behaviour at work

(We're reporting from this month's Division of Occupational Psychology conference at the Digest. This post is by Dr Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist, and will also feature in that magazine's March issue. @jonmsutton / @psychmag)

The face that launched a thousand peer-reviewed journal articles beamed down from the stage as self-confessed ‘well adjusted workaholic’ Professor Adrian Furnham (University College London) began his keynote. Quips were in ready supply, but Furnham is much more than a crowd pleaser: this was a talk steeped in history and theory.

According to Furnham, there are 70,000 books in the British Library with leadership in the title. But most leaders don’t succeed, they fail, with a base rate of bad leadership collated from various studies of 50 per cent. This is due to incompetence (not having enough of something, or being promoted beyond the job they are good at), or derailment (having too much of a characteristic, such as self-confidence, or creative quirkiness). It’s this later problem that Furnham focused on, identifying three root causes: troubled relationships, a defective or unstable sense of self; and ineffective responses to change.

Furnham highlighted three fundamental issues. Firstly, organisations ‘select in’, for the traits they think will help an employee be a success, rather than ‘selecting out’ for what is going to cause problems. Secondly, it’s assumed that competencies are linearly related to success. And thirdly, employers fail to see the dark side of bright side traits and the bright side of dark side traits. For example, what if a self-confident leader pursues a risky course of action built on overly optimistic assumptions?

How do we characterise what makes a leader destructive? Furnham feels that the early ‘trait’ approach to leadership failed because ‘the list of traits grew remorselessly, leading to confusion, dispute and little insight’. Trait theory also ignored the role of both subordinates and situational factors. This oversight was rectified in the work of Tim Judge – who Furnham called ‘the best living occupational psychologist’ (see Digest coverage here)– which showed the ‘toxic triangle’ of destructive leaders, susceptible followers and conducive environments. The influence of the model was clear in Furnham’s own consideration of the ‘Icarus syndrome’. High flyers fall through poor selection, flawed personality, no or poor role models, and because they are rewarded for toxicity in the organisation.

Furnham then cantered through some typical personality disorder problems in plain English: arrogance, melodrama, volatility, eccentricity, perfectionism etc. I was struck by the simple, neo-psychoanalytic conception of Karen Horney from 1950: people move away from others, towards them or against them (something covered recently). Furnham outlined some just published research on the differences between private and public sector dark side traits, with private sector more likely to move against others through manipulation or creating dramas whereas public sector managers were more likely to show moving away traits such as withdrawal, doubt, or cynicism.

A series of his own studies, generally with huge samples, elucidated sex differences in dark side traits and their relationships with career choice and success. From all this, Furnham distilled some key implications for selection and recruitment. Consider using ‘dark side’ measures; beware excessive self-confidence and charm; do a proper bio-data and reference check; and get an expert to ‘select out’ for you. As for management, the message was to beware fast-tracking wunderkinds, and to seek a mentor, coach or at least a very stable deputy to keep these individuals on the rails.

‘Just as a good leader can do wonders for any group, organisation or country,’ Furnham concluded, ‘a bad one can lead to doom and destruction. Understanding and developing great leaders is one of the most important things we can do in any organisation.’

Furnham, A., Hyde, G., & Trickey, G. (2013). Do your Dark Side Traits Fit? Dysfunctional Personalities in Different Work Sectors Applied Psychology DOI: 10.1111/apps.12002


Further reading:
Timothy A. Judge, Ronald F. Piccolo, Tomek Kosalka, The bright and dark sides of leader traits: A review and theoretical extension of the leader trait paradigm, The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 20, Issue 6, December 2009, Pages 855-875, ISSN 1048-9843, 10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.09.004.
Pdf freely available here

DOP Annual Conference Reports: A matter of evidence

I spent last week at the BPS' Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference, from which I'll be reporting for much of the remaining month. A conference highlight was a late night chat with Prof Rob Briner of the University of Bath. Rob is a keen advocate of evidence-based practice, and as the Digest exists to help the world of work operate better through judicious use of evidence, I was keen for his views on what we're doing right and what we can do better.

As well as a bunch of tips and suggestions for me to explore, there were a few wider themes that I think are worth communicating.

Single articles are useful up to a point...
They remind us of the process that sits behind the evidence, the actual running-a-studyness of science: sample sizes, participant demographics, choice of statistics, study limitations. On top of this, they can be encapsulated relatively simply, meaning they get shared or form the beginning of discussions that get people to reflect on the evidence in a particular area.  And they do provide some evidence but only from one study.

....but Reviews are where it's at if you really want to use evidence
Narrative reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses all have their own features, but share in common that they look across the research to find patterns and trends. And the aggregate level is the most important level of evidence. In other words, the findings of any single study may be interesting and provide insight but what is much more important is what the whole body of evidence is suggesting.  Reviews can present clear findings about a body of evidence or be complex and contradictory and messy but we need to know what the evidence as a whole is suggesting before we can use it in practice.

Due to this, the Occupational Digest will now cover a review every month, either something just published or a fairly recent review that speaks to an issue of current interest.

In addition, when covering single articles, I'll aim to provide a second reference beyond the article itself, to a review that addresses the topic the article concerns itself with. Hopefully this will provide you, the readership, with signposting to help you find out more.

Further reading:
Briner, R.B. (1998).  What is an evidence based approach to practice and why do we need one in occupational psychology?  Proceedings of the British Psychological Society Occupational Psychology Conference, 39-44. (pdf link)

Psychopathic traits won't give an edge to entrepreneurs

Most people in business would agree that the dog-eat-dog mentality most celebrated in the 1980s has passed its high water mark, giving ground to cultures that value collaboration and mutual benefit. Yet shows such as The Apprentice still depict ruthlessness and uncompromising nature as the hallmark of the business success, and fictional characters from Gordon Gecko to Patrick Bateman further the idea that value-creators are a little psychopathic. Investigation of the 'dark-side' traits of leadership has started to focus on this notion: a recent report describes ongoing research suggesting these traits are present in start-up entrepreneurs, and may even be helpful to their success.  This matters if it were so, and a London-based team of Reece Akhtar, Gorkan Ahmetoglu, and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic have just published research into this issue, canvassing 435 individuals through an online survey.

The research looked at entrepreneurialism both as a personal trait, using the Measure of Entrepreneurial Tendencies and Abilities (META), and in terms of involvement in entrepreneurial activities. In this study, this was defined widely to include achievements and activities that relate to the researchers core definition of entrepreneurialism: innovation, value creation, and taking opportunities. So success included not only selling ideas and inventing products, but organising events and helping create social institutions.

Participants also responded to Levenson's self-report scale on psychopathic tendencies. The team predicted that different facets of psychopathy might mean different things for entrepreneurialism. Primary psychopathy involves narcissism, manipulation of others and low empathy, and was measured by agreement with items such as one beginning 'success is based on the survival of the fittest'. This was predicted to facilitate entrepreneurialism through competition and exploiting opportunities. Secondary psychopathy, meanwhile, involves lifestyle behaviours such as impulsivity or parasitic dependence, and anti-social behaviour such as criminal activity and recidivism. Given how these traits look likely to create more problems than they solve and alienate others in the process, they were predicted to actually impede entrepreneurial activities.

Akhtar and his colleagues built a statistical model of the data (including demographics and other basic controls) to determine what factors mattered when others were taken into account. META had a strong relationship of .72 with the overall entrepreneurial activity of the individual. Secondary psychopathy turned out to have no significant relationships to entrepreneurial traits (META) or activities. Meanwhile, primary psychopathy - that Darwinian 'me-first' mentality - was moderately linked to META ratings. But once META was taken into account, primary psychopathy had little bearing on whether an individual had entrepreneurial achievements or activities. The only exception that was found was in one sub-domain - building and benefiting society - and this relationship was negative, which is in this case makes intuitive sense.

This study suggests that for a broad definition of entrepreneurialism, the perception that psychopathic traits are needed is a false one. It may be that they can occur alongside other more pertinent traits, but their quintessentially psychopathic elements don't make for a better entrepreneur: they can even undermine their effectiveness. It may yet be true that entrepreneurs value getting ahead over getting along, but far from fetishising these dark-side traits, we should treat them with appropriate caution. Apprentice-makers, take note.

Akhtar, R., Ahmetoglu, G., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2013). Greed is good? Assessing the relationship between entrepreneurship and subclinical psychopathy Personality and Individual Differences, 54 (3), 420-425 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.013

2012 Roundup

Here at the Occupational Digest we've spent the last eight days looking back across the year at the sixty-odd pieces of new research we've been lucky enough to cover. Last time we did this, we gave you New Year resolutions, but this time, in the spirit of the season, we've suggested gifts and advice for particular types of people. Here's our roster of family and friends below. If you recognise yourself, or anyone you know, do have a look or pass it on.

• First day: Ambitious Anne 
• Second day: Busy Boris
• Third day: Caring Carl
• Fourth day: Datahead Devani
• Fifth day: Existential Eric
• Sixth day: Farsighted Freya
• Seventh day: Go-getting Gyasi
• Eighth day: Hunting Holly

Wishing a great holiday to all our readers. See you in the new year!

Eighth day of Christmas digested: Hunting Holly

Our final day digested is dedicated to Hunting Holly, on the lookout for a job but finding stiff competition in the market.

Help Holly out with her CV. When paid employment is scarce, many people take up voluntary activities to fill their time, but may wonder how much attention to devote to this in job submissions. Research suggests that recruiters don't overly care about whether work came with wages: what matters is the relevance of the skills and experiences accrued. In fact, a mix of voluntary and paid work is preferred to all-waged, demonstrating a more rounded candidate.

Also, Holly might want to include references to her potential as well as to proven track record. Contrary to intuition, indicators of what a person could achieve can be more attractive than simply focusing back on actual achievements. 'Potential-framing' may be a more effective approach to punching up that covering letter.


If Holly is looking for work abroad, she may be interested in whether national personality differences are real or imagined. Recent evidence makes us more confident that these are genuine. This can also have implications for strategies within assessment interviews, as we reported on last year.

When putting yourself forward for a job, there is a pressure to self-promote, even go beyond the truth, especially if you think everyone is doing it. A neat piece of research on job applicants uncovered honest admissions about their use of self-presentation tactics; it turns out that we tend to stick to the ones that recruiters consider ethical, bend the rules less frequently and break them even more rarely. So we could advise Holly to use her conscience as a guide as to how much to pitch herself.

Many job applications involve tests, and test providers commonly provide feedback on how well you did. The principle is laudable, to provide something of worth back to the candidate in the form of insights into their own capability. But for some, being forced to face a personal shortcoming, rather than being able to chalk up a job rejection to bad luck, ends up eroding wellbeing. It's possible that this could end up undermining motivation to make applications, so Holly may want to think about whether it's worthwhile picking through this feedback or pushing on regardless.

Given the ubiquity of testing, one gift you might want to give Holly is preparation for it, such as a book, article or even coaching. Recent research suggests that this can have a moderate effect for taking situational judgment tests.

Seventh day of Christmas digested: Go-getting Gyasi

Ah, the entrepreneurs, the doers, the makers. Someone like Gyasi, a go-getter. Maybe even a maverick, as outlined by this recent research. What do you get for the guy who does everything? A bit of digested advice, that's what.

As he builds his start-up, or recruits for his team, Gyasi might be wondering how to gather like minds. Is there a personality profile that really sinks their teeth into work? Here's some research that suggests so, and tells you what.

Many people appear to be making the move to self-employment nowadays, but the able self-employed are periodically offered jobs. What side of the fence would Gyasi be better on? The time he sticks as his own boss is likely to correlate with a few core traits, as explained by this research.

We spoke about stress when planning for Boris, but the picture is more interesting for Gyasi. Type A personalities, who really feed off work, do suffer more when their irritability is put under strain from high work loads. But they are rather more insulated from the dismaying stress that normally accompanies not being recognised for your efforts and under some conditions can even blow off stress better by venting it. To that extent, our advice for Gyasi is to recognise when his stress-reduction strategies may impact those around him in unpleasant ways.


Gift: A holiday. He probably deserves it. The trick is to get him to focus on the trip and not take the desk with him mentally. Highly absorbing activities are going to be a better respite than two weeks on the beach with the smartphone flashing under the deckchair.