Toxic Emotional Experiences: What they are, How they affect us, How to avoid them

When does experiencing negative emotions lead to longer-lasting consequences, for our mental health, our attitude toward work, or our performance? Negative emotions themselves tend to be short-lived, such as the flash of hot anger during a fruitless phone call with your would-be internet provider. These moments in themselves needn't necessarily wear us down; in fact, they can be galvanising, such as anger generated from a sense of injustice. Researchers Tina Kiefer and Laurie Barclay propose that for lasting harm to occur, discrete negative events need to happen against a wider backdrop, to which every event contributes and by which every event is given weight. These backdrops they describe as 'toxic emotional experiences' (TEEs).

Kiefer and Barclay explored this concept within a pool of 876 participants recruited online, asking them to anonymously rate their own performance, attitude toward the organisation (in terms of trust, perceived organisational support, and affective commitment, the feeling of belonging), and psychological health. These outcome measures were predicted using negative emotions such as angry or anxious, and as a second component of their model, features that are seen as defining of a TEE. This was based on items describing three features: whether emotional experiences were recurring, draining, and encouraged disconnection from others.

Structural Equational Modelling was used to ask whether and how the TEEs mediated the impact of negative emotions on the outcome measures. Within the data, various effects were found: performance was influenced by levels of disconnection and recurrence, psychological health by recurrence and draining, and attitude to organisation by recurrence. Total TEE also influenced each outcome.

In a second study, Kiefer and Barclay looked at helping behaviours, such as contributing ideas or sharing workload, within 136 individuals from within a single organisation. Contrary to predictions, higher incidence of negative emotions produced more helping behaviours, rather than less. It's possible this is an artefact of certain teams in high pressure, crisis situations, experiencing more negative emotions during a time when they were required to work more closely together. However, TEEs, particularly the recurring component, moderated the effect by making helping behaviours less likely. This study shows that not only are TEEs distinct from raw negative emotional events, the two can pull apart in different directions.

Recurring appeared to be a particularly important component of TEEs. You can see it as the chip, chipping away of resolve due to the sense that problems are continuing without a clear end. This study reinforces the importance of addressing persistent low-level negative issues, as their effects seem to be insidious - a kind of No Broken Windows effect for the emotional workplace, perhaps?

Kiefer, T., & Barclay, L. (2012). Understanding the mediating role of toxic emotional experiences in the relationship between negative emotions and adverse outcomes Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (4), 600-625 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02055.x


Further reading:

Lee, K., & Allen, N. J. (2002). Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: The role of affect and cognitions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 131–142. DOI:10.1037/0021-9010.87.1.131

Can more cognitive ability be a liability?

If you want to predict performance at work, you're hopefully aware of the long-investigated benefits that cognitive ability provide in many types of occupation. So hearing about apparently contradictory psychology studies in domains such as 'success under stress' where 'less is more', you're curious. Can cognitive ability - intelligence, roughly told - undermine task performance, or learning adaptability? A critical review by Oswalt and Beier argues that we needn't rewrite our assumptions just yet.

There are differing explanations for why ability could be a liability, all homing in on higher attentional control (through for instance high working memory capacity) biasing one towards highly conscious 'controlled processing', looking for perfect solutions when more automatic processing or loose heuristics do the job better, or at least protect you from falling into debilitating anxiety. If so, we could - we should - favour low-cognitive ability applicants for roles involving the kinds of tasks that show such effects. X and Y draw out three research areas that claim such effects, taking the position that the exceptional findings can be resolved by appraising the complexity of the tasks themselves.

First, 'pressure to perform' research asserts that when attempting difficult tasks, high cognitive ability individuals are more sensitive to pressures such as financial incentives or being observed, and their performance suffers accordingly. This is often construed as lower-ability individuals being more 'adaptable' to pressure. Beier and Oswalt firstly point out that in these studies the performance drop still leaves high-ability individuals doing better than their counterparts, just by a smaller margin than before. They go on to offer another account: under normal conditions, high-ability people do indeed tackle difficult tasks by bringing their attentional resources to bear, which pays off in superior performance. When pressure arises, which can indeed mess with highly conscious strategies, they rely more on the blunt, guessy, heuristic approach which low-ability people were using all along. Under this account, then, higher cognitive ability are *more* adaptable under pressure, changing up their strategies and still coming out top.

A study by DeCaro et al used a procedural learning paradigm where you must figure out the hidden rules to categorise images flashed on screen, varying in colour, shape, number and background. They showed that for simple rules high cognitive ability individuals learned faster, but the situation reversed when the rules were highly complex. Then, low-ability individuals are hypothesised to thrive by going with gut or employing kludgy strategies such as memorising individual successes rather than attempting to generalise to rules. But Beier and Oswalt suggest two problems concerning the goal of the task. The dependent measure of Task-Mastery was based on how long it took a participant to make a run of eight correct responses. But why not five? Or 15? A followup study showed that using 16-trial runs as your criteria, the ability liability disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, the goal was not explicit for participants. If it were, high-ability individuals might have exercised judgment as to whether to bother investing in solving the algorithm, or go for more imperfect tactics, as the reviews believe occurs in pressure to perform situations.

Finally, researchers investigating 'adaptive performance' have suggested that when learning a complex task, such as tank-battle simulations - a sudden change in the task demands (a massive terrain shift) is harder to stomach for those of higher cognitive ability, who experience a larger drop in performance at the point where we leave the familiar old world and bravely enter a new one. Again, this is marshalled as evidence of lack of flexibility due to commitment to one strategy.

In this particular study, the authors' analysis suggests that higher-ability people are not learning at a faster rate than their counterparts (presumably they begin with a higher capability, given that just as in the Pressure to Perform literature they do perform better overall than their counterparts). But through some simple modelling Beier and Oswalt demonstrate that this is hard to believe, as it suggests that in a complex situation with constantly changing demands - hundreds of brave new worlds - higher ability people would get worse and worse with respect to those with less ability, which is a radical claim. Instead, they suggest that the parallel learning rates are due to the analysis approach used, and that in truth the finding is more intuitive: higher ability means you learn a situation more quickly, and thus have more to lose at the moment where the conditions are altered.

This line of research line will continue, as we seek to better understand how performance is influenced by a range of interlocking factors. For now, Beier and Oswalt conclude that their review "is strongly aligned with one of the most consistent findings in over a century of psychological research: Cognitive ability exerts a main effect such that the smarter you are, the better you will perform on just about any complex task, all else being equal."

Beier, M., & Oswald, F. (2012). Is cognitive ability a liability? A critique and future research agenda on skilled performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 18 (4), 331-345 DOI: 10.1037/a0030869

Further reading:
 
Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262–274.
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262

Saving the world through psychology

Can Occupational Psychology play a part in saving the world? Absolutely, insisted Prof Stuart Carr in his keynote presentation at the DOP conference. After all, work is deeply woven into the world, so transforming one can influence the other. Carr brought this home through examples of the United Nation's 2015 Millennial Development Goals, which include reduction of poverty, which manifests in the wages that workers derive; education, which depends on the capability of teachers and other staff; and gender equality, which can be combated in the workplaces in which we spend much of our waking hours.

This exemplifies a humanitarian approach to work psychology, ensuring decent work for all workers and ensuring that the work they do meets responsibilities towards multiple stakeholders, rather than the bottom line. Carr provided some examples of how he and collaborators are making inroads into this, for instance by organising a Global Special Issue on Psychology and Poverty reduction that spanned multiple journals, raising awareness of how psychology can point at these issues.

Carr also raised another way to use psychology to improve the world: by applying it directly to the conditions of those involved in Humanitarian Work. These roles can involve risk and be demanding, so it would be useful to investigate this and take steps to foster well-being. And any way to improve the impact of the humanitarian work itself would obviously be beneficial. Carr reported on the creation of online networks such as Humanitarian Work Psychology that connect researchers,  students and those on the ground, who are commonly isolated, to allow them to share knowledge and put it to work on actual problems.

So we can change the world through 'Humanitarian' Work Psychology to make conditions of work decent everywhere, coupled with 'Humanitarian Work' Psychology that focuses attention on those aspiring to be levers of change in the world. Further examples abounded in the presentation, including a global task force to address pay disparities in humanitarian work: the dual pay levels for foreign and national staff causing distancing of the two groups due to negative appraisals - the former rationalising the latter's low pay as reflecting their capability, the latter becoming demotivated and distrustful of the attitude of the foreigners, causing a vicious cycle.

There is much more to do, and the keynote was a call to arms to the profession as a whole. As Carr reminded us, much occupational psychology work developed in the Peace Corps in the 1960s and following, and only later became concentrated in focus on the for-profit sector. A shift is possible and long overdue. Carr likened this to a Koru, the fern frond native to many countries including his home in New Zealand, whose spiral shape suggests a return to beginnings, and whose swift unfurling denotes the possibility of change.

Carr, S., McWha, I., MacLachlan, M., & Furnham, A. (2010). International–local remuneration differences across six countries: Do they undermine poverty reduction work? International Journal of Psychology, 45 (5), 321-340 DOI: 10.1080/00207594.2010.491990

Do test cheats matter if you test enough people?

Over the past decade, the cheapness and convenience of online testing has seen its usage grow tremendously. Its critics raise the openings it makes for cheaters, who might take a test many times under different identities, conspire with past users to identify answers, or even employ a proxy candidate with superior levels of the desired trait. Its defenders point to countertactics, from data forensics to follow-up tests taken in person. But the statistical models employed by researchers Richard Landers and Paul Sackett suggest that in recruitment situations, the loss of validity due to online cheating can be recovered simply due to the greater numbers of applicants able to take the test.

Landers and Sackett point out that test administrators normally intend to select a certain volume of candidates through testing, such as the ten final interviewees. The accessibility factor of online testing could allow you to grow your candidate pool, say from 20 to 50. Considering these numbers, its possible to now select those that scored better than 80% of the other candidates, rather than merely those in the top half. And if some of your candidates cheat, oomphing their scores to the 82nd percentile when they only deserve the 62nd, that's still a better calibre than the 50-or-better you would have been prepared to accept from your smaller face-to-face pool.

Landers and Sackett moved from these first principles to modelling out some realistic large data sets containing a range of true ability scores. They considered sets where cheating gave a small (.5 SD improvement) or large (1 SD) bonus to your test score; against this was another factor, how much your natural ability influenced your likely to cheat, from no relationship, r=0, into increasingly strong negative relationships, from -.25 to -.75, modelling the idea that weaker performers are more likely to cheat. And finally, they varied the prevalence of cheating in increments from zero up to 100%.

The researchers ran simulations in each data set by picking a random subset - the 'candidate pool' - and selecting the half of the pool with better test scores. In the totally honest datasets, the mean genuine ability score of selected candidates was .24. but that value was lower for sets that contained cheaters, as some individuals passed without deserving it. Landers and Sackett then added more candidates into each pool, allowing pickier selection, and reran the process to see what true abilities were obtained. In many data sets the loss of validity due to cheating was easily compensated by growth of applicant pool. For instance, if cheating has only a modest effect and is only mildly related to test ability (r= -.25) then doubling the applicant pool yields you genuine scores of .24 even when 70% of candidates are cheating, and higher scores when the cheaters are fewer in number, such as .31 for 30% cheaters.


Great...but wait. there are two important take-aways relating to fairness. It's true that if we're getting .31 averages instead of .24, our selected candidates should be more job-capable, even some of those who did cheat, and that's a win for whoever's hiring. But in the process we've rejected people who by rights deserved to go through. Essentially, this is a form of test error, and so not a uniquely terrible problem, but it's one we shouldn't become complacent about just because the numbers are in the organisation's favour.

Secondly, and as anyone trained in psychometric use will be aware, increasing selection ratios from top 50% to top 25% is no casual prerequisite. Best practice is that without evidence, such as an inhouse validity study, cut-offs on a single test should be capped at the 40th percentile, meaning you pass 60% of candidates. In particular, raising thresholds can have adverse impact on minority groups, on whom many tests still show differentials (although these are closing over time). As minorities tend to make up a minority of any given applicant pool, such differentials can easily squeeze the diversity out of the process before you even get a chance to sit down with candidates and see what they have to offer in a rounded fashion.

Nevertheless, this paper brings a fresh angle to the issue of test security.


Landers, R., & Sackett, P. (2012). Offsetting Performance Losses Due to Cheating in Unproctored Internet-based Testing by Increasing the Applicant Pool International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20 (2), 220-228 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2012.00594.x

Further reading:

Tippins, N. T. (2009). Internet alternatives to traditional proctored testing: Where are we now? Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2, 2–10.

Finding the balance between work and home

(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)

Who is responsible for work-life balance? The individual, the organisation, or even the legislative system? That was the question posed at the start of this symposium, and it became clear that ‘one size fits all’ policies and practices don’t exist: we must understand needs and wants in order to tailor solutions.

First up was Dr Ellen Ernst Kossek (Purdue University, US), who identified the importance of feeling in psychological control of boundaries. Based on three validated measures of ‘cross role interruption behaviours’, ‘boundary control’ and ‘work-family identity centralities’, Kossek outlined different profiles. You’re either an ‘integrator’, or a ‘separator’, or you cycle between the two: a ‘volleyer’. Add in consideration of whether your well-being level is high or low and you end up with six styles, including the ‘fusion lovers’ who are happy to integrate work and family life, the ‘job warriors’ who volley away to their heart’s discontent, and ‘captives’ who are the separators with low well-being.

The image of Winston Churchill in his pyjamas, as an early remote worker, cast a large shadow over the talk by Dr Christine Grant and colleagues from Coventry and Warwick Universities. Grant described her work to outline competencies related to the effective e-worker, and to develop an assessment tool. Organisations can provide training for existing and new e-workers, Dr Grant said, before leaving us with the thought that ‘a good manager is always a good manager; a bad manager is worse as an e-worker’.

It’s one thing taking your work home with you when you’re an academic or editor, but another entirely when you’ve just been pulling a family out of some motorway wreckage. Dr Almuth McDowall (University of Surrey) looked at work-life balance self-management strategies in the police force, eliciting 134 behaviours from semi-structured interviews. Some were context-specific, for example in the police it’s actually very important not to take work home with your, as it is confidential and often intrusive material. McDowall highlighted the importance of communication and negotiation over work-life balance, and suggested that there is a separate competence for line managing work-life balance in others.

Finally, Professor Gail Kinman (University of Bedfordshire) tackled a subject close to home for many: work-life conflict in UK academics. She noted that academics vary in the extent to which they wish their roles to be integrated, with many highly absorbed in the job role and most working considerably over the 48 hour working time directive. In Kinman’s survey of 760 academics in at least 99 universities, most academics weren’t getting the separation they wanted. Working at home and ICT use predicted work-life conflict. Kinman called for enhanced sensitivity to variation in boundary management styles and preferences amongst colleagues and supervisors, citing the example of sending e-mails at the weekend as potentially role modelling that behaviour for the recipient.

Another interesting point to emerge from the symposium is that most measures of work-life balance are focused on the impact on families, despite the fact that it’s an issue for the single and childless as well.

Further reading:

Ernst Kossek, E., Lewis, S., & Hammer, L. (2009). Work--life initiatives and organizational change: Overcoming mixed messages to move from the margin to the mainstream Human Relations, 63 (1), 3-19 DOI: 10.1177/0018726709352385

Are organisations led by the limbic system?

(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)

According to keynote speaker Gerard Hodgkinson (Professor of Strategic Management and Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School), ‘Descartes’s error is alive and well in the workplace’. In a bold and wide-ranging address, Hodgkinson made the case for why and how occupational psychology needs to connect with the social neurosciences.


Hodgkinson is bringing psychology into the field of strategic management, trying to help decision makers become more rational. Take how organisations tend to respond to a major threat or opportunity (HMV and Blockbuster come to mind as I write this). Usually there are small, incremental changes, and when it becomes apparent this isn’t sufficient, what does the organisation do? Nothing. There is a period of ‘strategic drift’. Then there is a period of ‘flux’, which on Hodgkinson’s graphic representation looks rather like a tailspin. This is followed by ‘phase 4’, ‘transformational change’ or ‘complete demise’.

But to what extent can psychology shed light on this process? Hodgkinson’s 2002 book ‘The Competent Organization’ argued the case for the centrality of the psychological contribution to organisational learning and strategic adaptation, yet 11 years on, he said, there was still only a passing consideration of affective and non-conscious cognitive processes. Why do we continue to sidestep it?

Using examples from his practice, Hodgkinson demonstrated how strategising is both an inherently cognitive and affective process. Eliciting a cognitive taxonomy from senior figures in a UK grocery firm, he found that although the market conditions had changed dramatically, mental models – individually and collectively – had not. Decision makers were slaves to their basic psychological processes, for example still focusing on the ‘magic number’ of ‘7 plus or minus 2’ competitors.

Hodgkinson showed how he confronts strategic inertia in top management teams, stimulating individual cognitive processes by scenario analysis. Some organisations excel at this: Hodgkinson claims that Shell closed all their facilities within 45 minutes of 9/11. While others were still struggling to comprehend what was happening, their scenario planning had allowed them to take quick and decisive action.

Hodgkinson’s latest research draws on social cognitive neuroscience and neuroeconomics to develop a series of counterintuitive insights. His hope is that these can teach people to be more skilled in their control of their emotional, limbic system. True rationality, he concluded, is the product of the analytical and experiential mind.

Further reading:

Hodgkinson, G., & Healey, M. (2008). Cognition in Organizations Annual Review of Psychology, 59 (1), 387-417 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093612 Pdf freely available here.

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.

Sixth day of Christmas digested: Farsighted Freya

Farsighted Freya likes to look ahead, and at the big picture. Ideally she has a senior role, or at least an advisory one, helping shape strategy in her organisation. Here are some ways she could influence company policy for the better.

Periods of organisational change can have critical effects on employee engagement, which can make the difference between a successful change and one that flounders. Evidence suggests that those who feel they've received the least from the organisation to date are, paradoxically, most suspicious that the change could improve their conditions. Freya could use this as an indicator as to which organisation areas will be less easier to get buy-in from.

Organisations involve a dance between form (directing efforts towards outcomes) and freedom (for individuals to discover, explore and modify activities). When employees are given the latitude to self-manage their work, it's tempting to want to balance this out by monitoring them. This turns out to be a terrible approach, eliciting push-back and counterproductive behaviour from workers who find this intrusive....so warn Freya off it. Perhaps she wants to go the whole hog, and move her organisation towards a non-hierarchical structure. Exciting stuff, but what are the pitfalls? Recent research explores this.

One way in which an organisation finds form is through developing and maintaining an identity - design and aesthetic at Apple, say, or ethical and community-oriented at the cooperative. Freya might be interested in a recent study exploring how identity is formed both by what is remembered and what is forgotten – sometimes deliberately.

Gift: a whistle. Simply to remind her that the long-term health of organisations depends on the willingness of its members to speak out about unsavoury practices. This isn't always easy, so some insights into the conditions that facilitate whistle-blowing may help her shape organisational policy in that direction.

Fifth day of Christmas digested: Existential Eric

Today is dedicated to Existential Eric, who is asking himself the question: what do I want to be? Maybe the Eric in your life is still at school, or someone arriving at a turning point later in life.,, either way, give them the gift of guidance to make their decisions a little easier.

Is leadership for Eric?

The best leaders often emerge from a match between their background and that of the group that they lead (and this year's New Psychology of Leadership is definitely giftable on that front). But there is consistent research linking individual traits to leadership effectiveness, a recent study even suggesting that these can be identified at school age.

Give a Warning: if your Eric is bullish about getting ahead and being in charge, you might want to give them a bit of farsighted wisdom: evidence suggests that people who make their way into management roles and then implode often possess a set of antagonistic traits summarised as 'moving against' others. Eric would need to discover how to manage his behaviours in order to manage others - or he's setting himself up for a fall.

Give Encouragement: conversely, if your Eric is cautious and preoccupied with their impact on others, there is actually evidence that they may be fit for leadership. You are more likely to be perceived as a good leader if you are prone to feelings of guilt - but not shame, the difference being that guilt is accompanied by an urge to take action (rather than hide in your room). Not only that, the guilt-prone are rated as actually being better leaders in both experimental and workplace situations.

Where to go

Where indeed! Your Eric might take a moment to consider following the family way: family firms have unique features that make them perform differently and form particular cultures.

They might want to do the opposite: pack their bags and see the world. The army is one time-honoured route for this, but it's worth their considering whether they will make it past training; recent research looks at the risk factors, which are complex but throw up some ideas, such as forming clear routines, and not joining up simply due to lack of options elsewhere. They should be aware, however, that military training appears to affect personality, damping down the flourishing of agreeableness that normally accompanies the movement into adulthood.

They might want to try something random: the 'happiest place on earth', where they will get to learn about customer-delighting techniques that are getting rolled out in more and more organisations, or they might want to take a grittier job that exposes them to all walks of life: that was one of the appeals reported by sex shop workers in this article on 'dirty work' occupations

Ultimately though, evidence again and again points at the importance of getting a job that you want. Intrinsic motivation - enjoying your work - leads to better managerial performance, and for all types of workers being involved with work that interests you leads to better performance, much more so than traditionally understood. Even training outcomes are influenced by being in your job of choice.

Finally, if your Eric is at a waypoint in later life and trying to figure out directions, he could do worse than consider his alternative self: who he could have been had he made other decisions. This seems a promising way to inform life decisions and crystallise understanding about your own strengths and weaknesses.

Fourth day of Christmas digested: Datahead Devani

Datahead Devani is the person in your life who is technical and loves it. Whether it be gadgets and the internet or science and facts, she loves to get involved. Here are some ways to help her help her organisation,

Give her tips on the impact of their organisation's communication tools. Perhaps she could check out this research examining telephone waiting time factors, and see whether their current set-up is solid? How about internet policy? Evidence suggests that 'cyber-loafing' peaks at certain periods, especially when people aren't getting enough sleep. One example is after the switch to summer time, as people struggle to adjust to the new hours. Perhaps smart teams might elect to employ one of the various programs that limits internet access during these 'risk periods'?

Introduce her to Occupational Psychology. Ok, we're biased here! But research suggests that the work done in our field is pretty solid; for example, experimental work tends to hold up well when examined in real-world situations. We can be proud of the scientific rigour that tends to exist underneath our work, and Devani can too. As we've documented, assessment tests have become more sophisticated and powerful in recent years, so being the go-to person in the organisation on this front could be useful. See also the BPS' resource on psychological testing, which contains research, advice and information on accreditation in the UK.

A gift? A camera. This lovely piece of research outlines the ways in which visual research in organisations democratises understanding, uncovers blind spots and gives a fuller understanding of how things are done, and could be done. Just ask her to turn off that superfluous digital 'click' sound while she's at it - she might actually be savvy enough to find it buried in the Settings somewhere.

Third day of Christmas digested: Caring Carl

Ah, Caring Carl. Maybe he works as a team leader, or perhaps he's simply a motivated member of a team. He certainly has ideas about how to improve the quality of the workplace. Why not give him a few more? These come with an evidence base behind them.

Getting better outcomes from the team. Simply put, a team that is willing to listen to other perspectives and to not take disagreements personally is going to reach better outcomes. On the first, research shows that the diversity within a team only translates to more creative outcomes if team members are prepared to feed that diverse input through their own positions. On the second, we now understand better that rare trick of how to transform conflict from a disabling to an enabling event: groups whose members feel free to speak out without being vilified can keep conflicts focused on task rather than relationship, allowing problems to be robustly interrogated and leading to better outcomes.

Pay attention when there is a change-up to team composition.  If Carl is in charge of the team, he should know that the emotional responses new starters have to their supervisor has a significant effect on their transition into the team. Making an effort to give support and make them feel in good hands is critical. More generally, when individuals find themselves working with a highly talented individual it's easy to feel intimidated and under pressure to perform comparably - especially once you've started to become familiar to each other but before you've developed an Us over I mentality. Being aware of that emotional component makes it easier to get past it, by recognising what lies behind tensions and acting as a spur to get the team on the same page sooner rather than later.

Finally Carl might want to be vocal about whether the managerial set-up works for his team. Specifically, evidence suggests that job outcomes and experiences can suffer when managers regularly work remotely. If it appears that this is a problem for his team, perhaps he would like to have a word, with this study as backup.

A gift for Carl? How about a book of (workplace appropriate) jokes? A compelling model has been drawn suggesting that even minor incidents of humour in the workplace lead to virtuous spirals that can lift mood and create a better working environment. Here, I'll start you off: what's orange and sounds like a parrot?

Second day of Christmas digested: Busy Boris

Yesterday we had some thoughts and gifts for Ambitious Anne, someone intending to make a success of themselves. Today, it's Busy Boris. Boris is the person who has already climbed their way into a position of responsibility. And you know what? Sometimes, it doesn't seem so great for them.

Sure, they appear to be willingly putting those extra hours into work. But are they addicted to it? Fascinating research on the New Zealand film industry (you know the one) suggests that the social addiction model developed around substance use can be extended to the social patterns that occur around work, especially when the availability of that work is uncertain and arrives in short bursts. If there is a problem with managing the impact of work on their life, raising awareness is an important first step.

 If you are a spouse or partner of a Boris in an unhappy place, you might want to suggest a move to other pastures. After all, it appears that a partner's perception of the problems that work causes has a powerful influence over and above the workers own perceptions. You can help them to make the hard decision. But assuming it hasn't come to that, how can we help keep Boris on the up?

Firstly, he would do well to keep his team onside. Your Boris is probably lovely, but it's possible they've leant towards treating subordinates instrumentally in order to get on. If they are seen to be 'in it for themselves', things can roll on without too much turbulence until team members perceive that they are being left on the outside, at which point things are likely to deteriorate. And if they make a big thing about running a caring workplace but don't walk their own talk, their stock is likely to fall very quickly. On the positive side, if they do it right, Boris can have a positive impact on his subordinates through a role in their coaching. How to get involved - alongside the coach and the individual themselves - without being a third wheel? Here's how.

Maybe work is particularly stressful - some of our loved ones exist on the front-lines of society, or are stuck in toxic work situations. The evidence suggests that if you experience violence in your work, ruminative thoughts are likely to worsen the effects these have upon your psychological health. Ideally they should speak to a counsellor or therapist, but in the meantime you might help them find ways to take their mind off the incident.

OK, but Christmas is coming up and I want something concrete, something to give. No problem, here are two suggestions:

• A sitting cushion.  There is a current vogue for research into mind-body techniques like meditation or focused breathing, which generally agree that these have positive effects on stress reduction. 
• Alternatively how about running shoes - I recommend barefoot ones. Evidence suggests that workplace burnout and generalised depression can feed each other in a vicious cycle - but that exercise can be effective in breaking that cycle, through its benefits to sleep, decreasing stress, and making you feel better about yourself.

First day of Christmas digested: Ambitious Anne

Our first post is dedicated to that person you know who is really fixed on getting ahead. We'll call them Ambitious Anne, though you'll know them by their own name. First, ambitious? Well, good for Anne. Longitudinal research suggests that possessing ambition in spades is an asset over the lifespan of an individual. It influences expected areas such as life attainments - more prestigious jobs, leading to higher income - but also longer life and higher life satisfaction.

If your Anne is a woman, she might be interested in some of the research on career progression and gender we've been covering at the digest. Experimental research has suggested that perceiving that you live in a male-scarce environment may influence women to focus more on how they can personally ensure financial stability and a legacy for themselves, a possible explanation for why US states with fewer men see women taking higher-earning positions. Perhaps an environment not overflowing with men presents a better hot-house for incubating ambition?

Also, help Anne by warding off some false advice: there isn't evidence that she needs to play tough in order to get ahead in business. A large analysis confirms that low agreebleness is correlated with better pay, but also that the effect is driven by males in the sample. And even if your Anne is a man, I wouldn't recommend them to toughen up, as other measures like life satisfaction better correlate with high agreeableness, not low. One thing we can recommend to an ambitious fella is that if he is looking to reach managerial roles in a stereotypically male environment, such as construction, he should be aware that he is likely to be held to less forgiving standards than would a female counterpart: the stereotypical attribution is that 'he has no excuse for failure'

Sticking with gender factors, Anne might want to scrutinise her future, because as a woman it's possible that opportunities she's offered will be especially precarious. Michelle Ryan's body of research has identified the presence of a glass cliff, with a long way to fall, that makes it important to consider the risks as well as the benefits of a big promotion. She may also want to recognise (not accept, as it's not acceptable) that dominant behaviour on her part may be attributed to her temperament, rather than as a tool she uses to get the job done. This attribution bias has been robustly observed, although it disappears for black women in the US, whose minority of a minority status appears to make them an anomaly with fewer norms to violate. Of course, black leaders have other perception issues to contend with, with subordinates viewing their failures as exemplifying incompetence, and their successes as due to the conditional utility of traits that are stereotypical of their race, rather than pertaining to their leadership skill.

Finally, ambitious people tend to be keen to learn from their mistakes and self-improve. So a caution to Anne would be that too much focus on 'learning from failure' can make us unhappy. Instead, an approach that mixes focus on the losses with a 'restorative' strategy, filling your mind with new demands, seems to preserve the insights from mistakes but allow the negative mood to resolve quickly, allowing you to move onto new things.

On top of all that advice, any specific gifts for Anne? How about a mentor? Consult our round-up of when mentoring is most effective. Go on, it's our round....

Introducing the eight days of Christmas digested

It's that time of the year where we start to reflect back on what we've done over the past twelve months - the good, the bad and the unclassifiable. It's also the time when many of us scrabble to find gifts for Christmas, Hanuka or your preferred celebration. So to help the Occupational Digest to reminisce - and help you out if you're short-handed - we present The Eight Days of Christmas Digested.

Today and every day leading up to the 25th, we'll offer you a post aimed at a particular type of person. A Christmas wish-list, if you will.