Light and dark personality traits shape workplace behavior, new research collection shows

Personality does not operate in a vacuum at work. A new Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic, introduced by an editorial from Manuel Galán of Catholic University San Antonio of Murcia, David Pineda of Miguel Hernández University of Elche, and Ben-Roy Do of Fu Jen Catholic University, gathers ten contributing articles that examine how both socially valued and socially aversive traits interact with leadership, colleagues, and organizational climates to shape behavior, wellbeing, and performance. The collection, titled “Personality interactions in the workplace: light and dark sides of human behavior,” spans quantitative and qualitative investigations across diverse cultural and organizational settings, and includes a systematic meta-analysis.

The editorial frames the collection around the Five-Factor Model, a widely adopted framework for understanding how personality traits predict individual performance. Contemporary organizational researchers, the editors note, increasingly adopt interactionist and trait activation perspectives, which emphasize that the expression of personality traits depends on situational cues and contextual conditions. In other words, the same disposition may manifest differently depending on the environment in which an employee operates, a premise that runs through much of the assembled work.

Scholarly attention, the editors write, has increasingly expanded beyond traditionally studied positive personality characteristics to encompass both the “light” and “dark” sides of personality and human behavior. While prosocial attributes may promote constructive and citizenship behaviors, aversive personality traits can produce more complex and context-dependent outcomes. A central focus of the collection is the Dark Tetrad, comprising narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism, which has attracted growing attention in organizational research because these traits have been associated with both adaptive and maladaptive workplace outcomes.

Two studies in the collection examine how dark leadership behaviors ripple through teams. Drawing on social exchange theory, Wu and colleagues investigate the effects of Machiavellian leadership on subordinate happiness at work. Their findings indicate that leaders high in Machiavellianism may trigger psychological contract breach, which in turn diminishes employees’ happiness at work. Importantly, high-quality coworker exchange can buffer the negative consequences of such leadership, suggesting that peer relationships may serve as a protective resource when the leader–subordinate relationship itself is a source of harm.

Complementing that focus on direct targets, Li C. and colleagues adopt an observer’s perspective on exploitative leadership, grounded in Social Information Processing Theory. Their study shows that observing a leader exploit colleagues heightens observers’ own feelings of job insecurity, again through psychological contract breach. A high-quality leader–member exchange relationship, however, can reduce individuals’ susceptibility to exploitative leaders. Together, the two studies suggest that the damage of dark leadership extends beyond immediate victims and that the quality of workplace relationships conditions how employees respond.

Other contributions turn to employee wellbeing. Using data from a large national survey in China, Wang and colleagues examine narcissistic rivalry, a dark personality facet, among working adults. Their investigation uncovers a sequential mediation mechanism linking narcissistic rivalry to heightened occupational burnout via elevated perceived stress and deteriorated sleep health. The finding traces a specific pathway from a trait-like interpersonal tendency through physiological and psychological strain to exhaustion at work, underscoring how dark traits may erode health rather than only conduct.

In a counterintuitive result, Wnuk observes that employees with elevated Dark Triad traits actually report greater stress and emotional exhaustion when working in a caring ethical climate. The editors suggest this finding points to the need to match ethical preferences between potential employees and the organization during recruitment, since an environment designed to foster care may sit uneasily with individuals whose dispositions diverge from its norms.

Unethical behavior is addressed directly by Albejaidi and Mughal, who investigate the Dark Triad in combination with the Fraud Pentagon framework among future accounting professionals. Their work elucidates how traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy activate cognitive states of opportunity perception, rationalization, capability, and intention formation that may predispose individuals toward unethical decision-making.

The collection also covers constructive behavior and wellbeing. Drawing on conservation of resources and job demands-resources theories, Çukurovali and colleagues study proactive personality among insurance sector personnel. Their empirical findings establish that individuals with proactive dispositions engage significantly more in innovative work behavior, which in turn elevates overall job performance, validating personal initiative as a core catalyst for workplace innovation. Grounded in self-determination theory, organizational support theory, and the stimulus–organism–response framework, Abdou and Albohnayh explore autonomy-supportive leadership in the high-stress hospitality industry. Their investigation reveals that autonomy-supportive supervisory styles may satisfy fundamental psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness and promote lasting employee psychological wellbeing, with perceived organizational support playing a moderating role.

Ethical factors receive a quantitative synthesis of their own. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Li Z. and colleagues organize the broad umbrella of “ethics” into three distinct conceptual boundaries: individual moral traits and cognitions, interpersonal and leadership dynamics, and macro-level organizational contexts. Across the synthesized literature, relationships between ethical responsibility and organizational citizenship behavior are found to be mediated by ethical leadership, ethical climate, and moral identity, indicating that ethical conduct at work emerges from multiple interacting levels rather than from individual virtue alone.

Peer relationships feature prominently as well, encompassing both supportive and harmful dynamics. Based on social exchange theory, Zhang and colleagues examine the psychological mechanisms underpinning the temporal continuity of organizational citizenship helping behavior, perceived team-member exchange, and perceived coworker support. They demonstrate when and how performing good deeds replenishes, or depletes, the actor’s willingness to sustain future helping, a question with direct implications for how helping cultures maintain themselves over time. Finally, venturing into transnational educational settings, Sun and colleagues use qualitative and network perspectives to dissect “moralized reputational governance” and relational aggression within co-national peer networks. Their analysis unpacks how interpersonal surveillance, gossip, and ostracism operate as subtle coercive mechanisms, reflecting covert, relational dark-side behaviors within tight-knit institutional groups.

Taken together, the editors argue, the ten contributions show that in organizational and educational settings, behavior cannot be understood simply in terms of individual traits or “good” and “bad” actors. Leadership practices, social exchange relationships, ethical climates, and peer dynamics emerge as recurring elements in understanding both harmful and constructive behavior. The editors hope the collection will encourage more longitudinal, dyadic, and network-based research while helping organizational leaders and scholars better understand hidden toxicity, promote ethical behavior, and build healthier and more positive workplaces. The editorial was edited and reviewed by Darren C. Treadway of Niagara University and appears in Volume 17 of the journal, published on 20 October 2026.

Subject of Research: How light and dark personality traits interact with leadership, coworker relationships, and ethical climates to shape workplace behavior and employee wellbeing.

Article Title: Editorial: Personality interactions in the workplace: light and dark sides of human behavior

Article References: Galán, M., Pineda, D., & Do, B.-R. (2026). Editorial: Personality interactions in the workplace: light and dark sides of human behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 2012061. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.2012061

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.2012061

Keywords: personality, Dark Tetrad, Machiavellianism, narcissism, workplace behavior, leadership, psychological contract breach, employee wellbeing, organizational citizenship behavior, ethical climate, social exchange theory, burnout