Dark Personalities at Work: When Psychological Backfire Fuels Office Betrayal

A new study from researchers at Guangxi Minzu University, Shandong Normal University, and partner institutions in China offers a striking look at how a manipulative personality style translates into workplace misconduct — and, more provocatively, how the very psychological resources we often celebrate as protective can amplify the damage under the wrong moral conditions. The research, published in BMC Psychology, examined 576 employees across enterprises and institutions in Shandong Province and found that Machiavellian personality was positively associated with relational deviance, a form of workplace misconduct that targets interpersonal relationships rather than company property.

Relational deviance is a concept worth unpacking, because it differs sharply from the more familiar image of the employee who steals supplies or falsifies expense reports. Instead of attacking organizational assets directly, relationally deviant workers undermine the social fabric of the workplace itself: spreading rumors, excluding colleagues from critical information, sabotaging alliances, playing coworkers against one another, and weaponizing trust. In environments where coordination and cooperation drive productivity, this category of misconduct can be more corrosive than conventional theft, precisely because it is harder to detect, harder to document, and harder to punish through formal channels. The study’s authors ground their work in Dark Triad personality theory, which groups Machiavellianism alongside narcissism and psychopathy as socially aversive traits, and in moral self-regulation theory, which describes how individuals manage the ethical constraints they place on their own behavior.

Machiavellianism, as a psychological construct, is characterized by emotional coldness, a calculating orientation toward others, cynicism about human nature, and a pragmatic willingness to deceive when it serves self-interest. People high in this trait tend to view social relationships instrumentally — as tools to be used rather than bonds to be honored. The theoretical prediction, therefore, is straightforward: employees who see colleagues as instruments should be more likely to engage in relational deviance, because the interpersonal harm such behavior causes registers to them as strategy rather than betrayal. The empirical results confirmed this expectation. Using validated instruments including the Machiavellian Personality Scale, the Relational Deviance Scale, the Moral Disengagement Scale, and the Psychological Capital Scale, the researchers found a significant positive association between Machiavellian tendencies and relationally deviant conduct.

But the direct link is only the beginning of the story. The study’s central contribution lies in its analysis of two conditioning factors: moral disengagement and psychological capital. Moral disengagement, a concept developed within social cognitive theory, refers to the set of cognitive maneuvers people use to rationalize harmful behavior — euphemistic labeling that sanitizes misconduct, diffusion of responsibility that spreads blame across a group, dehumanization that strips victims of moral standing, and advantageous comparison that frames one’s own wrongdoing as minor next to others’ transgressions. The researchers found that the relationship between Machiavellian personality and relational deviance was significantly stronger at higher levels of moral disengagement. In other words, a manipulative disposition becomes most dangerous when it is paired with a cognitive apparatus capable of neutralizing guilt.

The second moderator, psychological capital, is where the study takes its most unexpected turn. Psychological capital, or PsyCap, is a positive psychological resource typically composed of four components: self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience. In organizational psychology, PsyCap has been treated almost uniformly as a protective asset — a buffer against stress, a predictor of job performance, and a safeguard against counterproductive work behavior. Interventions to build PsyCap are common in workplace development programs, on the assumption that confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient employees will behave better. The new findings complicate that assumption considerably.

When moral disengagement was low, the pattern matched the conventional wisdom: high psychological capital attenuated the relationship between Machiavellian personality and relational deviance, rendering it statistically nonsignificant. Under ethical cognitive conditions, psychological resources appear to function as intended — giving employees the internal stability to resist acting on manipulative impulses. But when moral disengagement was high, the picture inverted. The relationship between Machiavellian personality and relational deviance was strongest precisely among employees with high levels of psychological capital. Confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience, in the hands of someone who has cognitively disengaged from moral standards, become fuel rather than restraint.

The authors describe this as a potential dark side of psychological capital, and the framing has real theoretical weight. It suggests that PsyCap is not an unconditionally protective resource but a capacity whose behavioral consequences depend on the moral cognition of the person wielding it. A resilient, optimistic employee who has convinced himself that his rumors are just honest feedback, or that his exclusion of a rival is deserved, now has the psychological stamina to sustain that misconduct over time — to persist where a less resourced colleague might burn out, back down, or succumb to guilt. Psychological capital supplies the energy; moral disengagement removes the brakes. The study thereby extends understanding of the boundary conditions of PsyCap’s behavioral effects, a point the authors emphasize in their conclusion.

Methodologically, the study employed a cross-sectional design, with data collected through an online survey and analyzed using SPSS 27.0. The sample of 576 valid responses drawn from employees across various enterprises and institutions in Shandong Province gives the findings statistical grounding, though the cross-sectional nature means the data capture associations at a single point in time rather than causal trajectories over a career. The authors measured each construct with established scales, and the analysis focused on how the moderating variables reshaped the strength of the core relationship. The procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of Weifang University of Science and Technology and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, with informed consent obtained from all participants. The work was supported by the 2025 Guangxi Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Project and a talent introduction research startup project at Guangxi Minzu University.

For organizations, the implications are uncomfortable but actionable. Background screening and personality assessment have long been proposed as tools for identifying high-Machiavellian employees, but the study suggests that screening alone is insufficient, because the expression of the trait depends heavily on cognitive and moral context. Workplace cultures that implicitly tolerate moral disengagement — through diffuse accountability, normalized cynicism, or leadership that models rationalization — may be converting otherwise manageable personality risk into active relational sabotage. Conversely, interventions that target moral disengagement directly, by making responsibility concrete, by refusing euphemistic framing of harmful behavior, and by holding individuals visibly answerable for interpersonal harm, may blunt the mechanism through which dark personality traits translate into deviance.

The findings also carry a caution for the booming industry of positive psychology at work. Building resilience, optimism, and confidence in employees is not inherently good or bad; it is an amplifier of whatever moral orientation the employee already holds. In the hands of an ethically engaged worker, psychological capital protects against stress and supports constructive persistence. In the hands of a morally disengaged one, it powers sustained interpersonal predation. The study’s most lasting contribution may be this reframing: psychological resources are not virtues in themselves but capacities, and the ethical architecture of an organization determines whether those capacities build the workplace up or quietly tear it apart from within.

Subject of Research: The relationship between Machiavellian personality, moral disengagement, psychological capital, and relational deviance among corporate employees

Article Title: The association between Machiavellian personality and relational deviance among corporate employees

Article References: Zhang, L., Wang, X., Li, Y., Liu, Y., & Niu, Z. (2026). The association between Machiavellian personality and relational deviance among corporate employees. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05821-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05821-7

Keywords: Machiavellianism, relational deviance, workplace misconduct, moral disengagement, psychological capital, Dark Triad, organizational psychology, BMC Psychology, employee behavior, moral self-regulation, cross-sectional survey, China