Browsing by Author "Alikirri, Noora"

Background In personnel assessments, personality inventories are used to evaluate the fit of a person’s personality and the job or the organization they are applying for. The Dark Triad of personality measures those personality traits that can be described as harmful and norm-violating and it has been speculated that they could complement general models of personality, such as the Big Five of personality. The aim of this study was to develop a prototype of a personality inventory which would describe these harmful traits more in depth and which could be used in the context of personnel assessments. In addition, this study examined the relationship between the Big Five and the Dark Triad. Methods The data consisted of 523 Finnish respondents who participated in a psychological personnel assessment conducted by Momentous Oy. The reliability of the scales selected for the inventory was studied by examining the internal consistency of the scales. Correlations and linear regression were used to assess how Big Five traits were associated with the Dark Triad. Both confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were used to study the structure of the inventory. Results The reliability of the scales selected for the study appeared to be sufficient, except for a few scales. The associations between the Big Five traits and the Dark Triad conformed to the findings of previous studies. The Big Five personality traits were negatively correlated to psychopathy and Machiavellianism, but positively related to narcissism, except for agreeableness. At the dimensional level, the five big personality traits explained 32% of the variance in Machiavellianism, 34% in narcissism, and 55% in psychopathy. Agreeableness explained most variance in each of the Dark Triad scale compared to other Big Five traits. An exploratory factor analysis resulted in a six-factor model which explained 55% of the variation in the data. Conclusions Based on the research, a prototype of an inventory describing six dimensions of personality was created. In the inventory, the scales of Dark Triad, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, formed one dimension together with the Big Five scales of morality and dutifulness. Agreeableness in the Big Five seems to partially describe the same traits as the Dark Triad and it would be interesting to study this association and its importance for work performance and organizational fit more in the future.