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Moral character and workplace deviance: recent research and current trends
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ScienceDirect Moral character and workplace deviance: recent research and current trends Yeonjeong Kim and Taya R Cohen This article discusses contemporary research on moral character and workplace deviance. We take a personality perspective, meaning we view moral character as composed of characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality. Whereas most research uses the Big Five model as an organizing framework for understanding personality structure, we instead recommend researchers use the HEXACO model. Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness from the HEXACO are key indicators of moral character and predict workplace deviance. We also discuss guilt proneness and moral identity internalization — narrower moral character traits that predict workplace deviance but do not map exclusively onto the Big Five or HEXACO dimensions. Finally, we discuss measurement and modeling issues relevant to understanding moral character and workplace deviance. Address Carnegie Mellon University, United States Corresponding author: Cohen, Taya R ([email protected])
Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138 This review comes from a themed issue on Morality and ethics Edited by Francesca Gino and Shaul Shalvi For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Available online 18th August 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.08.002 2352-250X/# 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Recent psychological research has approached the study of moral character from a personality perspective, which posits that moral character is composed of characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality [10,11,12,13,16,17,18]. Here, we use the terms ‘‘morality’’, ‘‘moral’’, ‘‘ethics’’, and ‘‘ethical’’ to refer to standards of right and wrong conduct that provide guidance on what we should and should not do [19]. Understanding individual differences in moral character allows us to predict and possibly prevent unethical behaviors that harm people, organizations, and society. In this paper, we focus on how moral character influences workplace deviance. Workplace deviance, or counterproductive work behavior (CWB), refers to volitional behavior by employees that harms or intends to harm the people in an organization and/or the organization itself. It is a Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
broad construct that includes acts of abuse, theft, absenteeism, sabotage, and other harmful actions. In the sections that follow, we describe current trends in the study of workplace deviance and its relationship to moral character.
The Big Five versus HEXACO models of personality structure Cohen and Morse [10] recently proposed a tripartite model that decomposes moral character into motivational, ability, and identity components. The motivational component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward considering the needs and interests of others, and how one’s own actions affect other people.’’ The ability component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward regulating one’s behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences for oneself or others.’’ Finally, the identity component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward valuing morality and wanting to view oneself as a moral person.’’ The motivational and ability components of moral character are reflected in the Agreeableness and Conscientiousness factors from the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM), often referred to as the ‘‘Big Five.’’ The FFM posits that personality can be summarized by five broad dimensions (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience), with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness having the clearest and most robust relationships with CWB [23,32]. Conscientiousness is indicative of being ‘‘dependable, achievement-striving, hardworking, persevering, and orderly’’ [32]. It is strongly correlated with measures of self-control, which is a more specific aspect of personality that is likewise indicative of moral character and predictive of CWB [11]. Agreeableness in the FFM is indicative of being ‘‘cooperative, flexible, tolerant, and forgiving’’ [32]. It is strongly correlated with empathic concern, which also relates to moral character and predicts prosocial and antisocial behaviors [7]. In a compelling demonstration of the power of the Big Five personality traits to predict unethical organizational behaviors, Le et al. [23] found that adolescents’ selfreported Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were correlated with their CWB 18 years later. A number of other studies over the past several years corroborate these relationships, including meta-analyses and studies using coworker reports of personality and job performance [4,14,22,29,32]. www.sciencedirect.com
Moral character and workplace deviance Kim and Cohen 135
Although the majority of research on personality and CWB relies on the FFM, there is a growing literature that instead utilizes an alternative six-factor personality framework called the HEXACO model [2,3,24]. The HEXACO is composed of Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). The most important difference between the FFM and HEXACO is the newly introduced Honesty–Humility factor, defined as ‘‘the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might exploit them without suffering retaliation’’ [2, p. 156]. Honesty–Humility is one of the most important indicators of moral character [11]. Employees with high levels of this broad personality factor are less deviant and delinquent than employees with low levels [9,11,12,28]. Beyond the addition of the Honesty–Humility factor, a second important difference between the FFM and HEXACO is that some facets of personality that are subsumed by the Agreeableness factor in the FFM are instead subsumed by the Honesty–Humility factor in the HEXACO model [3]. Agreeableness in the HEXACO model captures individuals’ tendencies to be gentle, flexible, patient, and forgiving, whereas Honesty–Humility captures their tendencies to be sincere, fair, modest, and to avoid greed. In contrast to the FFM, Agreeableness in the HEXACO is not correlated with CWB [9,11,12,28]. In the HEXACO model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and CWB are Conscientiousness, which is largely the same as its Big Five analogue, and Honesty–Humility. Like Big Five Agreeableness, Honesty–Humility relates to the motivational element of moral character (i.e., consideration of others). Honesty–Humility, as a broad factor, encapsulates individual differences in the ‘‘dark triad’’ variables — Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy — which also predict workplace deviance, but are not captured by the FFM [5,31,35]. As a set, the dark triad is indicative of callousness and a lack of consideration of others [31]. Thus, high levels of the dark triad traits are associated with low levels of Honesty–Humility and indicate low standing on the motivational component of moral character [5,11]. Although it has been over a decade since the HEXACO model was introduced and shown to outperform the FFM, the majority of personality and applied psychology research still relies heavily on the FFM. Given the unequivocal evidence in favor of the HEXACO model from studies in more than a dozen countries throughout the world [2,3], we find this slow rate of adoption discouraging. We strongly recommend that researchers use the HEXACO model of personality structure, rather www.sciencedirect.com
than the FFM, when investigating the relationship between personality and workplace deviance and other unethical behaviors.
Beyond broad traits The Big Five and HEXACO factors represent broad personality traits. There is an ongoing and sometimes heated debate over whether psychological research on personality should focus on broad dimensions or narrow facets, with questions being raised about the predictive validity of broad factor-level traits, such as Conscientiousness, versus narrow facet-level traits, such as self-control [1,33,37]. Our view is that narrow facets or more specific personality attributes should be preferred when there is a strong conceptual link between a specific characteristic and a criterion variable, or when one wants to gain a nuanced understanding of individual differences and how they relate to a particular phenomenon [1]. Collapsing specific facets of personality into broader, more general measures can be helpful in applied research when parsimonious prediction of an important outcome is the chief goal [33]. However, doing so can, at times, obscure relationships and hinder theoretical development, which is particularly problematic in circumstances where it is important to dig deep into the data to fully understand the phenomena of interest. Related to the question of whether broad versus narrow attributes of personality should be used to predict job performance, there are a number of individual traits indicative of moral character that do not map exclusively onto one of the Big Five or HEXACO dimensions. Among the most important for understanding moral character are guilt proneness and moral identity internalization, both of which predict workplace deviance, delinquency, and other unethical behaviors [11]. Guilt proneness is an aspect of moral character that indicates a disposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing goes unseen. It correlates with Honesty–Humility, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness suggesting it may relate to both the motivational and ability elements of moral character [10,11]. Moral identity internalization is indicative of a strong desire to be a moral person and to see oneself as such (see Aquino, this volume), and embodies the identity component of Cohen and Morse’s [10] tripartite moral character framework (Table 1).
Measurement and modeling issues Recent studies of moral character and workplace deviance have highlighted important issues concerning the way moral character traits are measured and how their ability to predict workplace deviance is modeled. With respect to the first issue (i.e., measurement), most investigations of moral character use self-reports, with respondents rating themselves on various aspects of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A limitation of this method is that Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
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Table 1 Key concepts in moral character and workplace deviance research. Key concepts
Definition
Workplace deviance
Volitional behavior by employees that harms or intends to harm the people in an organization and/or the organization itself (also called counterproductive work behavior). Examples include: abuse, theft, absenteeism, and sabotage.
Moral character
Characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality.
Big Five model of personality
Model of personality structure that contends that personality can be summarized by five broad dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience. In the Big Five model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and workplace deviance are Conscientiousness and Agreeableness.
HEXACO model of personality
Model of personality structure that contends that personality can be summarized by six broad dimensions: Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). In the HEXACO model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and workplace deviance are Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness.
Conscientiousness
A personality trait associated with moral character that is included in the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. Conscientiousness captures a disposition to be responsible, disciplined, and dependable. Individuals with greater levels of Conscientiousness commit less workplace deviance.
Honesty–Humility
A personality trait associated with moral character that is included in the HEXACO model of personality but not the Big Five model. Honesty–Humility captures a disposition to be sincere, fair, modest, and to avoid greed. Individuals with greater levels of Honesty–Humility commit less workplace deviance.
Agreeableness
A personality trait included in both the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. Agreeableness in the Big Five model captures a disposition to be compliant, trusting, altruistic, straightforward, modest, and sympathetic. Agreeableness in the HEXACO model captures a disposition to be gentle, flexible, patient, and forgiving. Accordingly, Big Five and HEXACO Agreeableness differ with regard to their relationship to moral character and workplace deviance.
Guilt proneness
A personality trait associated with moral character that is not included in either the Big Five or HEXACO models. Guilt proneness is a disposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing is private. Individuals with greater levels of guilt proneness commit less workplace deviance.
Moral identity internalization
A personality trait associated with moral character that is not included in either the Big Five or HEXACO models. Moral identity internalization is a disposition to have a strong desire to be a moral person and to see oneself as such. Individuals with greater levels of moral identity internalization commit less workplace deviance.
self-reported measures are vulnerable to faking, impression management, and a lack of self-knowledge. An alternative is to use other-reports, drawn from acquaintances. While self-reports capture one’s view of one’s self (i.e., identity), other-reports capture the reputation one has in the eyes of others [22]. Recent studies investigating self-reports and other-reports of moral character have found moderately strong, but not perfect, agreement between targets’ self-ratings and well-acquainted others’ ratings of them, with acquaintance reports having incremental predictive powers beyond self-reports and vice versa [12,18,22]. With regard to self-other agreement of workplace deviance, Berry et al. [4] conducted a meta-analysis that found self-reports and other-reports of CWB are highly correlated and similarly related to known covariates, such as Big Five Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. In support of self-reports over other-reports when investigating workplace deviance, this review found that employees’ selfratings revealed more instances of CWB than ratings from coworkers. Furthermore, other-reported CWB did not Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
provide incremental predictive power beyond selfreported CWB. Presumably this is because employees keep many of their deviant behaviors private, hiding them from colleagues and supervisors. Thus, while acquaintance ratings of moral character add information beyond self-reports, the same is not necessarily true for workplace deviance. Another measurement-related topic that is prevalent in the current applied psychology literature is how to reduce socially desirable responding and faking. Methods currently being explored include forced-choice response formats [20,34] and interventions to limit false responding [25,30]. With regard to the first of these methods, Salgado and Ta´uriz [34] conducted a meta-analysis of the criterion validity of the Big Five factors when forced-choice formats versus single-stimulus formats were used to predict job performance. In a typical forced-choice format, respondents select one answer from a set of several equally desirable alternatives. This is in contrast to single-stimulus rating scale formats where respondents indicate their agreement with a statement that could www.sciencedirect.com
Moral character and workplace deviance Kim and Cohen 137
describe them. Salgado and Ta´uriz [34] found that the Big Five variables assessed with forced choice measures have similar or slightly higher validity in predicting job performance compared to other methods. With regard to faking, Levashina and Campion [25] found that behavioral interviews that ask respondents about past behaviors or experiences were more resilient to faking compared with situational interviews that ask respondents about how they would behave in hypothetical situations. Surprisingly, they also found that follow-up questioning increased rather than decreased faking, leading them to conclude that behavioral interviews with little follow-up questioning are the most effective method for reducing faking. Their finding that follow-up questions leads to more, rather than less, faking is in contrast to idea that deception can be best detected by soliciting additional information. The counterintuitive nature of Levashina and Campion’s finding makes this is a ripe for future research. Other research on faking investigates whether it can be reduced via warnings or instructions at the start of an assessment. For example, O’Neill et al. [30] investigated whether faking could be reduced by warning respondents that it could be detected with a lie-detector scale that would be used to disqualify those found to be lying. Although their research was with undergraduates and not in a high-stakes setting, they nonetheless found some support for the efficacy of such warnings. With regard to modeling the relationship between moral character and workplace deviance, the past few years have witnessed a growth in studies investigating the interactive effects of moral character traits, rather than just their main effects. For example, many recent papers have explored the interactions among personality traits in predicting workplace deviance [6,15,36,41] and other papers have explored interactive effects of personality traits and situational variables [9,21,26,27,29,38,40]. Individuals’ behaviors are simultaneously influenced by multiple personality traits, situational factors, and their interactions. Therefore, we are encouraged by this recent exploration of interactive effects, and believe the knowledge it generates will greatly enhance our understanding of the determinants of workplace deviance.
behave unethically [8,39] and they are less likely to respond with unethical behaviors when they are treated negatively by others [21]. In contrast low moral character individuals not only respond to negative work environments, such as abusive supervision or ostracism from coworkers, by engaging in unethical behaviors, but their unethical behaviors increase their susceptibility to experiencing negative treatment from others in the future [21]. Greater understanding of the interactions between moral character, the workplace environment, and workplace deviance, and their temporal dynamics, is a crucial direction for future research and we look forward to continued advancement in this area over the next several years.
References and recommended reading Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as: of special interest of outstanding interest 1.
Ashton MC, Paunonen SV, Lee K: On the validity of narrow and broad personality traits: a response to Salgado, Moscoso, and Berges (2013). Pers Individ Dif 2014, 56:24-28. An article discussing the debate about broad factors versus narrow facets; the authors provide empirical evidence that a facet-level trait can be a better predictor than a factor-level one when the criterion is strongly related to the narrow trait
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Ashton MC, Lee K, de Vries RE: The HEXACO Honesty–Humility Agreeableness, and Emotionality factors: a review of research and theory. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2014, 18:139-152. A review of the theory behind and the research on the HEXACO model of personality structure, and how it differs from the Five Factor Model, with a focus on the Honesty–Humility, Agreeableness and Emotionality dimensions
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Berry CM, Carpenter NC, Barratt CL: Do other-reports of counterproductive work behavior provide an incremental contribution over self-reports? A meta-analytic comparison. J Appl Psychol 2012, 97:613-636. A meta-analysis showing that self-report and other-report are highly correlated and are similarly associated with known correlates; it also shows that other-reports provide little incremental validity beyond selfreporting. 5.
Book A, Visser BA, Volk AA: Unpacking ‘‘evil’’: claiming the core of the Dark Triad. Pers Individ Dif 2015, 73:29-38.
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Burns GN, Morris MB, Wright CP: Conceptual and statistical interactions: an illustration with the AB5C and CWBs. J Bus Psychol 2014, 29:47-60.
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Carnahan T, McFarland S: Revisiting the Stanford prison experiment: could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty? Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2007, 33:603-614.
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Chirumbolo A: The impact of job insecurity on counterproductive work behaviors: the moderating role of Honesty–Humility personality trait. J Psychol 2014, 149:554569.
Future directions We reviewed recent evidence demonstrating a direct link between low levels of moral character and workplace deviance. However, moral character not only influences deviant behaviors directly, but also indirectly by influencing the situations one faces [21]. For example, individuals with high levels of moral character avoid situations in which they are likely to harm others or www.sciencedirect.com
Ashton MC, Lee K: Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2007, 11:150-166.
10. Cohen TR, Morse L: Moral character: what it is and what it does. Res Organ Behav 2014, 34:43-61. A theory paper proposing a tripartite model for understanding moral character on the basis of the idea that there are motivational, ability, and identity elements. Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
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11. Cohen TR, Panter AT, Turan N, Morse L, Kim Y: Moral character in the workplace. J Pers Soc Psychol 2014, 107:943-963. An empirical article that investigates the relative importance of more than two dozen individual differences for determining a person’s moral character and the frequency with which they engage in counterproductive work behaviors and organizational citizenship behaviors. 12. Cohen TR, Panter AT, Turan N, Morse L, Kim Y: Agreement and similarity in self-other perceptions of moral character. J Res Pers 2013, 47:816-830. 13. Fleeson W, Furr RM, Jayawickreme E, Meindl P, Helzer EG: Character: the prospects for a personality-based perspective on morality. Soc Pers Psychol Compass 2014, 8:178-191. A review article of the use of the concept of ‘‘character’’ within psychology; the authors describe evidence supporting the notion that moral character is a psychological construct that can be studied using a personality-based approach. 14. Gonzalez-Mule´ E, Mount M, Oh I: A meta-analysis of the relationship between general mental ability and non-task performance. J Appl Psychol 2014, 99:1222-1243. 15. Gonzalez-Mule´ E, Degeest D, Mount MK: Power of the circumplex: incremental validity of intersection traits in predicting counterproductive work behaviors. Int J Sel Assess 2013, 21:322-327. 16. Goodwin GP: Moral character in person perception. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 2015, 24:38-44. 17. Goodwin GP, Piazza J, Rozin P: Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. J Pers Soc Psychol 2014, 106:148-168. An empirical article showing that moral character and warmth are separable and that character is more important than warmth in impression formation. 18. Helzer EG, Furr RM, Hawkins A, Barranti M, Blackie LER, Fleeson W: Agreement on the perception of moral character. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2014, 40:1698-1710. 19. Janoff-Bulman R, Carnes NC: Surveying the moral landscape: moral motives and group-based moralities. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2013, 17:219-236. 20. Joubert T, Inceoglu I, Bartram D, Dowdeswell K, Lin Y: A comparison of the psychometric properties of the forced choice and Likert scale versions of a personality instrument. Int J Sel Assess 2015, 23:92-97. 21. Kim Y, Cohen TR, Panter AT: The reciprocal relationship between counterproductive work behavior and workplace mistreatment: its temporal dynamics and boundary conditions.. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/ abstract=2638429 Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGroup), Pittsburgh, PA. 2015. A longitudinal study that examines the bidirectional causal relationship and temporal dynamics between counterproductive work behaviors and workplace mistreatment; it demonstrates that personality traits influence ones’ responses to situations, and those responses, in return, influence the situations one faces in the future 22. Kluemper DH, Mclarty BD, Bing MN, Mclarty BD, Bing MN: Acquaintance ratings of the Big Five personality traits: incremental validity beyond and interactive effects with selfreports in the prediction of workplace deviance. J Appl Psychol 2014, 100:237-248. 23. Le K, Donnellan MB, Spilman SK, Garcia OP, Conger R: Workers behaving badly: associations between adolescent reports of the Big Five and counterproductive work behaviors in adulthood. Pers Individ Dif 2014, 61–62:7-12. A longitudinal study showing that adolescents’ reports of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness from the Big Five model were correlated with selfreports of counterproductive work behaviors 18 years later 24. Lee K, Ashton MC: The H Factor of Personality: Why Some People are Manipulative, Self-Entitled, Materialistic and Exploitive — And Why It Matters for Everyone. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 2012.
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25. Levashina J, Campion MA: Measuring faking in the employment interview: development and validation of an interview faking behavior scale. J Appl Psychol 2007, 92:1638-1656. 26. Lian H, Brown DJ, Ferris DL, Liang LH, Morrison R: Abusive supervision and retaliation: a self-control framework. Acad Manage J 2014, 57:116-139. 27. Lian H, Ferris DL, Morrison R, Brown DJ: Blame it on the supervisor or the subordinate? Reciprocal relations between abusive supervision and organizational deviance. J Appl Psychol 2014, 99:651-664. 28. Marcus B, Ashton MC, Lee K: A note on the incremental validity of integrity tests beyond standard personality inventories for the criterion of counterproductive behaviour. Can J Adm Sci 2013, 30:18-25. 29. Nandkeolyar AK, Shaffer JA, Li A, Ekkirala S, Bagger J: Surviving an abusive supervisor: the joint roles of conscientiousness and coping strategies. J Appl Psychol 2014, 99:138-150. 30. O’Neill TA, Lee NM, Radan J, Law SJ, Lewis RJ, Carswell JJ: The impact of ‘‘non-targeted traits’’ on personality test faking, hiring, and workplace deviance. Pers Individ Dif 2013, 55:162168. 31. Paulhus DL: Toward a taxonomy of dark personalities. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 2014, 23:421-426. 32. Sackett PR, Walmsley PT: Which personality attributes are most important in the workplace? Perspect Psychol Sci 2014, 9:538551. A review article that discusses the relative importance of personality traits for job performance; it emphasizes the importance of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness from the Five Factor Model of personality structure 33. Salgado JF, Moscoso S, Berges A: Conscientiousness, its facets, and the prediction of job performance ratings: evidence against the narrow measures. Int J Sel Assess 2013, 21:74-84. 34. Salgado JF, Ta´uriz G: The Five-Factor Model, forced-choice personality inventories and performance: a comprehensive meta-analysis of academic and occupational validity studies. Eur J Work Organ Psychol 2012, 23:3-30. 35. Scherer KT, Baysinger M, Zolynsky D, LeBreton JM: Predicting counterproductive work behaviors with sub-clinical psychopathy: beyond the five factor model of personality. Pers Individ Dif 2013, 55:300-305. 36. Schippers MC: Social loafing tendencies and team performance: the compensating effect of agreeableness and conscientiousness. Acad Manage Learn Educ 2013, 13:62-81. 37. Sitser T, van der Linden D, Born MP: Predicting sales performance criteria with personality measures: the use of the general factor of personality, the Big Five and narrow traits. Hum Perform 2013, 26:126-149. 38. Sulea C, Fine S, Fischmann G, Sava F, Dumitru C: Abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors: the Moderating Effects of Personality. J Pers Psychol 2013, 12:196200. 39. Wiltermuth SS, Cohen TR: ‘‘I’d Only Let You Down’’: guilt proneness and the avoidance of harmful interdependence. J Pers Soc Psychol 2014, 107:925-942. An empirical article showing that highly guilt-prone individuals avoid forming interdependent partnerships with more competent others when they would be likely to harm their potential partner via poor performance. 40. Wiltshire J, Bourdage JS, Lee K: Honesty–Humility and perceptions of organizational politics in predicting workplace outcomes. J Bus Psychol 2013, 29:235-351. 41. Zhou ZE, Meier LL, Spector PE: The role of personality and job stressors in behavior: a three-way interaction. Int J Sel Assess 2014, 22:286-296.
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ScienceDirect Moral character and workplace deviance: recent research and current trends Yeonjeong Kim and Taya R Cohen This article discusses contemporary research on moral character and workplace deviance. We take a personality perspective, meaning we view moral character as composed of characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality. Whereas most research uses the Big Five model as an organizing framework for understanding personality structure, we instead recommend researchers use the HEXACO model. Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness from the HEXACO are key indicators of moral character and predict workplace deviance. We also discuss guilt proneness and moral identity internalization — narrower moral character traits that predict workplace deviance but do not map exclusively onto the Big Five or HEXACO dimensions. Finally, we discuss measurement and modeling issues relevant to understanding moral character and workplace deviance. Address Carnegie Mellon University, United States Corresponding author: Cohen, Taya R ([email protected])
Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138 This review comes from a themed issue on Morality and ethics Edited by Francesca Gino and Shaul Shalvi For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Available online 18th August 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.08.002 2352-250X/# 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Recent psychological research has approached the study of moral character from a personality perspective, which posits that moral character is composed of characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality [10,11,12,13,16,17,18]. Here, we use the terms ‘‘morality’’, ‘‘moral’’, ‘‘ethics’’, and ‘‘ethical’’ to refer to standards of right and wrong conduct that provide guidance on what we should and should not do [19]. Understanding individual differences in moral character allows us to predict and possibly prevent unethical behaviors that harm people, organizations, and society. In this paper, we focus on how moral character influences workplace deviance. Workplace deviance, or counterproductive work behavior (CWB), refers to volitional behavior by employees that harms or intends to harm the people in an organization and/or the organization itself. It is a Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
broad construct that includes acts of abuse, theft, absenteeism, sabotage, and other harmful actions. In the sections that follow, we describe current trends in the study of workplace deviance and its relationship to moral character.
The Big Five versus HEXACO models of personality structure Cohen and Morse [10] recently proposed a tripartite model that decomposes moral character into motivational, ability, and identity components. The motivational component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward considering the needs and interests of others, and how one’s own actions affect other people.’’ The ability component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward regulating one’s behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences for oneself or others.’’ Finally, the identity component reflects a ‘‘disposition toward valuing morality and wanting to view oneself as a moral person.’’ The motivational and ability components of moral character are reflected in the Agreeableness and Conscientiousness factors from the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM), often referred to as the ‘‘Big Five.’’ The FFM posits that personality can be summarized by five broad dimensions (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience), with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness having the clearest and most robust relationships with CWB [23,32]. Conscientiousness is indicative of being ‘‘dependable, achievement-striving, hardworking, persevering, and orderly’’ [32]. It is strongly correlated with measures of self-control, which is a more specific aspect of personality that is likewise indicative of moral character and predictive of CWB [11]. Agreeableness in the FFM is indicative of being ‘‘cooperative, flexible, tolerant, and forgiving’’ [32]. It is strongly correlated with empathic concern, which also relates to moral character and predicts prosocial and antisocial behaviors [7]. In a compelling demonstration of the power of the Big Five personality traits to predict unethical organizational behaviors, Le et al. [23] found that adolescents’ selfreported Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were correlated with their CWB 18 years later. A number of other studies over the past several years corroborate these relationships, including meta-analyses and studies using coworker reports of personality and job performance [4,14,22,29,32]. www.sciencedirect.com
Moral character and workplace deviance Kim and Cohen 135
Although the majority of research on personality and CWB relies on the FFM, there is a growing literature that instead utilizes an alternative six-factor personality framework called the HEXACO model [2,3,24]. The HEXACO is composed of Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). The most important difference between the FFM and HEXACO is the newly introduced Honesty–Humility factor, defined as ‘‘the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might exploit them without suffering retaliation’’ [2, p. 156]. Honesty–Humility is one of the most important indicators of moral character [11]. Employees with high levels of this broad personality factor are less deviant and delinquent than employees with low levels [9,11,12,28]. Beyond the addition of the Honesty–Humility factor, a second important difference between the FFM and HEXACO is that some facets of personality that are subsumed by the Agreeableness factor in the FFM are instead subsumed by the Honesty–Humility factor in the HEXACO model [3]. Agreeableness in the HEXACO model captures individuals’ tendencies to be gentle, flexible, patient, and forgiving, whereas Honesty–Humility captures their tendencies to be sincere, fair, modest, and to avoid greed. In contrast to the FFM, Agreeableness in the HEXACO is not correlated with CWB [9,11,12,28]. In the HEXACO model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and CWB are Conscientiousness, which is largely the same as its Big Five analogue, and Honesty–Humility. Like Big Five Agreeableness, Honesty–Humility relates to the motivational element of moral character (i.e., consideration of others). Honesty–Humility, as a broad factor, encapsulates individual differences in the ‘‘dark triad’’ variables — Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy — which also predict workplace deviance, but are not captured by the FFM [5,31,35]. As a set, the dark triad is indicative of callousness and a lack of consideration of others [31]. Thus, high levels of the dark triad traits are associated with low levels of Honesty–Humility and indicate low standing on the motivational component of moral character [5,11]. Although it has been over a decade since the HEXACO model was introduced and shown to outperform the FFM, the majority of personality and applied psychology research still relies heavily on the FFM. Given the unequivocal evidence in favor of the HEXACO model from studies in more than a dozen countries throughout the world [2,3], we find this slow rate of adoption discouraging. We strongly recommend that researchers use the HEXACO model of personality structure, rather www.sciencedirect.com
than the FFM, when investigating the relationship between personality and workplace deviance and other unethical behaviors.
Beyond broad traits The Big Five and HEXACO factors represent broad personality traits. There is an ongoing and sometimes heated debate over whether psychological research on personality should focus on broad dimensions or narrow facets, with questions being raised about the predictive validity of broad factor-level traits, such as Conscientiousness, versus narrow facet-level traits, such as self-control [1,33,37]. Our view is that narrow facets or more specific personality attributes should be preferred when there is a strong conceptual link between a specific characteristic and a criterion variable, or when one wants to gain a nuanced understanding of individual differences and how they relate to a particular phenomenon [1]. Collapsing specific facets of personality into broader, more general measures can be helpful in applied research when parsimonious prediction of an important outcome is the chief goal [33]. However, doing so can, at times, obscure relationships and hinder theoretical development, which is particularly problematic in circumstances where it is important to dig deep into the data to fully understand the phenomena of interest. Related to the question of whether broad versus narrow attributes of personality should be used to predict job performance, there are a number of individual traits indicative of moral character that do not map exclusively onto one of the Big Five or HEXACO dimensions. Among the most important for understanding moral character are guilt proneness and moral identity internalization, both of which predict workplace deviance, delinquency, and other unethical behaviors [11]. Guilt proneness is an aspect of moral character that indicates a disposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing goes unseen. It correlates with Honesty–Humility, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness suggesting it may relate to both the motivational and ability elements of moral character [10,11]. Moral identity internalization is indicative of a strong desire to be a moral person and to see oneself as such (see Aquino, this volume), and embodies the identity component of Cohen and Morse’s [10] tripartite moral character framework (Table 1).
Measurement and modeling issues Recent studies of moral character and workplace deviance have highlighted important issues concerning the way moral character traits are measured and how their ability to predict workplace deviance is modeled. With respect to the first issue (i.e., measurement), most investigations of moral character use self-reports, with respondents rating themselves on various aspects of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A limitation of this method is that Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
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Table 1 Key concepts in moral character and workplace deviance research. Key concepts
Definition
Workplace deviance
Volitional behavior by employees that harms or intends to harm the people in an organization and/or the organization itself (also called counterproductive work behavior). Examples include: abuse, theft, absenteeism, and sabotage.
Moral character
Characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that are associated with morality.
Big Five model of personality
Model of personality structure that contends that personality can be summarized by five broad dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience. In the Big Five model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and workplace deviance are Conscientiousness and Agreeableness.
HEXACO model of personality
Model of personality structure that contends that personality can be summarized by six broad dimensions: Honesty–Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). In the HEXACO model, the two traits most strongly related to moral character and workplace deviance are Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness.
Conscientiousness
A personality trait associated with moral character that is included in the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. Conscientiousness captures a disposition to be responsible, disciplined, and dependable. Individuals with greater levels of Conscientiousness commit less workplace deviance.
Honesty–Humility
A personality trait associated with moral character that is included in the HEXACO model of personality but not the Big Five model. Honesty–Humility captures a disposition to be sincere, fair, modest, and to avoid greed. Individuals with greater levels of Honesty–Humility commit less workplace deviance.
Agreeableness
A personality trait included in both the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. Agreeableness in the Big Five model captures a disposition to be compliant, trusting, altruistic, straightforward, modest, and sympathetic. Agreeableness in the HEXACO model captures a disposition to be gentle, flexible, patient, and forgiving. Accordingly, Big Five and HEXACO Agreeableness differ with regard to their relationship to moral character and workplace deviance.
Guilt proneness
A personality trait associated with moral character that is not included in either the Big Five or HEXACO models. Guilt proneness is a disposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing is private. Individuals with greater levels of guilt proneness commit less workplace deviance.
Moral identity internalization
A personality trait associated with moral character that is not included in either the Big Five or HEXACO models. Moral identity internalization is a disposition to have a strong desire to be a moral person and to see oneself as such. Individuals with greater levels of moral identity internalization commit less workplace deviance.
self-reported measures are vulnerable to faking, impression management, and a lack of self-knowledge. An alternative is to use other-reports, drawn from acquaintances. While self-reports capture one’s view of one’s self (i.e., identity), other-reports capture the reputation one has in the eyes of others [22]. Recent studies investigating self-reports and other-reports of moral character have found moderately strong, but not perfect, agreement between targets’ self-ratings and well-acquainted others’ ratings of them, with acquaintance reports having incremental predictive powers beyond self-reports and vice versa [12,18,22]. With regard to self-other agreement of workplace deviance, Berry et al. [4] conducted a meta-analysis that found self-reports and other-reports of CWB are highly correlated and similarly related to known covariates, such as Big Five Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. In support of self-reports over other-reports when investigating workplace deviance, this review found that employees’ selfratings revealed more instances of CWB than ratings from coworkers. Furthermore, other-reported CWB did not Current Opinion in Psychology 2015, 6:134–138
provide incremental predictive power beyond selfreported CWB. Presumably this is because employees keep many of their deviant behaviors private, hiding them from colleagues and supervisors. Thus, while acquaintance ratings of moral character add information beyond self-reports, the same is not necessarily true for workplace deviance. Another measurement-related topic that is prevalent in the current applied psychology literature is how to reduce socially desirable responding and faking. Methods currently being explored include forced-choice response formats [20,34] and interventions to limit false responding [25,30]. With regard to the first of these methods, Salgado and Ta´uriz [34] conducted a meta-analysis of the criterion validity of the Big Five factors when forced-choice formats versus single-stimulus formats were used to predict job performance. In a typical forced-choice format, respondents select one answer from a set of several equally desirable alternatives. This is in contrast to single-stimulus rating scale formats where respondents indicate their agreement with a statement that could www.sciencedirect.com
Moral character and workplace deviance Kim and Cohen 137
describe them. Salgado and Ta´uriz [34] found that the Big Five variables assessed with forced choice measures have similar or slightly higher validity in predicting job performance compared to other methods. With regard to faking, Levashina and Campion [25] found that behavioral interviews that ask respondents about past behaviors or experiences were more resilient to faking compared with situational interviews that ask respondents about how they would behave in hypothetical situations. Surprisingly, they also found that follow-up questioning increased rather than decreased faking, leading them to conclude that behavioral interviews with little follow-up questioning are the most effective method for reducing faking. Their finding that follow-up questions leads to more, rather than less, faking is in contrast to idea that deception can be best detected by soliciting additional information. The counterintuitive nature of Levashina and Campion’s finding makes this is a ripe for future research. Other research on faking investigates whether it can be reduced via warnings or instructions at the start of an assessment. For example, O’Neill et al. [30] investigated whether faking could be reduced by warning respondents that it could be detected with a lie-detector scale that would be used to disqualify those found to be lying. Although their research was with undergraduates and not in a high-stakes setting, they nonetheless found some support for the efficacy of such warnings. With regard to modeling the relationship between moral character and workplace deviance, the past few years have witnessed a growth in studies investigating the interactive effects of moral character traits, rather than just their main effects. For example, many recent papers have explored the interactions among personality traits in predicting workplace deviance [6,15,36,41] and other papers have explored interactive effects of personality traits and situational variables [9,21,26,27,29,38,40]. Individuals’ behaviors are simultaneously influenced by multiple personality traits, situational factors, and their interactions. Therefore, we are encouraged by this recent exploration of interactive effects, and believe the knowledge it generates will greatly enhance our understanding of the determinants of workplace deviance.
behave unethically [8,39] and they are less likely to respond with unethical behaviors when they are treated negatively by others [21]. In contrast low moral character individuals not only respond to negative work environments, such as abusive supervision or ostracism from coworkers, by engaging in unethical behaviors, but their unethical behaviors increase their susceptibility to experiencing negative treatment from others in the future [21]. Greater understanding of the interactions between moral character, the workplace environment, and workplace deviance, and their temporal dynamics, is a crucial direction for future research and we look forward to continued advancement in this area over the next several years.
References and recommended reading Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as: of special interest of outstanding interest 1.
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Ashton MC, Lee K, de Vries RE: The HEXACO Honesty–Humility Agreeableness, and Emotionality factors: a review of research and theory. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2014, 18:139-152. A review of the theory behind and the research on the HEXACO model of personality structure, and how it differs from the Five Factor Model, with a focus on the Honesty–Humility, Agreeableness and Emotionality dimensions
4.
Berry CM, Carpenter NC, Barratt CL: Do other-reports of counterproductive work behavior provide an incremental contribution over self-reports? A meta-analytic comparison. J Appl Psychol 2012, 97:613-636. A meta-analysis showing that self-report and other-report are highly correlated and are similarly associated with known correlates; it also shows that other-reports provide little incremental validity beyond selfreporting. 5.
Book A, Visser BA, Volk AA: Unpacking ‘‘evil’’: claiming the core of the Dark Triad. Pers Individ Dif 2015, 73:29-38.
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Future directions We reviewed recent evidence demonstrating a direct link between low levels of moral character and workplace deviance. However, moral character not only influences deviant behaviors directly, but also indirectly by influencing the situations one faces [21]. For example, individuals with high levels of moral character avoid situations in which they are likely to harm others or www.sciencedirect.com
Ashton MC, Lee K: Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2007, 11:150-166.
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