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(Spoiler alert...not as much as you might think)
The personality psychologist Robert Hogan was the first to argue that we have an inside, an outside, and a dark side to our personality.
This framework is central to Hogan's personality assessments, including the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which measures dark-side personality traits that can derail careers and relationships, and impact organisations.
His work is grounded in socioanalytic theory, which emphasizes how personality influences social interactions, reputation, and career success. His other major contributions include the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) for normal personality traits (the ‘outside’), and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) for personal drivers and values (‘the inside).
Since Hogan first conceptualised the dark side of personality in 1994, there has been a fascination with understanding and predicting the factors which lead to bad leadership and career derailment - not least because there is evidence that leaders’ performance is linked to the success of their organisations. In addition, weekly reports of corporate leadership crises resulting in the resignation of high-profile public figures have only increased the appetite of researchers across disciplines to explore the factors involved.
Exactly 30 years on, in 2024, I thought Hogan’s ‘taxonomy’ (system for classification) of the dark side of personality was ripe for review in the light of developments both within psychology, and across other disciplines such as Business and Management studies. As part of my MSc in Work Psychology, I carried out a methodological review of the research literature over the last 10 or so years to assess the strength of the evidence about its relationship with who emerges as leaders, and how effectively they perform at work.
Before I looked at the dark side of personality, I had to start with the ‘outside’ of personality. The Big 5 personality traits are well-known: they became a widely accepted construct for describing and understanding the structure of human personality in the early 1990s, and it was established soon after that personality does have an impact on performance at work, although it seems to be less well-known that the extent of this is still very much the subject of debate!
In 1994, Hogan and others suggested that the Big 5 reflects only the ‘bright side’ of personality, (i.e. people at their best) and that leader ‘effectiveness’ requires both the presence of these positive characteristics and the absence of what they referred to as ‘dark side’ characteristics. Hogan suggested that such traits are likely to lead to ‘emergence’ as leaders, but are also associated with ‘ineffective’ leadership, i.e. detrimental consequences in the long-term or under elevated levels of stress or pressure.
Does the latest evidence support Hogan’s early suggestions, and if so to what extent?
Join me to read part two of this monthly series of blogs as I explore:
