A meta-analysis of the relations between personality and workplace deviance: Big Five versus HEXACO

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Highlights

  • We examine both the HEXACO and the Big Five personality model.

  • HEXACO Honesty-Humility is the strongest predictor of workplace deviance.

  • HEXACO and B5 Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are also important predictors.

  • The HEXACO (31.97%) explains more variance in workplace deviance than the Big Five (19.05%).

Abstract

We present a comprehensive meta-analysis of the relations between personality and workplace deviance. More specifically, we compared the validities of the Big Five domains with those of the HEXACO domains for predicting workplace deviance. We found that HEXACO Honesty-Humility shows the strongest relation with workplace deviance, followed by Conscientiousness (Big Five and HEXACO) and Agreeableness (Big Five and HEXACO). Big Five Neuroticism (positively) and HEXACO Emotionality (negatively) also correlate with workplace deviance. However, HEXACO and Big Five Openness to Experience and Extraversion do not contribute substantially to the prediction of workplace deviance. For the most part, these results support the conceptual differences between the Big Five and the HEXACO personality models. We also found that the HEXACO domains (31.97%) explain more variance in workplace deviance than the Big Five domains (19.05%). Consequently, the HEXACO model appears to be a viable alternative to the Big Five model when predicting and explaining levels of workplace deviance. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings as well as limitations and future research ideas are discussed.

Introduction

The prevention and prediction of workplace deviance has been a major focus for researchers and practitioners due to its high (financial) costs for organizations (e.g., Henle et al., 2005). An important predictor of workplace deviance is personality (e.g., Berry, Ones, & Sackett, 2007), which is usually captured with the Big Five (B5) or the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM).1 Previous meta-analyses have shown that the personality domains of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism are the best predictors of workplace deviance (Berry, Carpenter, & Barratt, 2012; Berry, Ones, & Sackett, 2007; Salgado, 2002). However, many unresolved issues remain in examining the relations between personality domains and workplace deviance, and the current meta-analysis aims to resolve these. First, these previous meta-analyses (Berry et al., 2012; Berry, Ones, et al., 2007; Salgado, 2002) were focused on other research questions (e.g., comparing the validity of self- and other-ratings of workplace deviance; Berry et al., 2012), included only a limited number of effect sizes, and found substantially different effect sizes for some of the B5 personality domains. For example, Salgado (2002) found only a small correlation for Conscientiousness (r = −0.16), whereas Berry, Ones, et al. (2007) and Berry et al. (2012) report a moderate correlation with self-rated workplace deviance (r = −0.31). Such unstable findings are not surprising given the small number of effect sizes that were used in these previous meta-analyses, but they can lead to ambiguities for researchers and practitioners about which personality domains to choose when predicting workplace deviance. The current meta-analysis will resolve these inconsistencies by including more effect sizes that will result in more precise and conclusive meta-analytic effect size estimates. Second, whereas the B5 has been the dominating model of personality for the past decades, considerable evidence has accumulated in favor of an alternative representation of the personality structure, known as the HEXACO model (e.g., Ashton, Lee, & De Vries, 2014; Lee & Ashton, 2004). Although primary studies have used the HEXACO domains to predict workplace deviance (e.g., Chirumbolo, 2015; Louw, Dunlop, Yeo, & Griffin, 2016), the present meta-analysis is the first to include the HEXACO domains to compare their predictive validities to those of the B5 domains.

The goal of the present meta-analysis therefore is to provide a comprehensive meta-analytic review of the relations between B5 and HEXACO personality domains and workplace deviance, including a larger number of studies compared to previous meta-analyses (Berry et al., 2012; Berry, Ones, et al., 2007; Salgado, 2002) that allow for more reliable and valid conclusions. More specifically, the current meta-analysis contributes to the literature in four ways. First, we extend the personality and workplace deviance literature by providing the first meta-analytic overview and comparison of the validities of the B5 and the HEXACO personality domains. As such, our findings will help researchers and practitioners optimize the prediction and prevention of workplace deviance. Second, based on a priori expectations, we provide a higher-powered test of important moderators of the relations between personality and workplace deviance as compared to previous meta-analyses (i.e., workplace deviance facets and the source of the workplace deviance rating). Third, as previous meta-analyses were mostly descriptive in nature, we extend the field by providing a theoretical discussion of the findings based on multiple theoretical accounts that can explain the relations between personality and workplace deviance. And last, to the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to test the conceptual similarities and differences between the B5 and the HEXACO personality model based on their relations with a specific external outcome, thus carrying important implications for personality theory. Taken together, the current meta-analysis extends previous meta-analyses by providing more precise effect size estimates and higher-powered tests of important moderators, by including the HEXACO and comparing its relations with workplace deviance to those of the B5, and by providing a theoretical discussion of the findings.

Workplace deviance (or counterproductive work behavior) has been defined as “voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both” (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, p. 556). Such behavior has severe negative effects on the well-being and success of organizations and their employees (e.g., Barling, Dupré, & Kelloway, 2009; Bowling, Burns, Stewart, & Gruys, 2011). Workplace deviance is often divided into two facets: Organizational workplace deviance (OD) and interpersonal workplace deviance (ID) (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). OD consists of behaviors directed toward the organization, such as stealing, damaging company property, or intentionally working slowly. ID consists of behaviors directed toward members of the organization, such as gossiping, bullying, or harassing coworkers. Both forms are costly and detrimental for the organization and can vary in severity (Henle et al., 2005; Sackett, 2002). Workplace deviance can be caused by the organizational environment (e.g., by abusive supervision; Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007) and by stable individual differences (e.g., personality; Hastings & O'Neill, 2009). Although various individual differences have been examined as predictors of workplace deviance (e.g., age, gender, work experience), personality is the most prominent individual difference predictor of workplace deviance (e.g., Berry et al., 2012; Ng, Lam, & Feldman, 2016). As such, personality questionnaires are a useful tool in job selection to screen an applicant's proneness to workplace deviance (e.g., Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, & Judge, 2007).

Personality describes “the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments” (Larsen & Buss, 2005, p. 4). The most common approach to study the structure of personality is through the so-called lexical approach, which posits that important human personality differences are encoded in sufficiently encompassing dictionaries in all natural languages (Goldberg, 1982; Goldberg, 1990). Up until recently, consensus existed among personality scholars that five domains capture most of the personality variance. The B5 divides personality into the following five domains: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.2

Although the B5 is the predominant model of personality, re-analyses of lexical data that have become available from at least a dozen languages, including English, offer support for six cross-culturally replicable factors of personality (Ashton et al., 2014; De Raad et al., 2014; Saucier, 2009), which are commonly known by the HEXACO acronym: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. The HEXACO domains Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience are highly similar to their B5 counterparts. The other three domains – Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness – differ in important ways from the Neuroticism and Agreeableness domains of the B5 (Ashton & Lee, 2008). More specifically, HEXACO Emotionality and Agreeableness are rotated variants of B5 Neuroticism and Agreeableness. This re-rotation is accompanied by a shift in the content of these domains. For example, the irritability and anger content that is included in B5 Neuroticism is part of Agreeableness in the HEXACO model. On the other hand, B5 Agreeableness captures some of the sentimentality content that is part of the HEXACO Emotionality factor. These conceptual differences may influence their relations with workplace deviance. Furthermore, Honesty-Humility reflects the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others (Ashton & Lee, 2007), and low levels of Honesty-Humility are associated with harmful effects upon individuals and upon society and humanity as a whole, such as theft, fraud, workplace delinquency, and vandalism (Ashton & Lee, 2008). It has been suggested that this factor, which is not captured by any of the B5 domains, is especially important in predicting workplace deviance (Ashton et al., 2014; Ashton, Lee, & Son, 2000).

Given that the B5 and HEXACO personality domains of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience are conceptually very similar, we expect similar relations between these three personality domains and workplace deviance. In line with previous meta-analytic results, we do not expect Openness to Experience (Salgado, 20023: r = 0.10; Berry, Ones, et al., 20074: r = −0.06) and Extraversion (Salgado, 2002: r = 0.01; Berry, Ones, et al., 2007: r = −0.03) to relate to workplace deviance. Because individuals scoring high on Conscientiousness are hard-working, disciplined, and responsible, and because previous meta-analytic results indicated a negative relation between Conscientiousness and workplace deviance (Salgado, 2002: r = −0.16; Berry, Ones, et al., 20074: r = −0.31), we expect Conscientiousness to negatively relate to workplace deviance. However, the exact magnitude of this effect remains ambiguous, rendering a comprehensive meta-analysis of this relation necessary.

Agreeableness is expected to relate negatively to workplace deviance because individuals scoring high on this domain are compassionate, patient, and trusting. Meta-analytic evidence indeed indicates that B5 Agreeableness correlates negatively with workplace deviance (Salgado, 2002: r = −0.13; Berry, Ones, et al., 2007: r = −0.35), but these previous effect size estimates differed substantially. B5 Agreeableness captures some of the variance associated with HEXACO Honesty-Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2005), which has been found to be an important predictor of workplace deviance (Lee, Ashton, & De Vries, 2005). However, compared to HEXACO Agreeableness, B5 Agreeableness lacks a (reversed) anger facet which is part of B5 Neuroticism and which has been shown to correlate positively with workplace deviance (Hastings & O'Neill, 2009). We suspect that the inclusion of Honesty-Humility variance outweighs the exclusion of (reversed) anger-related variance, and therefore expect that B5 Agreeableness exhibits a stronger negative relation with workplace deviance than HEXACO Agreeableness. Previous findings from primary studies are mixed (e.g., Lee, Ashton, & De Vries, 2005), rendering a meta-analytic examination of this relation even more important.

As noted above, B5 Neuroticism contains variance associated with anxiety and depression and variance associated with irritability and anger. Anxiety may be associated with lower levels of workplace deviance, whereas anger may be associated with higher levels of workplace deviance (Hastings & O'Neill, 2009). Previous meta-analyses remain ambiguous about the relation between Neuroticism and workplace deviance as well, reporting either a non-significant (Salgado, 2002: r = 0.04) or a positive relation between B5 Neuroticism and workplace deviance (Berry, Ones, et al., 2007: r = 0.23). A new meta-analysis on this relation is therefore necessary to determine the exact magnitude and direction of the relation between Neuroticism and workplace deviance. Individuals scoring high on HEXACO Emotionality combine higher fearfulness and anxiety with a higher need for emotional support and a tendency to form strong bonds with others. Therefore, we expect that HEXACO Emotionality shows a moderately strong negative association with workplace deviance. This aligns with the finding that individuals scoring high on HEXACO Emotionality are less likely to be deviant because they are more likely to be afraid of retributions (Van Gelder & De Vries, 2012).

Last, we expect HEXACO Honesty-Humility to show the strongest negative correlation with workplace deviance out of all included personality domains because individuals scoring high on this trait tend to be honest, fair-minded, and to lack greed. These individuals have also been found to be more cooperative (Thielmann & Hilbig, 2014), less likely to sexually harass someone (Lee, Gizzarone, & Ashton, 2003), and less likely to be delinquent and criminal (De Vries and Van Gelder, 2013, De Vries and Van Gelder, 2015).

There are two methodological moderators that have important implications for our understanding of the relations between personality and workplace deviance: workplace deviance facets and the source of the workplace deviance ratings.

Meta-analytic evidence indicates that ID and OD correlate strongly, but not too strongly with each other (r = 0.52) and that they show different correlations with external variables (Berry, Ones, et al., 2007). In the current meta-analysis, we will examine if ID and OD correlate differently with personality domains, indicating the usefulness of separating ID and OD when using personality to predict workplace deviance. We expect to find different correlations with ID and OD for Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.

Agreeableness forms one of the dimensions of Wiggins' (1979) interpersonal circumplex model, and this domain is suggested to directly determine the quality of interpersonal, as opposed to impersonal, interactions (McCrae & Costa, 1989). Accordingly, research has shown that Agreeableness is a valid predictor of prosocial behavior (Habashi, Graziano, & Hoover, 2016), and of performance in jobs involving interpersonal interactions and team work (Mount, Barrick, & Stewart, 1998). Indeed, Berry, Ones, et al. (2007)5 found Agreeableness to be more strongly correlated with ID (r = −0.36, k = 10) than with OD (r = −0.25, k = 8). However, Berry and colleagues did not formally test whether the difference between these correlations was significant. In the present meta-analysis, we provide a high-powered test. Based on the above arguments and the findings of Berry, Ones, et al. (2007), we expect Agreeableness to be more strongly related to ID than OD.

Conscientiousness is an important trait when it comes to behaviors directed at the organization. Conscientious employees are more likely to follow rules, to work hard, to take initiatives (McCrae & Costa, 1992), and to adhere to organizational norms (Marcus & Schuler, 2004; Mount, Ilies, & Johnson, 2006). As Conscientiousness is not intrinsically interpersonal (McCrae & Costa, 1989), we expect its relation with OD to be stronger than its relation with ID. Indeed, findings of Berry, Ones, et al. (2007) hint at this direction: they found Conscientiousness to correlate more strongly with OD (r = −0.34, k = 8) than with ID (r = −0.19, k = 11).

The measurement of workplace deviance using either self- or other-ratings of workplace deviance has been of major concern to researchers in the past. Berry, Ones, et al. (2012) demonstrated that self-ratings seem to be a valid alternative to other-ratings of workplace deviance, but also showed that the personality domains of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism correlate more strongly with self-ratings than with other-ratings of workplace deviance. Such stronger correlations with self-rated workplace deviance may be reflective of same-source biases. However, same-source biases would result in stronger correlations of all personality domains with workplace deviance when self-ratings are used than when other-ratings are used. Another possibility is that especially those domains that are susceptible to socially desirable responding (i.e., Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism; Berry, Page, & Sackett, 2007; Li & Bagger, 2006) will show dissimilar relations with self- and other-ratings of workplace deviance because self-ratings of those personality domains will be inflated while self-ratings of workplace deviance will be deflated to appear socially desirable. We will therefore examine if the personality domains correlate differently with self- and other-ratings of workplace deviance.

Section snippets

Systematic literature search & coding

A systematic literature search was conducted on several scientific databases, including EBSCO, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, in December 2016. The keywords used to find articles were: Personality, Big 5, Big Five, Five-factor-model, FFM, HEXACO, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Neuroticism, Emotional Stability, Emotionality, Conscientiousness, Intellect, Honesty-Humility, Workplace Deviance, Interpersonal Deviance, Organizational Deviance, or Counterproductive Work

Personality predicting overall workplace deviance

Results for the meta-analytic relations between the B5 and HEXACO personality domains and workplace deviance are shown in Table 1. Consistent with our expectation, HEXACO Honesty-Humility (ρ = −0.482) showed the strongest correlation with workplace deviance out of all examined personality domains. Both Conscientiousness (B5 ρ = −0.372; HEXACO ρ = −0.403) and Agreeableness (B5 ρ = −0.362; HEXACO ρ = −0.194) were also significant predictors of workplace deviance. B5 Neuroticism (ρ = 0.192) and

Discussion

In an effort to provide a comprehensive overview of the relations between personality and workplace deviance, the current study is the first to meta-analytically compare the B5 with the HEXACO in predicting workplace deviance, or—for that matter—any organizational outcome. Our results indicate that when predicting workplace deviance, the HEXACO model outperforms the B5 model, and researchers and practitioners might therefore want to prioritize the HEXACO over the B5 when trying to predict

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