Rotten apples in bad barrels: Psychopathy, counterproductive work behavior, and the role of social context
研究发现员工精神病态与反生产工作行为呈曲线关系，且这种关系在负面社会情境（如同事冲突、苛责管理）下会增强，为理解黑暗人格与行为后果的复杂性提供了新视角。
Summary There is an inherent interest in the implications of psychopathic employees, although attention, to date, is more pronounced in public media than in the scientific literature. In this study, we use behavioral threshold theory to propose a curvilinear relationship between employees' psychopathy and their counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Our predictions were corroborated across three studies involving two countries while controlling for narcissism and Machiavellianism. Specifically, we find that the destructive nature of psychopathy is amplified with accelerated levels of CWB among individuals high on psychopathy. These results address mixed and unexpected findings in the literature, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of the psychopathy–CWB relationship. Drawing additionally on trait activation theory, we examine the moderating effects of social context as manifested in relationship conflict with coworkers and abusive supervision. Results support the moderated hypotheses such that the psychopathy–CWB curvilinear relationship is stronger in negative social environments for both self‐rated and other‐rated CWB assessments. As the relationships between individuals' dark traits and behavioral outcomes are likely more complex than simple linear relations, we advocate future research to combine complementary theoretical lenses for improved theoretical precision.