Why employee psychopathy leads to counterproductive workplace behaviours : an analysis of the underlying mechanisms

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine possible explanatory mechanisms linking employee secondary psychopathy to counterproductive workplace behaviour (CWB). Based on the emotion-centred model of voluntary work behaviour we argue that secondary psychopathy is characterized by unfavourable cognitive appraisal tendencies, which in turn positively relate to negative affectivity. We further assume that this cognitive-affective process enhances CWB. We also include primary psychopathy into our research model to test if the presumed mechanism applies to both psychopathy dimensions. We collected daily-survey data from 470 employees (1670 days) and analysed these data using multilevel structured equation modelling. We found strong support for the hypothesized serial mediation model, indicating that secondary psychopathy triggers dysfunctional cognitive-affective tendencies and consequently increases the likelihood of CWB. The proposed model did not hold up for primary psychopathy. Our study outlines the presence of distorted cognition-affective patterns in employee secondary psychopathy only. These patterns seem to play a key role in explaining the link between employee secondary psychopathy and deviant workplace behaviour. Based on this procedural knowledge relevant implications for theory and practice are provided.     

WHAT DO FEMINISTS BELIEVE?

When a woman says "I am a feminist" what does she mean? What do other people think she means? We asked 71 women to complete the Feminist Perspectives Scale (Henley, Meng, O'Brien, McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998) from their own perspective and from the perspective of a "typical feminist." Women who self-identified as feminists had stronger beliefs than those who did not on all feminist perspectives except cultural feminism. Both groups believed that a typical feminist held stronger radical, socialist, and cultural feminist beliefs than they themselves did, although the discrepancies were greater for nonfeminists. Nonfeminists viewed a typical feminist as endorsing stronger cultural feminist views than did feminists. Our results indicate that feminist self-identity is related to endorsement of feminist ideologies, and that both feminists and nonfeminists think that a typical feminist is more extreme than they are. The results also suggest that cultural feminism is a contested ideology; it is not endorsed by feminists, but is ascribed to them by nonfeminists