What Makes People Break the Rules at Work? Researching the Dark Side of Personality
This article was contributed by our Master of Business Psychology graduate, Alex Maroske.
Imagine you’re on a flight, 35,000 feet above the ground, trusting that every crew member is meticulously following safety protocols. But what if someone decided to skip a critical step? What if they thought, “It’s fine this time—I know better”? This kind of behaviour, known as workplace deviance, isn’t just a minor inconvenience in industries like aviation, healthcare, or mining. It can be the difference between life and death.
My research investigated motivations behind workplace rule-breaking behaviour. Specifically, I examined three personality traits collectively called the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Through these trait assessments we can predict which individuals within the workplace act out counterproductive workplace behaviours (CWBs) that include deceptiveness and unsafe methods during work. Studying these personality traits constitutes foundational knowledge to build safer workplaces with better ethical standards.
What Is Workplace Deviance, and Why Does It Matter?
Workplace deviance is the acts that violate organisational norms and cause harm either to the organisational or to its employees. The actions can run from a minor infraction like showing up to work late, to for more serious infractions, like stealing, sabotaging equipment, or bullying coworkers.
Small rule breaking behaviours, although small, can be catastrophic in safety critical industries such as aviation, oil rigs and emergency services. Skipping a preflight safety check like a minor thing but ends up being a system failure in mid-flight. In healthcare, of course, it is the same – the failure to follow patient care protocols can lead to lives being lost.
These high stakes environments mean it is important to understand why people engage in workplace deviance. I set out to establish what personality traits and conditions within the workplace help drive those behaviours and what we can do to stop them.
Meet the Dark Triad
The Dark Triad consists of three personality traits that are often linked to unethical or harmful behaviours:
Machiavellianism: The ultimate schemers, Machiavellian people, are manipulative, strategic and are often self-advance. Relationships are simply tools for getting what they want, and the ends always justifies the means. Take, for example, your work was manipulated by a manipulative colleague who would claim it as his to get promoted.
Narcissism: We all want to be liked by others, although narcissists tend to be very self-centred and see themselves as basically better than anyone else. They are endearing, charming, and have confidence, in their need for validation and entitlement there is a potential for conflicts and self-centred decisions. A manager however, disregards team input or even lets them know that their input isn’t even relevant.
Psychopathy: Perhaps the most dangerous of the three, psychopathy is marked by a lack of empathy, impulsivity, and a disregard for consequences. Psychopaths are good at deceiving, act with no guilt or remorse. Thus, a psychopathic individual in high-risk job may break safety rules and go for faster results, without paying attention to the repercussions.
These traits themselves are not inherently “evil,” but people who score high for one or more are more likely to engage in behaviours that threaten (or will threaten) workplace safety and cohesion. To understand the interaction between these traits and workplace factors like stress and culture is what my research focused on.
How I Conducted My Research
I surveyed 170 employees across industries to investigate the relationship of the Dark Triad traits and workplace deviance. Three tools provided a comprehensive understanding:
Short Dark Triad (SD3): A 27-item questionnaire that measured levels of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
Workplace Behavior Questionnaire (WBQ): Developed specifically for this study, the WBQ assessed how situational pressures influence rule-breaking tendencies. Key items of this scale include “To what extent does the lack of resources or inadequate training motivate you to consider alternative, non-standard methods?”, “How much does the potential for quick results motivate you to take risks, even if it involves cutting corners?”, “How likely are you to avoid seeking clarification to prevent appearing incompetent, even if it means deviating from protocols?”
Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist (CWB-C): This tool captured concrete instances of workplace deviance, such as theft, sabotage, and production inefficiencies.
Together, these tools revealed how personality traits, workplace stressors, and organizational culture interact to drive deviant behaviours.
Why Do People Break Rules at Work?
Breaking rules at work isn’t always done with bad intent. Deviance is often the result of a combination of personality traits, stress and the personality of the workplace culture. Here’s what my research uncovered:
Psychopathy Is the Biggest Predictor: Psychopathy was a most powerful predictor of workplace deviance among the Dark Triad traits. All without remorse, individuals scoring high on psychopathy were more likely to manipulate others, ignore safety protocols and take dangerous shortcuts.
Stress Fuels Rule-Breaking: Workplace stress magnifies deviant tendencies arising from lack of prior control of tight deadlines, shortage of resources, or heavy workloads. Although those with milder Dark Triad traits are still likely to behave riskily, stress acts like gasoline on a small fire making risky behaviour even more likely.
What Can We Do About It?
The good thing is workplace deviance is preventable. Based on my findings, here are some actionable strategies:
Integrate Personality Assessments into Hiring: The SD3 can be used to assist organisations in recognising that individuals holding psychopathy traits are high risk for being placed in critical roles.
Strengthen Safety Cultures: Be consistent and enforcing the rules, promoting ethical leadership and open communication. If employees see leaders being on the other side of ethical behaviour, they’ll do the same.
Reduce Stress and Burnout: Resilience training, flexible schedules, providing the resources to enable employees to do their job safely—invest in these three things.
Leverage Technology for Monitoring: Wearable devices can provide real time tracking of employee stress, and behavioural analytics can identify malicious activities, even before mistakes or unsafe practises occur.
Why This Research Matters
My results are particularly relevant to high-risk industries but are more broadly applicable. Knowledge of psychological and environmental factors that operate to drive deviant behaviour on the job can be leveraged by organisations in all sectors to produce more safe and productive environments.
On an Oil Rig as an example — these findings might assist in preventing bullying or favouritism among staff. But in the corporate office they could at least reduce unethical activities like fraud or data breaches. In the end, establishing trust and accountability goes back to being able to align individual behaviour with organisational values.
Looking Ahead
Workplace deviance still has much to learn. More work could be done to understand how these behaviours change over time, or the cultural differences that influence the impact of the Dark Triad in global organisations.
What’s clear is this: and the study doesn’t stop there — it’s not an academic exercise seeking to understand traits such as Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. It is an operational tool to create workplaces where safety, ethics and trust are the norm rather than the exception.
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