Political skill camouflages Machiavellianism: Career role performance and organizational misbehavior at short and long tenure

On the basis of socioanalytic theory (Hogan & Shelton, 1998) and mimicry-deception theory (Jones, 2014), we hypothesized that political skill would effectively mask Machiavellianism (socioanalytic theory) with consequences for coworker perceived career role performance and actual counterproductive work behavior at low and high levels of job tenure (mimicry-deception theory). We tested our hypotheses in a triangular multisource design in two complementary studies comprised of both target workers and coworkers with a total of N = 1438 participants. In Study 1, we found that when political skill was high, targets received high career role performance ratings from coworkers, and this was also the case when targets had high levels of Machiavellianism (socioanalytic masking effect). For targets with low political skill, the career role performance ratings of high Machiavellians was low at long tenure. The results of Study 2 partly disconfirmed mimicry-deception theory: Individuals high in Machiavellianism and high in political skill did not tend to avoid engaging in overtly mean behaviors toward others and extracting organizational resources at short tenure. Implications and limitations are discussed. •We jointly tested socioanalytic and mimicry deception theory.•We predicted career role performance and counterproductive work behavior.•We used a two-study triangular research design with 1438 study participants.•Political skill masked Machiavellianism as predicted by socioanalytic theory.•Mimicry deception theory was only partially supported by the data.