Maladaptive Personality at Work: Exploring the Darkness

Important changes in how personality is conceptualized and measured are occurring in clinical psychology. We focus on 1 aspect of this work that industrial psychologists have been slow to embrace, namely, a new trait model that can be viewed as a maladaptive counterpart to the Big 5. There is a conspicuous absence of work psychology research emerging on this trait model despite important implications for how we understand personality at work. We discuss objections to the trait model in a work context and offer rejoinders that might make researchers and practitioners consider applying this model in their work. We hope to stimulate discussion of this topic to avoid an unnecessary bifurcation in the conceptualization of maladaptive personality between industrial and clinical settings.