The Relationship of Dark Triad and Job Satisfaction among Helping Professionals
The Relationship of Dark Triad and Job Satisfaction among Helping Professionals

Summary/Abstract: Background: While the personality of helping professionals has been the subject of research for quite some time, the approach towards this has changed over this period. While most research (e.g. Bakker et al., 2006; Mlcák & Záskodná, 2008) focuses more on adaptive personality traits - the so called „bright side“ (Oluf & Furnham, 2015) -, less attention was paid to the fact that, as with every person, a helping professional possesses, to some degree , maladaptive personality traits, or a „dark side“. The job attitude of the helping professional results from two motivating factors detected in the workers in human services; one is perceived satisfaction and a positive feeling from helping others (Kopřiva, 1997); the other is a desire for power and control over the client (Guggenbuhl-Craig, 2007). The question that naturally arises is whether the helping profession can satisfy even the darker needs of the worker if it follows that perceived job satisfaction does not necessarily have to be related only to the granting of aid, but may also be due to such darker motivation. Aim: The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship of three aversive personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy - nowadays known by experts as the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002) - ; with work satisfaction on a sample of helping professionals - pedagogical workers, healthcare workers, rescue workers and social workers. Method: The study was conducted on a sample of 151 participants from different sectors of the helping professions (Mage = 37.13; SD = 11.83). Females represented 71.5% of all respondents (N = 108), aged 19 to 65 (Mage = 38; SD = 12.6). Males represented the remaining 28.5% of respondents (N = 43), aged 20 to 62 (Mage = 34.9; SD = 9.5). Four groups of helping professionals were identified: pedagogical workers (PG) - kindergarten teachers, elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers (47.7%); healthcare workers (HC) - doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, sanitary workers, dental technicians (21.9%); rescue workers (RS) - policemen, firemen, rescuers, soldiers (23.8%); social workers (SW) – social workers, psychologists, special pedagogues (6.6%). A convenience and purposive sampling method was used. The Slovak version of Short Dark Triad - SD3 (Jones & Paulhus, 2014; Čopková, in review) and the Slovak version of Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1985; Mesárošová, 2016) were administered. The Slovak version of Short Dark Triad consists of 27 items that saturate three subscales – Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy. Each dimension consists of 9 items. The respondent responds to a 5-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). The indicators of the internal consistency of the scales expressed by the McDonald´s omega coefficient were as follows - ωm = 0.745; ωn = 0.619; ωp = 0.792. Slovak version of Job satisfaction survey is based on the original Job satisfaction survey (Spector, 1985; Mesárošová, 2016)), which is aimed at capturing job satisfaction in the humanitarian sectors, so its use is suitable for a sample of helping professionals. It contains 36 items. The respondent answers on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree). Nine factors of job satisfaction are saturated with four items in the questionnaire, and these are distributed across the– pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, rewards, conditions, co-workers, nature of work, and communication. The indicators of internal consistency of the scales expressed by the McDonald´s omega coefficient were satisfactory - ωf1 = 0.807; ωf2 = 0.629; ωf3 = 0.826; ωf4 = 0.659; ωf5 = 0.713; ωf6 = 0.602; ωf7 = 0.722; ωf8 = 0.791; ωf9 = 0.776; ωjss = 0.899. Results: Significant negative relationships were identified between Machiavellianism and satisfaction with coworkers (r = - 0.342**), nature of work (r = - 0.162*), communication (r = - 0.343**). Narcissism had a significant positive relationship with the satisfaction with promotion (r = 0.224**), but had a negative significant relationship with satisfaction with co-workers (r = - 0.262**) and communication (r = - 0.173*). Psychopathy had negative significant relationships with satisfaction with supervision (r = - 0.224**), co-workers (r = - 0.296**), the nature of work (r = - 0.306**) and communication (r = - 0.236**). Machiavellianism (r = - 0.227**) and psychopathy (r = - 0.173*) have a significant negative relationship with overall job satisfaction. The Dark Triad had only very weak relationships with those elements of work related to financial and non-financial remuneration, such as pay, benefits and rewards. The analysis of the relationship between the Dark Triad and working conditions led to the same results. The Dark Triad concept predicted a 38.2% variation in job satisfaction among helping professionals. The regression analysis indicated that the Dark Triad significantly predicted overall job satisfaction (F(3/147) = 3.013; p = 0.032; R2 = 0.058), satisfaction with co-workers (F(3/147) = 8.093; p <0.001; R2 = 0.142), communication (F(3/147) = 6.842; p <0.001; R2 = 0,123), promotion (F(3/147) = 3.437; p = 0.019; R2 = 0.066) and the nature of work (F(3/147) = 5.438; p = 0.001; R2 = 0.100). Conclusion: In spite of some limits, we consider the results of our study to be beneficial as they have shown that helping professionals, who are automatically expected to be selfless and prosocial, also have some aversive personality traits, which may be a significant element in how helping professional consider individual elements of their work satisfaction. Therefore, it is equally important and interesting to consider how the aversive traits of helping professionals are related to their job satisfaction. In particular, the clarification of the predictive strength of the Dark Triad traits in relation to helping professionals’ job satisfaction is a valuable finding of our research.

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