SummaryThere is an inherent interest in the implications of psychopathic employees, although attention, to date, is more pronounced in public media than in the scientific literature. In this study, we use behavioral threshold theory to propose a curvilinear relationship between employees' psychopathy and their counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Our predictions were corroborated across three studies involving two countries while controlling for narcissism and Machiavellianism. Specifically, we find that the destructive nature of psychopathy is amplified with accelerated levels of CWB among individuals high on psychopathy. These results address mixed and unexpected findings in the literature, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of the psychopathy–CWB relationship. Drawing additionally on trait activation theory, we examine the moderating effects of social context as manifested in relationship conflict with coworkers and abusive supervision. Results support the moderated hypotheses such that the psychopathy–CWB curvilinear relationship is stronger in negative social environments for both self‐rated and other‐rated CWB assessments. As the relationships between individuals' dark traits and behavioral outcomes are likely more complex than simple linear relations, we advocate future research to combine complementary theoretical lenses for improved theoretical precision.

中文翻译：

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坏桶里的烂苹果：精神变态、适得其反的工作行为以及社会背景的作用

摘要 人们对精神病员工的影响有着内在的兴趣，尽管迄今为止，公共媒体的关注比科学文献中的关注更为明显。在本研究中，我们使用行为阈值理论提出员工的精神病与其反生产性工作行为（CWB）之间的曲线关系。我们的预测在涉及两个国家的三项研究中得到了证实，同时控制了自恋和马基雅维利主义。具体来说，我们发现，随着精神变态程度高的个体 CWB 水平的加快，精神变态的破坏性也会被放大。这些结果解决了文献中混合且意想不到的发现，从而提供了对精神病与 CWB 关系的更细致的理解。此外，我们还利用特质激活理论，研究了社会背景的调节作用，如与同事的关系冲突和虐待性监督所体现的那样。结果支持了经过调节的假设，即对于自我评价和其他评价的 CWB 评估，在消极的社会环境中，精神病与 CWB 曲线关系更强。由于个体的黑暗特质和行为结果之间的关系可能比简单的线性关系更复杂，我们主张未来的研究结合互补的理论视角以提高理论精度。