EDITORIAL article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1656269
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Heavy Work Investment: Multidimensional Constructs and Work Outcome VarianceView all 7 articles
Editorial : Exploring Heavy Work Investment: Multidimensional Constructs and Work
Provisionally accepted
- 1HEC Montréal, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
- 2Tel-Hai College, Upper Galilee, Israel
- 3Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
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studies (71,625 participants) across 23 countries. With an overall pooled prevalence of 15.2%, the analysis reveals that roughly one in seven employees may be affected by workaholism. Metaregression showed that studies using nationally representative samples reported significantly lower prevalence (around 9.8%), while non-representative samples yielded higher estimates. Triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) interacted with career interests to predict subjective and objective career success among 300 South African professionals. They found that the association between narcissism and higher career success is amplified for individuals with enterprising interests, while Machiavellianism was linked to better success when social interests were high. In contrast, psychopathy showed limited predictive value for career outcomes regardless of interest type. The study situates its findings within personenvironment fit theory, highlighting that Dark Triad traits can be leveraged adaptively depending on one's vocational interests. The authors acknowledge limitations to their study, including crosssectional design and self-report measures, and call for longitudinal and multi-method approaches to clarify causal pathways.
Keywords: Heavy-Work-Investment, Workaholism, Engagement (involvement), commitment, Health Outcomes
Received: 29 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vandenberghe, Tziner and Acosta-Prado. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Christian Vandenberghe, HEC Montréal, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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