Personality Interactions in the Workplace: Light and Dark Sides of Human Behavior

Personality plays a central role in shaping interpersonal dynamics and performance within organizations. While traditional research has focused on individual traits, recent developments highlight the importance of examining personality in interaction, particularly through dyadic and relational lenses. This shift aligns with social exchange and interactionist perspectives, which emphasize how reciprocal patterns, compatibility, and personality complementarity shape workplace behaviors and outcomes. Furthermore, interest in socially aversive traits such as the Dark Tetrad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism) has expanded understanding of counterproductive and complex social dynamics at work. Integrating these lines of research offers a promising avenue to elucidate how personality interacts within dyads and teams, influencing cooperation, conflict, leadership, and overall organizational functioning.

The goal of this Research Topic is to advance understanding of how personality traits, and their interactions, shape workplace relationships and outcomes. While much research has examined personality at the individual level, less is known about how traits interact within dyads and groups to influence behavior, emotions, and performance. This gap is particularly salient when considering both adaptive and maladaptive traits, including those within the Dark Tetrad, which may uniquely affect social exchange processes, trust, and cooperation. Recent advances in dyadic and multilevel modeling, social network analysis, and interactionist frameworks now allow for more nuanced examinations of these dynamics. By integrating perspectives from personality psychology, social exchange theory, and organizational behavior, this Research Topic seeks to uncover how combinations of traits predict workplace dynamics and outcomes, offering insights for leadership development, team composition, and organizational interventions that promote healthy and effective interpersonal functioning.

The Research Topic invites contributions that explore the interplay of personality traits and their influence on workplace interactions, with particular attention to dyadic, relational, and social exchange perspectives.

We welcome submissions examining how personality configurations shape cooperation, conflict, leadership, trust, and well-being across hierarchical and peer relationships.

Studies integrating dark personality traits (e.g., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) and their impact on organizational processes are particularly encouraged.

Authors may employ diverse methodologies, including experimental, longitudinal, cross-sectional, dyadic, network, and multilevel approaches, as well as reviews.

Manuscript types of interest include original research, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses that contribute to a deeper understanding of personality-driven dynamics in the workplace and offer implications for organizational development.

Keywords: Dark Tetrad, Dyadic processes, Social exchange theory, Workplace relationships, Interpersonal interactions

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.