Over the last 15 years, there has been growing fascination among scholars in studying “dark behaviors” and “dark traits,” especially as they are expressed in organizational contexts. One taxonomy of dark traits that has garnered special interest is the dark triad (DT), which is comprised of three toxic and malevolent traits: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. This chapter offers a review of DT research, with a particular focus on research relevant to the organizational sciences. We begin with a definition of personality in general and the traits of the DT in particular, including a discussion of the clinical and subclinical variants of these traits. We then review literature linking the DT traits to an array of organizational outcomes, discuss how the DT traits may be assessed, and conclude with recommendations for future work.

Objective Sleep problems and alcohol misuse are common issues experienced by college students that can have detrimental effects on overall health. Previous work indicates a strong relationship between poor sleep quality and alcohol risk in this population. This study explored the moderating effect of drinking motives in the relationship between global sleep quality and experience of alcohol-related negative consequences. Participants College students (N = 1,878) who reported past-month drinking. Methods Participants completed online surveys assessing sleep and alcohol-related behaviors. Results Poorer sleep quality and higher drinking motives (coping, conformity, and enhancement) predicted greater alcohol-related consequences, controlling for drinking. Further, coping motives moderated the relationship between sleep quality and consequences such that participants reporting poor sleep and high coping motives experienced heightened levels of consequences. Conclusions These findings advance the understanding of the relationship between sleep problems and alcohol-related risk and provide implications for targeted campus-based health promotion interventions.

Objective Students with poor mental health are at increased risk for problematic alcohol use. These students also tend to underutilize alcohol-related protective behavioral strategies (PBS). Cross-sectional studies indicate that PBS use may be particularly useful for students with mental health challenges; however, it is unclear whether training these students to use PBS is an effective approach for reducing alcohol use and consequences. The current study evaluated the efficacy of a standalone PBS skills training and personalized feedback (PBS-STPF) intervention among students accessing mental health services. Method Participants (N = 251) were randomly assigned to either an individual facilitator-led PBS-STPF intervention or a health-related control condition. Participants completed online follow-up surveys 1- and 6-months post-intervention which included measures of alcohol use, negative consequences and a composite measure of PBS use. Results Relative to control participants, students in the PBS-STPF condition reported significantly greater PBS use, but no differences in alcohol use or consequences. Participants in both conditions reported decreases in drinking outcomes over time. Tests of mediation indicated that the intervention indirectly led to reduction in drinking outcomes at 6 months through increased PBS use. Conclusions Although the intervention resulted in changes in PBS use that were maintained for up to 6 months post-intervention, the effects of the intervention on drinking and consequences were limited. A brief standalone PBS training may need augmentation in order to promote effective use of PBS for substantial decreases in alcohol consequences.

Lawrence R. James spent the last 20 years of his 35-year career developing and validating a new theory of personality that he called conditional reasoning. This theory was focused on mapping and measuring core aspects of the implicit (i.e., unconscious) personality. In this article, we (a) review James’s seminal contributions to the theory and measurement of conditional reasoning, (b) discuss subsequent contributions made in the area of conditional reasoning, and (c) provide a brief “look under the hood” at James’s approach to test development and validation. This final section of our paper is designed to familiarize other researchers with the protocols that James and his colleagues have used over the past 20 years. Many of these protocols have gone unmentioned or only briefly acknowledged (e.g., in conference presentations or informal meetings); indeed, many of these validation protocols were “implicit” in the thinking of James and his approach to the study of personality. Having benefited from working closely with James, we were privy to many of these implicit assumptions and protocols that privately guided James’s early work on conditional reasoning.

This study examined the pathways of parenting style (permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative) to alcohol consumption and consequences through the mediators of college adjustment and academic achievement (grade point average [GPA]). Participants were 289 students from a private, mid-size, West Coast university (mean age 19.01 years, 58.8% female, and 59.3% Caucasian) who completed online surveys. A path model discovered that receipt of permissive and authoritarian parenting uniquely predicted poorer college adjustment, but authoritative parenting predicted better college adjustment. Further, authoritarian parenting predicted lower GPA, but authoritative parenting predicted higher GPA. Better college adjustment, in turn, was predictive of fewer negative alcohol-related consequences, whereas higher GPA predicted lower drinking levels. Preventive implications for collegiate counseling centers and collaborative campus-wide health promotion efforts are discussed.