Bad-person Theories

Adrian Furnham and John Taylor

Chapter 5 in The Dark Side of Behaviour at Work, 2004, pp 130-143 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter is about individualistic, person-centred explanations for counterproductive behaviour. Psychologists have long talked about the fundamental attribution error, which is essentially the idea that people like to explain behaviour by using personality trait, internal or dispositional causes rather than external or situation causes. Thus asked to explain why someone is frequently absent or has many accidents they prefer to explain the former behaviour in terms, say, of hypochondria or laziness and the latter behaviour in terms of clumsiness or simply accident proneness. Most people ignore or underplay the many other external and situational factors that might play a role. Thus a person may be frequently absent because of a dying parent or accident prone because of poor factory layout, machinery or safety rules in an organization.

Keywords: Personality Disorder; Workplace Bully; Dysfunctional Parent; Counterproductive Behaviour; Fundamental Attribution Error (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-51010-4_5

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230510104_5

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