Personality Traits Are Associated with Research Misbehavior in Dutch Scientists: A Cross-Sectional Study

Joeri K Tijdink, Lex M Bouter, Coosje L S Veldkamp, Peter M van de Ven, Jelte M Wicherts and Yvo M Smulders

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-12

Abstract: Background: Personality influences decision making and ethical considerations. Its influence on the occurrence of research misbehavior has never been studied. This study aims to determine the association between personality traits and self-reported questionable research practices and research misconduct. We hypothesized that narcissistic, Machiavellianistic and psychopathic traits as well as self-esteem are associated with research misbehavior. Methods: Included in this cross-sectional study design were 535 Dutch biomedical scientists (response rate 65%) from all hierarchical layers of 4 university medical centers in the Netherlands. We used validated personality questionnaires such as the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism), Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, the Publication Pressure Questionnaire (PPQ), and also demographic and job-specific characteristics to investigate the association of personality traits with a composite research misbehavior severity score. Findings: Machiavellianism was positively associated (beta 1.28, CI 1.06–1.53) with self-reported research misbehavior, while narcissism, psychopathy and self-esteem were not. Exploratory analysis revealed that narcissism and research misconduct were more severe among persons in higher academic ranks (i.e., professors) (p

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0163251 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 63251&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0163251

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163251

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().