Associations of HEXACO and dark traits with power and gender harassment

要旨

Workplace harassment carries substantial individual and organizational costs, yet the roles of antagonistic ‘dark’ traits and broader personality remain debated. In a cross-sectional online survey of 354 currently employed Japanese adults recruited via Lancers, we tested whether HEXACO traits—especially Honesty–Humility (H–H)—are associated with self-reported power and gender harassment perpetration tendencies beyond the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy), and whether predictor structure differs by sex. Participants completed the HEXACO-60, the SD3-J, and validated harassment measures. HC3-robust hierarchical regressions showed that psychopathy was positively associated with power-harassment perpetration tendencies ( β ≈ 0.32–0.40, p < 0.001), whereas H–H was negatively associated (β = −0.14, p = 0.049). For gender-harassment perpetration tendencies, narcissism and psychopathy were positive predictors, while H–H and Openness were negative; Machiavellianism showed a negative coefficient in the multivariate models. Adding HEXACO traits explained additional variance beyond Dark Triad-only models (ΔR 2 = 0.032, p = 0.036 for power; ΔR 2 = 0.096, p < 0.001 for gender). Sex-stratified analyses revealed a meaningful divergence in predictor structure: among men, Openness was the dominant negative predictor of gender-harassment perpetration tendencies ( β = −0.44, p < 0.001), whereas among women H–H and Machiavellianism (negative, conditional on the other Dark Triad traits) were the most prominent predictors. We interpret these findings cautiously: incremental variance from H–H is consistent with—but does not by itself establish—a moral-personality contribution distinct from antagonistic traits, an inference that ultimately requires latent-variable modeling. Findings are framed as patterns of association in a Japanese employee sample rather than as evidence of universal mechanisms.

主題