Do grit and honesty change how job stress leads to bad behaviour at work?
Workers facing more job demands felt more exhausted and, through that exhaustion, reported more counterproductive behaviour at work; grit weakened the step from exhaustion to bad behaviour, while low honesty-humility unexpectedly weakened the step from demands to exhaustion.
Source
Grit or Honesty-Humility? New Insights into the Moderating Role of Personality between the Health Impairment Process and Counterproductive Work Behavior
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Single-time-point questionnaire survey analysed with regression and a PROCESS moderated-mediation model (job demands -> exhaustion -> CWB, with Honesty-Humility and Grit as moderators)
- N
- N=208 · 208 employees who returned the questionnaire (80% response rate)
- Population
- Italian employees in the private service sector, aged 20 to 60, mostly clerks
- Outcome
- Self-reported counterproductive work behaviour (CWB); exhaustion as mediator; Honesty-Humility (HEXACO) and Short Grit Scale as moderators
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What they did
The researchers surveyed 208 employees in the Italian private service sector with one questionnaire. It measured three job demands (role conflict, emotional demands and administrative hassles), emotional exhaustion, counterproductive work behaviour such as complaining about work to colleagues or outsiders, and two personality traits: Honesty-Humility from the HEXACO model and Grit (perseverance and passion for long-term goals). They tested whether exhaustion carried the effect of job demands on counterproductive behaviour and whether each trait changed the strength of either step.
What they found
Job demands were linked to counterproductive behaviour, but once exhaustion was taken into account the direct link shrank from a standardised coefficient of 0.18 to a non-significant 0.08, consistent with full mediation through exhaustion. Grit moderated the second step: among less gritty workers, exhaustion was more strongly tied to counterproductive behaviour. Honesty-Humility moderated the first step in an unexpected direction: job demands were more strongly linked to exhaustion in people higher in Honesty-Humility. Both traits correlated negatively with demands, exhaustion and counterproductive behaviour.
The limits
What it doesn't show
All variables were measured at one time with self-report questionnaires, so the study cannot establish that demands cause exhaustion or that exhaustion causes counterproductive behaviour; the authors call the lack of longitudinal data the most important limitation. Counterproductive behaviour was self-reported with five items focused mostly on complaining, which may miss more serious behaviours and is open to social-desirability bias. The sample came from one sector in Italy and was drawn from a larger multi-purpose study, so it may not generalise to other jobs, especially high-burnout professions. Mediation in cross-sectional data describes a pattern of associations rather than a demonstrated causal chain.
Key terms
- Counterproductive work behaviour (CWB)
- Deliberate actions that go against an organisation's interests, from sabotage or theft to gossip and complaining about work.
- Mediation
- When one variable (here exhaustion) carries the association between a predictor (job demands) and an outcome (CWB).
- Moderation
- When the strength or direction of a relationship depends on a third variable, such as a personality trait.
- Honesty-Humility
- The sixth HEXACO personality dimension, describing a tendency to be sincere, fair and unwilling to exploit others.
- Grit
- A trait defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, measured here with the Short Grit Scale.
- Health impairment process
- The Job Demands-Resources model's pathway in which high job demands wear people down, producing burnout that then harms outcomes.
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Quiz yourself
In this study, what role did exhaustion play in the model?
Common questions
What does 'full mediation' mean in this study?
It means that once exhaustion was included in the model, job demands no longer predicted counterproductive behaviour directly; their link ran through exhaustion. In cross-sectional data, though, this is a statistical pattern, not proof of a causal sequence.
Why was the Honesty-Humility result surprising?
The authors expected honest, humble people to be protected, but demands were more strongly tied to exhaustion in those high on the trait. They suggest cooperative people may take on extra load that others would avoid.
Does this mean companies should hire gritty people to prevent misconduct?
Not on this evidence alone. The data are correlational, self-reported and from one sector, so they suggest grit is associated with a weaker exhaustion-to-CWB link rather than showing that hiring for grit would reduce misconduct.
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