Personality
Do grit and honesty change how job stress leads to bad behaviour at work?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
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.
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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Key findings
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.
Methodology
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.
Limitations
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.
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