People with high scores on the so-called Dark Factor of Personality have significantly less interest in social and creative jobs. This is shown by new research from the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS) and the Department of Psychology.
When choosing an education or job, your choice is not only based on skills and opportunities. Your personality plays a notable role, too - and according to new research, certain traits can cause you to disregard certain types of work.
This is also true for people who score high on the so-called Dark Factor of Personality (D), which represents one's tendency to put one's own interests above those of others, e.g., via using aggressiveness, cheating, or manipulation as a means to that end.
'We know that personality influences career choices, and now we could see for the first time how the dark core of personality is linked to which jobs people find interesting in the first place,' says Ingo Zettler, professor of personality and social behavior at the University of Copenhagen.
No thanks to social jobs
Together with visiting researcher Lea de Hesselle and other colleagues, they investigated the connection between the D factor and the so-called RIASEC model (developed by psychologist John L. Holland), which divides job interests as well as actual occupations into six categories: realistic (e.g., practical work), investigative (e.g., innovation), artistic (e.g., creativity), social (e.g., social interaction), enterprising (e.g., leadership), and conventional (e.g., rules and regulations).
What do people who are prone to theft, hate speech, lying or bullying have in common? Over 10 years of international research shows that aversive tendencies stem from a single personality trait: the Dark Factor of Personality (D).
In the book 'Dark Factor - die Essenz des Bösen in uns' (Ariston Publishing, 2025), Ingo Zettler and his co-authors delve deeper into everything that research currently knows about the Dark Factor.
The book (currently published in German) is based on over 10 years of research and data from more than 2 million people. It provides background knowledge on what D actually covers, how it can be measured, and why it relates to everything from socio-demographics, to political attitudes, from romantic relationship behavior to mental health, and much more.
