Almost Everyone Has a “Dark Side” at Work, Analysis of More Than 86,000 Professionals Finds
Hogan Assessments, a global leader in personality science, finds that just 0.11% show no moderate- or high-risk personality derailers, while the average person has nearly four
An impossible deadline. A sudden change in strategy. A difficult conversation with a manager. A week when everything feels urgent. It is often in moments like these that some of our best qualities can start working against us.
An analysis of 86,615 working adults found that just 0.11% showed no personality derailers at a moderate- or high-risk level. On average, each person showed 3.7 derailers, suggesting that nearly everyone has multiple personality tendencies that could interfere with performance, relationships, or reputation under the wrong circumstances.
Hogan Assessments refers to these tendencies as personality derailers: characteristics that can become more visible when people are under pressure or otherwise not operating at their best. Rather than inherently negative qualities, they are often strengths taken too far. Confidence can become overconfidence, attention to detail can turn into perfectionism, independence can become distance, and enthusiasm can turn into an excessive need for attention.
“The dark side of personality is not about separating good employees from bad ones,” said Alise Dabdoub, PhD, Director of Product Innovation and Data Science at Hogan Assessments. “Often, we are looking at qualities that contribute to someone’s success but become less effective when taken too far. The same characteristic that helps a person succeed in one situation can create problems in another, particularly when pressure increases.”
The Most Common Workplace Derailers
The Hogan Development Survey evaluates 11 personality dimensions. Among the professionals analyzed, the tendencies most frequently found at a high-risk level (in the 90th percentile) were:
Colorful — 14.3%: Expressiveness and social confidence can become attention-seeking or make it difficult to share the spotlight.
Cautious — 14.2%: Careful decision-making can shift into excessive hesitation or fear of failure.
Bold — 13.7%: Confidence and ambition can become overconfidence, entitlement or difficulty acknowledging mistakes.
Reserved — 13.0%: Independence and emotional composure can become distance or limited communication.
The percentages represent the share of people who scored at a high-risk level on each dimension.
Together, the findings challenge the idea that career-limiting behaviors belong only to a small group of “difficult” employees. Instead, personality risk appears to be a normal part of working life. What matters is when these tendencies emerge, how strongly they show up and whether people recognize them before they begin affecting others.
When Strengths Start Working Against Us
Derailers may become more visible during tight deadlines, heavy workloads, organizational change, uncertainty, conflict, or fatigue. Stress is not the only trigger: boredom, complacency or becoming overly comfortable can also make people less attentive to how their behavior is being perceived.
For Hogan, the goal is not to eliminate these tendencies or change someone’s personality. It is to develop strategic self-awareness: understanding which behaviors a person is most likely to overuse, recognizing what triggers them and paying attention to how they affect other people.
“One of the most useful things people can do is look for patterns in the feedback they receive,” Dabdoub said. “If you consistently hear that you wait too long to make decisions, dominate conversations or pull back when things become difficult, that can be a signal that one of your strengths is being overused. The idea isn’t to become a different person. It’s to recognize the pattern early enough to adjust your behavior.”
That awareness becomes even more important for leaders, whose behavior can influence trust, communication, and performance across an entire team.
“The question is not whether you have a dark side at work. The data suggests that almost everyone does,” Dabdoub said. “The more useful question is whether you understand what yours looks like and can recognize it before it starts getting in the way of your performance or your relationships.”
About the analysis: The analysis includes data from 86,615 working adults from Hogan’s Global Normative Group assessed using the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which evaluates 11 personality tendencies that can interfere with workplace performance when they are not managed effectively.
