Vulnerable and dominant: Bright and dark side personality traits and values of individuals in organized crime in Denmark.

In this paper, we build on a robust literature on push and pull factors to focus on the personality traits and values of individuals involved in organized crime. We distinguish organized crime from other kinds of criminal activity and recruit a unique sample of non-incarcerated individuals verified by the Danish National Police to be involved in organized crime. We use comprehensive standardized psychological assessments of their big five personality traits, maladaptive dark traits and core values and drivers to compare them to an adult norm group. Danish individuals involved in organized crime are much less emotionally stable (d = 1.84), ambitious and self-confident (d = 1.50), agreeable (d = 0.87) and conscientious (d = 0.65) than the norm group. At the same time, they have substantially higher scores on all but one of the 11 dark traits (Cohen's d ranging from 0.39 to 3.10). They are characterized by a high need for security (d = 1.14) as well as material (d = 0.96) and financial success (d = 0.81). While these patterns fit results previously found in the criminological literature, a latent class analysis reveals two separate groups. A subset of one third of our sample had somewhat less depressed scores on the big five and more moderate scores on the dark traits, indicating more adaptive personality structures. We consider this novel finding in terms of potential exits from a milieu of organized crime.

Either or? Reconciling Findings on Mental Health and Extremism using a Dimensional Rather than Categorical Paradigm.

The background for this paper is the debate over what role mental illness plays in radicalization to violent extremism. While one camp points to cases of abnormal functioning of perpetrators, another argues that normal psychological mechanisms are central. Through a review of these perspectives, it becomes clear that mental illness cannot be ruled out as an epi-phenomenon, but is not a necessary condition either. The paper draws on work in psychiatric nosology on dimensional and categorical conceptions of illness and argues that the perspectives in this literature reflect a categorical approach to normal and abnormal functioning. Under a dimensional perspective, findings converge. The paper concludes by showing how this new dimensional approach to the role of mental illness in radicalization has implications for the design of risk assessment tools and leads to the recommendation for stronger inter-agency cooperation between mental health professionals, social services, and police and intelligence services.

The predictive validity of charge nurse personality on objective and subjective performance of subordinates.

AIM: This study examines the degree to which the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) predicts leadership effectiveness for charge nurses in Danish hospitals. BACKGROUND: Personality tests are implemented in health care management in an effort to improve evidence-based personnel selection and recruit more efficient leaders. However, relatively few studies of the predictive validity of personality have been conducted in hospital management. METHODS: Charge nurses (n = 177) from three Danish hospitals completed a five-factor, model-based personality inventory. These were coupled with data from 3,497 subordinates. Cluster-robust regression analysis was used to investigate relationships between personality and short-term sickness absence and satisfaction and leadership ratings for the subordinates. RESULTS: Low subordinate sickness absence was related to leader extraversion and conscientiousness. Employee satisfaction was related to leader emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness. Leadership ratings were associated with emotional stability. CONCLUSIONS: Personality predicted both objective and subjective measures of performance, although the effects were stronger for objective than subjective measures. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The results lend support to the use of validated personality measures in recruiting and promoting nurses in the health care sector. The use of personality tests should support rather than replace other talent-management measures.

The higher you climb: Dark side personality and job level.

The purpose of this study was to explore the idea that there are dark side personality differences in the profiles of people at different levels in organizations. This study replicates and extends existing leadership research by focusing on self-defeating behavioral tendencies. A Danish consultancy provided data on 264 adults based on assessment reports. This paper explored linear and quadratic relationships between personality and de facto job level. More senior managers scored high on Cluster B/Moving Against Others scales of Bold, Colorful and Imaginative, and low on Cautious and Dutiful. These Danish data are compared to data from Great Britain and New Zealand which show very similar findings. Practice should take into account that dark side personality traits associated with an assertive, sometimes hostile, interpersonal orientation, predict leadership level up to a point.

Personality disorders and the DSM-5: Scientific and extra-scientific factors in the maintenance of the status quo.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to review and discuss the evidence for dimensional classification of personality disorders and the historical and sociological bases of psychiatric nosology and research. METHOD: Categorical and dimensional conceptualisations of personality disorder are reviewed, with a focus on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-system's categorisation and the Five-Factor Model of personality. This frames the events leading up to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, personality disorder debacle, where the implementation of a hybrid model was blocked in a last-minute intervention by the American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustees. Explanations for these events are discussed, including the existence of invisible colleges of researchers and the fear of risking a 'scientific revolution' in psychiatry. RESULTS: A failure to recognise extra-scientific factors at work in classification of mental illness can have a profound and long-lasting influence on psychiatric nosology. In the end it was not scientific factors that led to the failure of the hybrid model of personality disorders, but opposing forces within the mental health community in general and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, Task Force in particular. CONCLUSION: Substantial evidence has accrued over the past decades in support of a dimensional model of personality disorders. The events surrounding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group show the difficulties in reconciling two different worldviews with a hybrid model. They also indicate the future of a psychiatric nosology that will be increasingly concerned with dimensional classification of mental illness. As such, the road is paved for more substantial changes to personality disorder classification in the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision, in 2017.