A review of the personality traits underlying workplace impression management

Abstract

This chapter reviews and discusses the literature on how personality is associated with workplace impression management (IM). After providing a brief overview of the core theories underlying investigations of how individual differences such as personality influence IM behaviour, we review the influences on IM of personality traits from broad personality models (e.g., HEXACO, Big Five/FFM) as well as of other influential traits (e.g., Dark Triad traits, political skill and will, proactivity, self-esteem, self-monitoring). We focus on both IM use overall, as well as unique relations with specific IM tactics. We highlight that (low) Honesty-Humility (and related dark personality traits) appear to play an important role in predicting most IM behaviours. Finally, we propose directions for future research on personality and workplace IM.