Research links aversive personality traits to vocational interests, suggesting implications for career choices.
Research on vocational interests has increasingly explored the role of aversive (“dark”) personality traits. Focusing on the core of all aversive traits, we herein link the D-Factor of Personality to Holland’s RIASEC dimensions (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional). Across six samples (total N = 8,409), both self-reports and objective occupational ratings consistently indicated negative relations between D and both social (−.50 ≤ r ≤ −.21) and artistic interests (−.31 ≤ r ≤ −.12). Concerning enterprising interests, heterogenous results were observed, with associations being positive in German samples, nonsignificant in US-based samples, and mixed in Danish occupational data. As expected, realistic, investigative, and conventional interests showed no consistent, substantial relations to D across samples.
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Hesselle et al. (2026) studied this question.
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