Antisocial Behavior Quotes

“The fact that we are so incredibly uninterested in what is happening inside the person closest to us is probably the source of many problems.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Everybody knows that if people hang around for any length of time in an urban area without purpose they are likely to become “antisocial.”
― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays

“I'm also comfortably asocial--a hermit in the middle of Seattle--a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“Zettler and Hilbig (2010) examined counterproductive behaviors—such as stealing from work, showing up late, being rude to coworkers, and other acts—in a sample of employees. The researchers wanted to understand how personality characteristics would be related to counterproductive behavior. To find out, they asked the employees to give anonymous self-reports about their personality, about their workplace, and about their counterproductive behavior at work. The findings of Zettler and Hilbig showed, not surprisingly, that employees who were high in Honesty–Humility generally engaged in little counterproductive behavior. In contrast, employees who were low in Honesty–Humility did a lot more counterproductive behavior.

But Zettler and Hilbig noted that this finding only applied to some of the low-Honesty–Humility employees. It depended on whether the employee worked in a place where there was a lot of “organizational politics”—for example, where employees could get ahead simply by agreeing with the boss or by having the right network of allies.

Employees who were low in Honesty–Humility did a lot of counterproductive behavior if they worked in places that were very “political,” but not if they worked in places that were not so political.

Presumably, workplaces with more organizational politics tend to make employees feel that self-serving behaviors (including some counterproductive acts) are normal and that punishment for those behaviors is less likely. In such a workplace, employees low in Honesty–Humility are therefore likely to act on the temptation to commit counterproductive behaviors, but employees high in Honesty–Humility remain untempted. The researchers noted that these findings were an example of a person-by-situation interaction: In one situation, the personality characteristic of low Honesty–Humility was expressed through counterproductive behavior, but in another situation, it was not.”
― Michael C. Ashton, Individual Differences and Personality