Derailers - Dark-Side Personality
Derailers
Dark-Side Personality
Derailers is a measure of a person's least flattering personality characteristics which emerge when they are under pressure, commonly referred to as 'the dark side.' The assessment was developed by Podium with Dr Nigel Guenole of MeasureCo.ai, one of our external scientific advisers.
There has been a renewed interest in what industry insiders refer to as 'the dark side' of personality which focuses on dysfunctional behaviours.
Important changes in how personality is conceptualised and measured have led to a new maladaptive trait model that is well summarised by the opposite poles of the well-known Big-Five model of personality. Some industrial psychologists have talked of a 'too-much-of-a-good-thing effect' and started to discuss how high scores at the positive end of the Big Five can have negative implications for performance.
There is a good case to be made that maladaptive personality profiles can be usefully and legally applied in personnel-related decision-making as long as job analysis has identified that lower standing on these traits is important for job performance, and as long as the questionnaires are designed specifically for prediction of job performance rather than medical screening purposes.
Beyond the Surface: Behavioural Risk Factors
Derailers is designed to predict job performance and identify counterproductive behaviours that interfere with interpersonal work relationships and prevent employees from achieving their work goals.
The Derailers trait model is considered a maladaptive equivalent of the Big Five and is the only commercially available dark side assessment that re-conceptualises maladaptive personality under the revised DSM-5 trait framework.
About Derailers
Derailers measures six maladaptive personality traits associated with the extreme scores on the Big-5 Personality Model and dysfunctional workplace behaviours. The maladaptive traits are: Competitiveness, Reserve, Negative Emotionality, Disinhibition, Diligence, and Unconventionality.
Derailers is a self-report inventory comprised of 60 questions. It has minimal reading demands and can be completed in under 15 minutes. Reports highlight areas of high risk and provide probing questions and development recommendations.
Measures
Maladaptive Traits
Negative Tendencies
Flattering Characteristics
Reports
Selection Reports
Development Reports
Bulk/Group Reports
Feedback Reports
Administration
On-Screen
Remote Email Invitation
Bulk Access
Duration
60 Untimed Questions
10 Minutes
The Evidence Behind Derailers
Key facts about how it was built and how well it works, from its technical manual, independent review and current norm library.
- What It Measures
- Six tendencies that can derail performance under pressure: Detachment, Negative Affect, Antagonism, Disinhibition, Compulsivity and Eccentricity. 60 questions.
- Theory
- The DSM-5 dimensional model of maladaptive personality traits, adapted for workplace use, whose scales act as the derailing counterparts of the Big Five.
- How It Was Built
- Six 10-item scales, selected and checked with exploratory structural equation modelling on an item pool completed by 696 people.
- Reliability
- Internal consistency of .77 to .84 (Cronbach's alpha) and .71 to .86 (McDonald's omega) across the six scales. Scores are stable over 14 days (N = 121) and 12 months (N = 103).
- Validity
- Scores relate as expected to the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (N = 280), to Dark Triad and self-report psychopathy measures, and to the Big Five.
- Norms
- International and UK applicant norms built from more than 900 job applicants, plus regional editions for Australasia, the Middle East and GCC, Türkiye, South Africa and the UAE, current to 2026.
- Fairness
- Measurement-invariance analysis found no test bias by ethnicity, gender or age (N = 388, UK sample balanced by ethnicity, gender and age).
- Maintained By
- Carl Francis CPsychol and Dr Pakeezah Rajab, Podium's psychologists. Designed with Dr Nigel Guenole, external scientific adviser.
- Sources
- Derailers Technical Manual v1.3 (2026); Podium norm library as at 2026.
When to Use Derailers
Development and Coaching
Recruitment and Selection
Conflict Management
Language Availability
- English
- Arabic
- Chinese (Simplified)
- French
- German
- Italian
- Slovakian
- Thai
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
Derailers Overview
The Derailers trait model is considered a maladaptive equivalent of the Big Five and is the only commercially available dark side assessment that re-conceptualises maladaptive personality under the revised DSM-5 trait framework.
Rather than screening for personality disorders, Derailers measures traits that predispose individuals to dysfunctional work behaviour amongst normal working populations, and which have clear implications for job performance.
Derailers was developed on large representative samples using multidimensional item response theory methods.
Derailers has strong internal consistency reliability overall and across sub-samples (e.g., gender and ethnicity).
Validity studies against well-established models reveal expected patterns of correlations with these alternative models.
Examination of questionnaire items across ethnic regroups reveals minimal evidence of psychometric bias (i.e., measurement invariance analyses).
Derailers Sample Reports
Derailers Select Report (PDF) Derailers Develop Report (PDF) Derailers Feedback Report (PDF)