Sarah Carver

About

In order to facilitate healthy, safe workplaces, it is important to understand why, when, and how employees behave badly. Accordingly, I am interested in learning more about counterproductive workplace behaviours, with a particular focus on workplace mistreatment and unethical decision-making. Below I list my current areas of interest within these domains.

Workplace Mistreatment

• Measurement challenges and construct proliferation (too many constructs in the kitchen?)
• The influence of leader characteristics and leadership style

Unethical Decision-Making

• How can we select for, and develop, ethical leaders?
• Why do dark personalities (sometimes) do good things?

Background

Prior to joining the team at Guelph in August 2025, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Saint Mary's University from 2024-2025 and completed a postdoc at the Ivey Business School in the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership from 2023-2024.

Education

• PhD: Industrial-Organizational Psychology, University of Western Ontario, 2024
• MSc: Industrial-Organizational Psychology, University of Western Ontario, 2019
• BA: Psychology, University of Guelph, 2016

Publications

Carver, S. J., & Woodley, H. J. R. (2025). Emotional intelligence and business ethics: Feeling confident in doing the right thing. Journal of Business Ethics. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-025-06044-3

Carver, S. J., McCurrach, C. W. D., & Goffin, R. D. (2024). Should faking ability on pre-employment tests be reviled or revered in retail sales? Journal of Personnel Psychology, 24(2), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000359

Carver, S. J., Goffin, R. D., & Factor, R. J. (2021). Relative and absolute self-ratings of work performance: Does social comparison lead to an enhanced thought process in self-evaluations? International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 29(3-4), 336–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12351