The Dark Side of Conflict: The Relationships between Dark Tetrad Personality Traits and Conflict Management Styles

The Dark Tetrad personality traits exhibit socially undesirable behaviors that can often lead to conflict. These negative personality traits might not only cause conflict, but they may play a role in resolving conflict as well. Using established psychology and communication research, this study sought to identify the conflict management styles associated with the Dark Tetrad personality traits. Participants (N = 1120) completed an online survey assessing Dark Tetrad personality traits and conflict management styles. The findings revealed that narcissism and Machiavellianism were positively correlated to every conflict management style (i.e., integrating, avoiding, dominating, obliging, and compromising). As hypothesized, all Dark Tetrad personality traits were positively related to the dominating conflict management style. Controlling for all Dark Tetrad personality traits, narcissism consistently predicted the use of all conflict management styles, suggesting that narcissistic individuals believe that they can navigate conflict in many different ways.