Abstract
Parental personality is a main contributor to parenting outcomes. However, research on parental personality and parenting or coparenting behaviour is scarce. These few studies showed that disagreeableness and neuroticism are consequently related to negative parenting outcomes. Machiavellianism is an antagonistic and socially aversive personality trait. Machiavellianism has been linked to unfavourable outcomes in several different types of relationships (e.g., romantic relationships, workplace relationships). Using self-report measures, I investigated the association between parental Machiavellianism, adolescents’ perceptions of parenting behaviour, and parent reported coparenting in a sample of 98 families raising adolescents. According to the results, Machiavellianism was positively related to adolescents’ perceptions of rejecting and overprotective parenting behaviour in mothers. With regard to coparenting, fathers’ Machiavellianism had a negative effect both on their own and on their spouses’ reports of coparenting quality. Differences between fathers’ and mothers’ results are discussed with regard to their functions in the parent-child interaction and in the spousal dyad.
Highlights
Parental personality is a main contributor to parenting outcomes
Some of the studies found Machiavellianism to be positively correlated with neuroticism as well (Jakobwitz & Egan, 2006; Vernon et al, 2008), whereas other studies reported no significant correlation between Machiavellianism and neuroticism (Lee & Ashton, 2005; Paulhus & Williams, 2002)
This study was the first to investigate the relationship between the parental personality trait of Machiavellianism and two different aspects of parenting – parenting behaviour as perceived by adolescent offspring and selfreported coparenting behaviour
Summary
Parental personality is a main contributor to parenting outcomes. research on parental personality and parenting or coparenting behaviour is scarce. Machiavellianism has been in the focus of personality research since the beginning of the 1970s (Christie & Geis, 1970; Fehr, Samson, & Paulhus, 1992) Since this antagonistic and socially aversive trait has been known to make individuals less attractive mates (Rauthmann & Denissen, 2014) and less committed employees (Becker & O’Hair, 2007), but nothing has been revealed yet about the relationship between Machiavellianism and parenting qualities. Relatively much is known about the personality functioning and personality traits of Machiavellian individuals Using these constructs to link Machiavellianism to parenting, I investigated the potential association between parents’ Machiavellianism, their adolescent children’s perception of their parenting behaviour, and parents’ reports of dyadic aspects of coparenting. This result was further confirmed from a psychodynamic approach by Láng (2015) who found that Machiavellianism was predicted by Borderline Personality Organization as described by Kernberg (1985)
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