Staying friends with an ex: Sex and dark personality traits predict motivations for post-relationship friendship

Machiavellianism and romantic relationship dissolution

“…Of course many people maintain friendships with previous partners (Mogilski & Welling, 2016) or experience relationship churning i.e., sexual activity with a former partner or an on / off cycle of break-up and reconciliation (Halpern-Meekin, et al 2012). These provide opportunities for further exploitation; therefore the use of indirect strategies may reflect a desire to exploit the partner after the break up.…”

“…Furthermore, the present studies did not consider the manner in which partners interact after the break up. For example, women may remain friends with their former partner and may do so for a range of reasons; these include reliability / sentimentality, pragmatism, continued romantic attraction, children, and shared resources, diminished romantic attraction, social relationship maintenance, and sexual access (Mogilski & Welling, 2016). Subsequent research should therefore address the nature of postbreak up interactions and the perceived benefits of continued contact, particularly as Machiavellianism predicts motivations for sexual behaviour (Brewer & Abell, 2015).…”

“…Specifically, women with higher Machiavellianism are predicted to employ subtle strategies to end their romantic relationship that serve to reduce conflict and protect their reputation. These strategies may also retain opportunities for exploitation and manipulation of their former partner, of particular importance given the number of women who retain contact with ex partners either as a friend or lover (Halpern-Meekin, Manning, Giordano, & Longmore, 2012;Mogilski & Welling, 2016).…”

Pathological Personality Traits and Utilitarian Moral Judgments

“…Research concerning the DSM-5 pathological personality traits is still in its nascent stages but this model has shown considerable promise due to its focus on extreme or atypical levels of personality traits that are not adequately captured by other models. For example, these pathological personality traits have been shown to be associated with a wide range of phenomena including moral foundations (Noser et al, 2015), the ability to understand the mental states of others (da Costa, Vrabel, Zeigler-Hill, & Vonk, 2017), interpersonal functioning (e.g., Southard, Noser, Pollock, Mercer, & Zeigler-Hill, 2015), fundamental social motives (Zeigler-Hill & Hobbs, 2017), criminogenic thinking styles (Zeigler-Hill, Mandracchia, Dahlen, Shango, & Vrabel, 2017), emotion regulation difficulties (Pollock, McCabe, Southard, & Zeigler-Hill, 2016), motivations for post-relationship friendship (Mogilski & Welling, 2016), and aggression (Hopwood et al, 2013).…”

Staying friends with ex‐romantic partners: Predictors, reasons, and outcomes

“…To the best of our knowledge, there is only one article (Mogilski & Welling, ) that has recently (after we collected our data) examined reasons for staying friends quantitatively. Although providing encouraging initial results regarding reasons to stay friends, the article has a few major limitations.…”