Who Will Be More Likely to Ghost You?

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Ghosting, where one person just completely breaks contact with another, in addition to unfollowing them on all social media platforms, is becoming a more and more common way to terminate a romantic relationship. Ghosting gets around some of the difficult issues associated with relationship dissolution, such as tricky conversations and having to justify one’s decision.

Given that ghosting is clearly a less sensitive and considerate method of relationship termination, we may wonder whether some people are more likely to ghost than others. For instance, there may be some personality characteristics that may be related to ghosting, such as those characterised by the Dark Triad. Generally, such people lack any feeling for those they are ghosting and may even have only been motivated to seek a relationship in the first place for the purpose of casual sex. Individuals characterised by the Dark Triad traits of psychopathy lack empathy and are emotionally cold. Those who are narcissistic are characterised by grandiosity, while Machiavellian individuals may see ghosting as a pragmatic tactic consistent with their deceptive behaviour traits.

Researchers Jonason, Kazmierczak, Campos, and Davis looked at attitudes toward ghosting in short- and long-term relationships by asking their participants how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement "Ghosting is acceptable to end a short-term/casual sex or long-term/serious relationship." They also asked their participants whether they had ghosted someone in the past, with 51 percent responding yes and 49 percent responding no. They collected data from 341 respondents from the United States, of whom three-quarters were female (Jonason, Kazmierczak, Campos, & Davis, 2021).

To assess Dark Triad traits, they used the Short Dark Triad questionnaire (Jones and Paulhus, 2014). More specifically, Machiavellianism was measured on strength of agreement with items such as "It’s not wise to tell your secrets," narcissism on agreement with items such as "People see me as a natural leader," and psychopathy with agreement to statements such as "Payback needs to be quick and nasty."

Short-Term and Long-Term Relationships

Overall, they found that the acceptability of ghosting short-term partners was related to all Dark Triad traits. However, the acceptability of ghosting long-term partners was unrelated to Dark Triad traits. This observation was more or less similar in men and women, with one exception. The relationship between narcissism and the acceptability of ghosting short-term partners was greater for men than for women.

Those in short-term relationships accepted ghosting as a relationship termination strategy more than those in long-term relationships. Furthermore, those in short-term relationships who had ghosted previously accepted ghosting as a termination strategy more than those in short-term relationships who had not ghosted before. However, in long-term relationships, there was little difference in the acceptance of ghosting as a termination strategy between those who had ghosted before compared to those who had not ghosted before.

Ghosters and Non-ghosters

The researchers found that the participants in their survey who had previously ghosted tended to score higher in Machiavellianism and also higher on psychopathy, compared with people who had not previously ghosted someone else. However, they were not more narcissistic. The researchers explain this as being due to the fact that narcissistic individuals may have more of an appreciation of the suffering of others. It may be that possessing such an understanding allows them to exploit a relationship rather than terminating it.

Overall, this study documents the importance of understanding ghosting and the acceptability and likelihood that this may be employed more by individuals scoring high on Dark Triad traits.