Am I wrong? I'm never wrong: the relationship between Dark Triad, child-parent conflict, parental burnout, and perceived social support in a sample of Japanese parents.

Abstract

Background: The Dark Triad of personality has been related to various negative social outcomes, including challenges in interpersonal situations, such as conflicts within the family and parenting dynamics. The present study aimed to explore the relationship between dark personality traits, child-parent relationships, and parental burnout, while considering the potential moderating effect of perceived social support.

Participants and procedure: A sample of 277 Japanese parents (49.5% men, 50.5% women), aged 20 to 39 years (M = 31.13, SD = 4.9), with children between 1 and 5 years old (toddlers or preschoolers), completed an online survey. Dark Triad traits were assessed using the Japanese version of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen, perceived social support with the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, parental burnout with the Parental Burnout Assessment, and child-parent conflict and closeness using the Child-Parent Relationship Scale.

Results: The results showed that higher levels of dark personality traits were associated with greater conflict in the child-parent relationship as well as higher levels of parental burnout. Interestingly, for parents high in Dark Triad traits, greater perceived social support was associated with higher levels of child-parent conflict.

Conclusions: The findings highlight the complexity of social support in the context of dark personalities, as it may fail to mitigate the harmful effects of conflictual family relationships.