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Ghosting, or breaking up with someone by stopping contact without warning, is considered more acceptable in short-term relationships, and may be linked with certain personality types, a study suggests.

When someone ends a relationship by abruptly stopping answering phone calls and messages, it can be very painful for their ex-partner, even when the relationship was short-lived.

But according to at the University of Padua in Italy, such a strategy may seem rational to people who have higher scores for the so-called dark triad of personality traits: Machiavellianism, being manipulative and cynical; narcissism, being self-centred or unempathetic; and psychopathy, being socially callous and antagonistic.

鈥淭his kind of cold and detached form of break up 鈥� one that doesn鈥檛 take anyone else鈥檚 feelings into consideration 鈥� is an easily reasoned outcome of the way in which these people鈥檚 brains work,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey prefer to just kind of bail.鈥�

Jonason and his colleagues asked 341 volunteers to complete a that scored them on their dark triad traits. Participants were asked how much they agree with statements such as 鈥渕any group activities tend to be dull without me鈥�, 鈥測ou should wait for the right time to get back at people鈥� and 鈥淚鈥檒l say anything to get what I want鈥�. Volunteers were aged 18 to 72 and were 76 per cent female, 42 per cent undergraduate students, and 72 per cent white, the rest being primarily African American.

The team then asked the participants to rank how acceptable ghosting is in different situations on a 10-point scale, and say if they had ever ghosted anyone in the past.

The researchers found that higher dark triad scores aligned with a greater acceptance and history of ghosting as a way to end short-term relationships, says Jonason.

That might be related to the fact that people with more dark triad traits are 鈥渞eward-sensitive鈥� and therefore trying to minimise the painful aspects of life, he says. 鈥淪o they鈥檙e going to try to stay away from the costs of breaking up 鈥� which is the drama and the argument.鈥�

鈥淚t is not surprising that scales that measure low agreeableness and high antagonism are related to being rude,鈥� says at Purdue University in Indiana, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the study. 鈥淪uch a person is not connected enough to these [partners] to really care about what they feel or what they think. It鈥檚 part and parcel of who that person is.鈥� He adds that in general such self-reporting surveys are reliable.

, Jonason鈥檚 earlier work has shown. But the study suggests when they do occur, their partners are unlikely to be ghosted.

鈥淚t seems they don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 acceptable to abandon a long-term partner with blocking on WhatsApp or something like that,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut [ghosting could] be a way they have of extracting themselves easily from low-investment relationships, which are already known to be the preference of these kinds of people.鈥�

Even so, this doesn鈥檛 mean people with higher dark triad traits are necessarily evil, nor even pathological, says Jonason. 鈥淭hese are people who see the world differently for a variety of reasons,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut we all have these traits in us [to a certain extent], and good and evil is never black and white. To pathologise those people is to essentially dehumanise them and therefore misunderstand them at the same time.鈥�