Resource control strategies and personality traits

• Resource control strategies were associated with different personality traits.
• Bistrategic controllers reported high levels of Dark Triad personality traits.
• Bistrategic controllers had modest openness, neuroticism, and extraversion.
• Bistrategic controllers had low levels of agreeableness.

Resource control strategies refer to the approaches that individuals adopt in order to acquire material resources and status. The present study examined whether individuals who adopt particular resource control strategies would report different personality traits. This was accomplished by asking 966 Jewish Israeli community participants to complete self-report measures concerning their resource control strategies and their personality traits. The results showed that individuals who adopted particular resource control strategies often reported different personality traits than those who adopted other strategies. For example, those who adopted a bistrategic control strategy reported relatively high levels of the Dark Triad of personality, modest levels of openness, neuroticism, and extraversion, as well as low levels of agreeableness. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the connection between resource control strategies and personality traits.