Relations of Machiavellianism with emotional blackmail orientation of salespeople

Abstract

Machiavellianism generally refers to the personality trait of manipulating others for one's success. Emotional blackmail is another form of manipulation in which people threaten to be punished if they don’t do what we want. Little research has been done with these two negative characteristics. This research is to investigate the Machiavellian orientation of salespeople and the relationship between Machiavellianism and Emotional Blackmail. The reported findings are based on 324 effective questionnaires by convenient sampling. Major findings are: (1) Machiavellianism is positively and significantly correlated with emotional blackmail, and (2) moderate effects of demographics on the relationship between Machiavellianism and emotional blackmail are insignificant. Implications and limitations of this study concerning the further applications of Machiavellianism and emotional blackmail are discussed.