Couple dominance dark personality traits and power motivation

Javier I. Borráz-León⁽¹⁾, Coltan Scrivner^(1,4), Oliver C. Schultheiss⁽²⁾, Royce Lee⁽³⁾, Dario Maestripieri^(1,4)

⁽¹⁾ Institute for Mind and Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

⁽²⁾ Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

⁽³⁾ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

⁽⁴⁾ Department of Comparative Human Development, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Correspondence: Dario Maestripieri, dario@uchicago.edu

Published

January 5, 2024

Title

Couple dominance, dark personality traits, and power motivation

Authors

Javier I. Borráz-León(1), Coltan Scrivner(1,4), Oliver C. Schultheiss(2), Royce Lee(3), Dario Maestripieri(1,4)

Keywords

Couple dominance; explicit power; implicit power; psychopathy; borderline; narcissism; autistic-like trait

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Author Contributions

JIB-L: Data Analysis, Investigation, Writing - Review & Editing. CS: Data collection, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing. OCS: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Data Analysis, Writing – Review & Editing. RL: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing. DM: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Writing – Review & Editing.

Funding

The authors have no funding sources to report.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the late Scott O. Lilienfeld for helpful discussions of conceptual and methodological aspects of this research.

Abstract

In romantic couples, there is usually an asymmetry in decisional power such that one partner is dominant and the other is subordinate. This study investigated the role of sex, ethnicity, self-assessed social status, personality traits, and power motivation (both explicit and implicit) as potential determinants or correlates of couple dominance in a mixed-sex sample of 50 college students. Through a previously validated questionnaire, participants indicated whether they were dominant or subordinate in their romantic relationship, or whether the latter was egalitarian. Major personality domains, narcissism, psychopathy, borderline, autistic-like traits, and explicit power were assessed through questionnaires. Participants also underwent a Picture Story Exercise to evaluate their implicit motives. Being dominant and having high explicit, but not implicit, power motivation were associated with some psychopathic, narcissistic, and/or borderline traits, while autistic-like traits were associated with being subordinate. Traits such as extraversion, conscientiousness, and honesty-humility had weak associations with couple dominance and/or explicit or implicit power motivation. Our findings have implications for the understanding of dominance dynamics within couples and the relationship between personality traits and power motivation.

Introduction

Dyadic dominance constitutes the building block for status hierarchies and both are ubiquitous in socially living vertebrates, including many species of nonhuman primates as well as humans [1]. In human romantic couples, and especially in those in which the relationship has lasted more than a few weeks or months, there is usually an asymmetry in decisional power such that one partner is dominant and the other is subordinate [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. In heterosexual couples, and especially in older couples or couples in which the man is much older than the woman, men are more likely to be dominant and women are more likely to be subordinate [5, 7; but see 8]. When decisional power is roughly shared within a couple and there is no clear-cut dominance, the relationship is considered to be egalitarian [5, 7].

Clear asymmetries in characteristics other than age (e.g., cultural beliefs associated with ethnicity, explicit or implicit power motivation, attractiveness, status in society, earning power, personality traits, etc.), may or may not be associated with couple dominance. Explicit motivation refers to conscious interest in attaining a particular goal (e.g., power), whereas implicit motivation refers to unconscious dispositions [9, 10].

In this study, we investigated the role of sex, ethnicity, self-assessed social status, personality traits, and power motivation (both explicit and implicit) as potential determinants or correlates of couple dominance. We are careful here to clarify that our use of the term ‘traits’ is specific to the instruments and the constructs that they measure, with no assumption that they are static over the life course, inherently genetically transmitted, or inherently pathological. We also will try to sidestep the debate over the precise boundaries