A common way that personality psychologists studying relationships (and social behavior more generally) conceptualize traits is the interpersonal circumplex, a way of pictorially representing the fact that people can differ along two important dimensions - power and warmth - using a circle. (These are similar to the Big 5 personality traits of extraversion and agreeableness.) There are a lot of different versions, but here's an example.
Each person will occupy a place on the outside of the circle depicting their levels of warmth and power. The top half of the circle is for dominance, the bottom half is for submissiveness. The right half is for warmth and the left half is for hostility. In this particular version, a person occupying the "Gregarious-Extraverted" position would have a blend of warmth and dominance.
People seem to be attracted to other people who are similar to themselves but have high quality romantic relationships with partners who are similar to themselves on the warmth dimension but opposite themselves on the dominance dimension.
And Cats...And Dogs!
The interpersonal circumplex has also been applied to relationships between people and their pets. One recent study (Ziegler-Hill & Highfill, 2010) had undergraduate pet owners answer questions about their own personality, their pet's behavioral style, and their attitudes toward their pet; they found the following:
"Cats were given higher scores for the assured-dominant (PA), arrogant-calculating (BC), cold-hearted (DE), and aloof-introverted (FG) octants, whereas dogs were given higher scores for the unassuming-ingenuous (JK), warm-agreeable (LM), and gregarious-extraverted (NO) octants. Dogs and cats received similar ratings for the unassured-submissive (HI) octant. These octant differences led to cats being given significantly lower ratings on the warmth dimension than dogs which indicate that pet owners considered cats to be less friendly and more hostile than dogs. No differences were found between dogs and cats on the dominance dimension or the positivity of the attitudes expressed by their owners... The direction of the arrow represents the single location on the circumplex that best characterizes the behavioral style of the pet...
It is also important to note that there were no differences between dog owners and cat owners on any of the octant or dimension scores from the IAS-R (Fs <>ns). That is, dog and cat owners reported very similar interpersonal styles...
Pet owners report the most positive attitudes toward their pets when they perceive them as possessing behavioral styles characterized by dominance and warmth...
The results of the present study suggest that owners are more satisfied with their pets when there is correspondence on the warmth dimension. That is, both dog owners and cat owners are more satisfied with their pets when they believe their pets exhibit a level of warmth that is similar to their own. Although this pattern emerged for both dogs and cats, the association was significantly stronger for cats... Complementarity on the dominance dimension did not emerge as a significant predictor of positive attitudes toward dogs."
To my knowledge, no study testing the complementarity hypothesis among rabbits and their humans has been undertaken.
2 comments:
That was cool. As far as human pairs are concerned, what you say seems to match my experience. I thought of you and Robert in particular as occupying obvious places on the circle.
I was thinking about cats and dogs today with regard to hardiness as well. I've sometimes compared my excitability about changes and newness to that of a dog. Cats strike me as much more likely to feel alienated and to view changes and stresses as threats rather than enjoyable challenges. (I'm not sure how much they do or do not feel they have control or agency.)
I often think of cats and dogs as high and low self-monitors, respectively.
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