The APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 3 Interpersonal Relations) is a comprehensive resource that presents the available research literature on various aspects of interpersonal relationships.

Exec Summary

• Relationships are functional: People form relationships to survive, thrive, and reproduce
• Great relationships make you healthier. But poor ones make you less healthy
• Power makes people more genuine because it allows them to be themselves

FULL SUMMARY

About the Author:
Various authors, including editors Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver, Jeffry A. Simpson, Allison K. Farrell, M. Minda Oriña, Alexander J. Rothman, Adam D. Galinsky, Derek D. Rucker, and Joe C. Magee.

We form 5 relationship types to solve life challenges

First and foremost, survival, reproduction, and self-advancement.

The main relationships are:

1. Dating couples
2. Married couples
3. Family members
4. Friends
5. Coworkers

Relationship Types and Associated Evolutionary Opportunities and Threats

Each relationship type follows slightly different rules.

Proximate reason & evolutionary reasons: they go in tandem

Two different approaches:

• Proximate causes from psychologists’ historical approach focus on the immediate triggers (causes) of action
• The evolutionary approach seeks the root cause, asking why people evolved to want sex, companionship, and love

These two approaches are complementary.

Gender differences

• Women tend to be more affiliative BUT…
• Men are more likely to “gang up”: If the outgroup is salient men are more likely than women to make cooperative choices that favor the group good (Van Vugt, De Cremer, & Janssen, 2007)
• Men go for larger groups, women smaller cliques males form alliances with large groups of other males, whereas females are more likely to associate with one another either one at a time or in small cliques (Benenson et al.(2008))
• Men’s friendships may be more functional: men are more concerned with their friends’ skills (e.g. , intelligence, athleticism, financial potential, creativity) and their friends’ social connections (Benenson et al.(2008))

Men also seek more leadership positions, something that the authors ascribe to the fact that male reproductive success and status are more interlinked (Kenrick et al. , 2004).

Interdependence theory

The levels are:

• Dependence refers to the degree to which an actor relies on an interaction partner, in that his or her outcomes are influenced by the partner’s actions
• Mutuality of dependence refers to whether two people are equally dependent on one another.
  • Mutual dependence tend to feel safer and are more stable and affectively serene (less anxiety, guilt)
  • Nonmutual dependence entails differential power: When Mary is more dependent, John holds greater power
    The less dependent partner exerts greater control, while the more dependent partner incurs more interaction costs (sacrifice, accommodation) and is more vulnerable to possible abandonment, and threats and coercion are possible
• Basis of dependence refers to the ways in which partners influence each other’s outcomes—the relative importance of partner versus joint control as a source of dependence.
  It includes the expression of dominance (vs. submissiveness) and assertiveness (vs. passivity), as well as the use of ability and skills such as social intelligence
• Covariation of interests refers to whether partners’ outcomes correspond or conflict. In simpler words: whether they want the same thing and share common goals. Covariation ranges from perfectly corresponding patterns (coordination) through mixed-motive patterns to perfectly conflicting patterns (zero-sum).
  Conflicting interests lead to the expression of cooperation versus competition and trust versus distrust
• Temporal structure refers to time element of a relationship and its changing nature through different situations.
  When it comes to time, long-term relationships and repeat exchanges call on self-control, delay of gratification, and the inclination to stick with it. Long-term relationships make people more likely to cooperate if they know they are going to be interdependent for many interaction situations.
  Relevant issues and trait include dependability versus unreliability and loyalty versus disloyalty (this is my interpretation of it, the text was too convoluted here to convey straightforward information)
  • Situation selection refers to movement from one situation to another. For example, Mary may seek situations entailing less interdependence, or John may confront the juncture between a present relationship and an alternative relationship
• Information availability refers to what partners know about each other, the environment, and the consequences of their actions.
  • Uncertain information raises the topics of openness, need for certainty, and optimism/pessimism

Transformations are often conceptualized as decision rules that a person adopts during interactions.
People may wait for the other person’s move, and generally also tend to follow their disposition or relationship modes.
For example:

• Altruism, which maximizes the partner’s outcomes
• Cooperation, which maximizes combined outcomes
• Competition, which maximizes the relative difference between one’s own and one’s partner’s outcomes
• Individualism, which maximizes one’s own outcomes irrespective of one’s partner’s outcomes.

People stick together because they need to

Albeit the authors don’t say so, interdependence theory is largely about game theory, social exchanges, and power dynamics.

And, as it’s often the case when you read things though that angle, things make a lot more sense -and are much simpler-.

For example, is suggests that people are in poor relationships because they have to -or have no better options-:

Mary may persevere in an abusive relationship not necessarily because she has low self-esteem or has acquired a pattern of learned helplessness but rather for reasons related to structural dependence—because she is heavily invested in remaining with her partner (e.g. , she is married to John or has young children with him) or has poor alternatives (e.g. , she has no driver’s license or faces poor employment opportunities; Rusbult & Martz, 1995)

Of course.

In close relationships, focus on win-win and the pleasure of giving rather than a calculative “give and take”

It was good to read this since Power University endorsed it since the beginning:

research has confrmed that negative noise has detrimental effects when people follow a strict reciprocity rule: Partners form more negative impressions of one another, and both people suffer poorer outcomes (Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Tazelaar, 2002). In contrast, a more generous tit-for-tat-plus-one strategy (giving the partner a bit more than is received from the partner) yields better outcomes—noise does not negatively affect partners’ impressions of one another or the outcomes each receives over the course of an extended interaction

And more game theory for good relationships:

in the presence of negative noise, a generous strategy yields better outcomes for both people than does tit-for-tat (for more extended evidence, see Klapwijk & Van Lange, 2009). Such fndings are reminiscent of the literature on interactions in close relationships, in which partners have been shown to enjoy better outcomes in conflictual interactions when one or both partners accommodate or forgive (e.g. , Karremans & Van Lange, 2009; Rusbult et al. , 1991)

Just make sure it’s not always you and only you to accommodate and forgive :).

The authors extend the same concept to socialization in general:

The societal implications of this interdependence analysis are quite powerful. They suggest concrete advice for people entering new situations at school, in organizations, or wherever else people interact in dyads or small groups. Under circumstances of imperfect information (which are very common), it helps to give people the beneft of the doubt, to reserve judgment, and to be more generous than a tit-for-tat strategy would advise.

And especially to written communication:

The research fndings on this topic may also be especially relevant to e-mail and other forms of electronic communication because these devices are quite noisy and tend to be less effective than face-to-face communication in generating cooperation (Balliet, 2010).

Mutual relationship dynamics matter far more than individuals’ character

Interdependence theoretic analysis provides a deeper understanding of trust than trait-oriented approaches. For one thing, it is a powerful predictive model—in accounting for dependence, commitment, prorelationship acts, and trust, interdependence variables account for substantially more unique variance (more than 30%) than do prominent actor-based variables (e.g. , attachment style accounts for less than 5% of the variance; Wieselquist et al. , 1999). That is, in ongoing relationships, partners’ actions are more important than are each person’s trait-based, frozen expectations

Interpersonal attraction… It’s complex

The authors divide the drivers of interpersonal attraction into domain-general reward perspectives and domain-specific evolutionary perspectives.

Domain-general rewards perspective

Including five needs:

• Hedonic pleasure
• Self-esteem
• Belonging, including familiarity, self-disclosure, and the social basis of anxiety reduction
• Consistency
• Self-expansion

Some items I found interesting:

• Attractiveness

Others’ physical attractiveness is perhaps the single most robust predictor of people’s initial attraction to them (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008b; Feingold, 1990)

• Similarity

the link between similarity and attraction is strong for perceived similarity (i.e. , subjective assessments of similarity) but sporadic and weak for actual similarity (i.e. , objectively determined similarity)

• Selectively hard to get

In one set of studies, Walster, Walster, Piliavin, and Schmidt (1973) sought to demonstrate that men tend to be attracted to women who play hard to get (an effect that could have contradicted the reciprocity effect), but their conclusion, based on six studies, was that men are attracted to women who are easy for them to get but hard for other men to get (also see Finkel & Eastwick, 2009b)
These fndings suggest that people tend to be attracted to others who like them but only if this liking makes them feel special
(…)
A subsequent speed-dating study yielded compatible conclusions: Speed daters were especially attracted to partners who liked them more than those partners liked other people, but they were not attracted to partners who indiscriminately liked everybody (Eastwick, Finkel, Mochon, & Ariely, 2007; also see Eastwick & Finkel, 2009)

And similar:

• Growing to like over time

Similarly, classic research has suggested that people tend to be more attracted to others who grow to like them over time than to others who have always liked them, who have always disliked them, or who have grown to dislike them over time (Aronson & Linder, 1965)

• Mutual self-disclosure

People who disclose intimately tend to be liked more than people who disclose less intimately, and people like others as a result of having disclosed intimately to them (Collins & Miller, 1994; but see Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991, for individual differences in this effect)

Domain-specific evolutionary perspectives

Where the authors review evolutionary psychology’s novel insights in the last decades.

Great wisdom, but we largely discuss this here on TPM so see relevant articles and evolutionary psychology book reviews.

Then the authors introduce what seems to be a third domain of attraction:

Instrumentality: we like those who help us advance our goals

Fitzsimons and Shah (2008) published a seminal article testing the instrumentality principle, which they defned as the tendency for people to “draw closer to instrumental others, evaluate them more positively, and approach them more readily, while distancing themselves from noninstrumental others, evaluating them more negatively, and avoiding them more readily”

And yes, it turns out that social climbers may truly be attracted to the wealthy, the bosses… And the Hollywood producers:

people indeed manifest such preferences for signifcant others who are instrumental for a currently activated goal (e.g. , to achieve academically, to enjoy social activities).

However, that disappears once the goal is reached:

Furthermore, this tendency to feel closer to signifcant others who are instrumental for a given goal than to those who are not disappears once people believe that they have made good progress toward achieving that goal, a social disengagement process that allows them to focus their self-regulatory efforts on goals that require more urgent attention (Fitzsimons & Fishbach, 2010; also see Converse & Fishbach, 2012)

Approaching, flirting & pickup lines

Albeit men like to think of themselves as leaders, women most often are:

Women tend to take the initiative in the courting process by displaying nonverbal cues of interest, signaling to a man that he is welcome to approach (e.g. , Moore, 2010; Perper, 1985). Women also instigate and control intricate patterns of rhythmic, nonverbal synchronization that develop between a man and a woman when they meet for the frst time (Grammer, Kruck, & Magnusson, 1998)

Getting attention

A large study of 5,020 adults identified five general styles of attracting attention from a potential mate:

• traditional
• physical
• sincere
• polite
• playful

Certain flirting styles—physical, sincere, and playful—were particularly successful in culminating in attracting a date, and the physical and sincere types led to relationships with the deepest emotional connection (Hall, Carter, et al.

Flirting

The authors define flirting as:

Flirting refers to subtle or playful verbal and nonverbal behaviors that indicate a romantic interest in another person

Flirting differs from normal conversation because it’s more animated and warmer, and both laugh more frequently with fewer periods of silence (Coker & Burgoon, 1987).
When flirting goes well, people move closer, gaze longer, and touch each other relatively frequently (Koeppel, Montagne-Miller, O’Hair, & Cody, 1993).

Fflirting predicted mate choice during a speed dating study (Back et al. , 2011), so it may work well.

Women’s flirtation body language includes (Simpson, Gangestad, & Biek, 1993):

• Head cant
• Pouting mouth
• Coyness

Women who send out flirtatious signals do receive more approaches (Moore, 1985)

Men’s body language involves gestures that get women to notice them and imply high status, such as taking up space, an open posture, and unreciprocated touching of other men (Renninger, Wade, & Grammer, 2004).
That can be effective, say the authors.

Also see:

• Signs she likes you
• Signs he likes you

Opening lines

Early research clustered opening lines around 3 factors:

• Cute–flippant, or your typical pick-up line
• Innocuous
• Direct

Pick-up lines didn’t work:

(…) both men and women found the cute–flippant lines to be the least desirable …
However, consistent with hypothesized gender scripts, women rated them as less preferred than men and rated the innocuous lines as more preferred than men.
(…)
Subsequent research, using different methods, has generally been consistent with Kleinke et al.’s (1986) fndings (Cunningham & Barbee, 2008; Levine, King, & Popoola, 1994)

In brief, it’s just like we long advised here at TPM.

However, best of all is to be introduced:

For example, Weber, Goodboy, and Cayanus (2010) assessed women’s perceptions of the appropriateness and effectiveness of opening lines displayed in videos of male actors.
Consistent with prior research, direct introductions were rated as the most appropriate opening line. In addition, being introduced by a third party was a strategy that women rated as most appropriate and most effective

Indeed, as we also said on TPM, introductions are great because they pre-frame you as safe, and better maintain your power/attraction.

However, just like we also said on TPM, if it’s a high-value man, lover type seeking short-term situations, it doesn’t matter much:

research has suggested that the type of relationship desired influences a woman’s evaluation of a man’s opening line.
Senko and Fyffe (2010) varied the nature of the relationship being sought by a woman (short vs. long term), the attractiveness of the male, and the opening lines in hypothetical scenarios. Consistent with evolutionary theory, if a long-term relationship was being sought, women preferred the direct or innocuous lines and associated these with intelligence and trustworthiness, but if a short-term relationship was the goal and the man was attractive, women had no preference for type of opening line.

Also read:

• How to approach a girl
• How to meet girls
• Cold approach

When men and women lie

Lying is common:

As noted by Rowatt, Cunningham, and Druen (1999), approximately 46% of men and 36% of women report telling a lie to get a date with an attractive partner.

However, men and women lie differently.
Men like more about commitment, sincerity, and the ability to acquire resources.
And women in “deceptive acts that alter their appearance”.

However, both alter their self-presentation to match the desires of an attractive potential partner.
That includes describing themselves as more, or less, traditional in sex role orientation (e.g. , Zanna & Pack, 1975).

Personality matters when it comes to lies, and self-monitors lie more (self-monitors are more environment-dependent and adapt to the surroundings):

Individual differences exist in the tendency to use deception in relationship initiation. Men and women who are high self-monitors, as compared with low self-monitors, engage in more deceptive self-presentations with a potential date, report using deception more frequently, and have more positive attitudes toward such behavior (Rowatt et al. , 1998)

Also read:

• Games men play
• Games women play
• Red flag games women play

Ideal partners

Does someone’s ideal of a partner influence mate choice?

Some famous speed dating studies suggest not.
However, research is actually inconclusive.

And, when analyzing longitudinal data, it seems that a closer resemblance to the ideal does predict outcomes and relationship fulfillment.

Who do men and women want?

We talk about this already on TPM.

Including the fact that men and women’s incentives and ideal partners differ, as well diverging interests.

But there is also the other side of the coin.
And what I found most helpful for most men who come from a “red pill” background though is this:

Most evolutionary models of mate preferences have focused more on differences between men and women, but both sexes have also faced the same adaptive challenge of successfully rearing offspring (Geary, 2000; Kenrick & Trost, 1997).
Human children require many years of constant care, supervision, and socializing to survive childhood and grow to reproductive age, and children born and raised by pair-bonded parents are more likely to survive to reproductive age and be more socially competitive later in life when they attempt to attract mates (Geary, 2000). Both men and women should thus be attentive to a potential long-term partner’s capacity for intimacy and commitment, because this would

This is probably why both men and women value warmth, kindness, and a sense of humor in potential mates (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997; Buss, 1989, 1994; Buss & Barnes, 1986; Campbell & Wilbur, 2009; Li et al. , 2002).
These are traits that facilitate relationships.

Ideal partner model

The model consists of three main components:

perceptions of the self, partners, and relationships (Baldwin, 1992).
That is, individuals’ images of their ideal partners reflect their self-perceptions, the qualities they would like their partner to possess, and the type of relationship they would like to have

The ideal partner does impact relationship quality and satisfaction:

Consistent with ISM, individuals who reported smaller partner discrepancies rated their relationships more favorably

Changing our partners: is it possible? Yes…

The common trope is that you should never try to change someone.

Well, that may not be true:

It seems, then, that when individuals explicitly express dissatisfaction with their relationship, or ask their partners to change, this may create friction or negative feelings between partners in the short term; however, if the problem is eventually worked through, often via additional voice strategies, the couple may end up being better off and more satisfed over time.

And contrary to Carnegie’s advice, the best way to facilitate that change seems to be with direct requests:

Across time, the use of direct strategies (e.g. , voice) produced greater change in the targeted features as reported by both partners.
Indirect strategies such as loyalty, in contrast, resulted in absolutely no change over time (see also Overall, Sibley, & Travaglia, 2010)

Good relationships are healthy

As the title says :).

Social support

Social support construct includes three components:

1. Existence of social relationships
2. Structure of one’s social networks
3. Functions of social support

An important distinction made by Barrera is between perceived availability of support and received support.

consistent evidence that social support was linked to cardiovascular health and immune functioning. In addition, they found evidence that emotional support in particular may be important for positive health outcomes

Even giving support is good for people:

several fndings suggesting that giving support, at both the aggregate (perceived) and the enacted level, is associated with many positive outcomes (Brown, Brown, & Penner, 2012)

Friendships

Data from Oswald, Clark, and Kelly (2004)

The authors provide an overview of research findings across the life cycle.

Friends spend more time together in adolescence as they seek independence from parents and family.
The group also provides a sense of belonging and friends help craft a sense of self-identity
In this stage, friends can also compensate for low quality family ties -I know something about that :)-.

Research in problem-solving tasks distinguished two types of friends (Shulman & Knafo, 1997):

• Disengaged friends (46%) who worked independently (and even competed with one another)
• Interdependent friends (54%) who collaborated on tasks

Interestingly and tellingly, interdependent friends are better at managing conflicts to preserve harmony and mutuality.
And disengaged friends are more focused on individual gain -potentially more Machiavellian, I’d add-.

Friends are healthy. But toxic friends are unhealthy

Summarize the authors:

A lack of regular contact with friends has disadvantages that range from vulnerability to depression, anxiety, and loneliness to increased risk of mortality.
Friends offer protection through mechanisms that include stress reduction; fulfillment of basic needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence; and contagion of happiness and health-promoting behaviors. However, friends can also have a negative influence on health (…) who one’s friends are, how healthy their behavior is, and how happy they are determine the effect that friendships have on health and well-being.

Read more:

• Frenemies
• How to recognize frenemies
• How to recognize toxic people and takers

Partner violence in intimate relationships (PV)

This chapter was eye-opening.

And it changed my view on toxic relationships and violence in relationships.
In part, my view was swayed by popular but unscientific books such as Why Does He Do That (read that review for more).

Partner violence (PV) is defined as any nonconsensual physical aggression against a romantic partner.

Overview

At a 16% incidence in a year’s time for heterosexual married couples, partner violence is relatively common (Straus & Gelles, 1990).
And even more common in dating, same-sex, and cohabiting relationships (e.g. , Statistics Canada, 2005; Straus, 2004).

Feminist perspective

The feminist perspective sees PV as a natural consequence of the patriarchal structure.
Men control resources, and force women in a subordinate position -including with violence- (Bograd, 1988; Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Dragiewicz & Lindgren, 2009).

This perspective also has been referred to as the patriarchal model, the gender paradigm, or the traditional theory on on PV (e.g. , Ehrensaft, 2008) because it has been the most widespread and dominant approach in the past and.

On the positive side, the feminist approach helped raise awareness on PV.
Unluckily, some proponents were also not very scientifically minded. Say the authors on the misuse of the frame “feminist” and its positive associations used as a weapon:

some researchers in the PV field have pointed out that this label has sometimes been used to brand those who question the premises or conclusions of the perspective as antifeminist (e.g., Dutton, 2012; Ross & Babcock, 2010)

The feminist perspective doesn’t hold up well against the available evidence.
And especially in the West.
For example:

• Most marriages are relatively equal in power (e.g. , Coleman & Straus, 1990), contrary to the assumption that patriarchal values structure all gender relations
  • Women often have more decision-making power: recent evidence has suggested that women are more likely than men to dominate decision making in marriage, even in marital relationships in which men make more money (Morin & Cohn, 2008)
• Male violence against women is more likely when men lack equal power in their intimate relationships (e.g. , Anderson, 1997; Babcock, Waltz, Jacobson, & Gottman, 1993; Sagrestano, Heavey, & Christensen, 1999). This is contrary to the assumption that male violence enforces male domination of women. Thus, PV may be an ineffective means of trying to compensate for a perceived lack of equal relationship influence
• Only a minority of men are violent, which would not be the case if violence against women were normative (Dutton, 1994)
• Society seems to condone female violence far more than male one: Women and men are much more accepting of women’s violence against men than the converse (Simon et al. , 2001). This wouldn’t be the case if society viewed PV as a fair way of enforcing male power over women
• There is little link between “patriarchal beliefs” and PV: the research linking traditional or patriarchal gender attitudes and roles with PV perpetration has been mixed at best (Sugarman & Frankel, 1996)
• Men with some important “strong” masculine traits engage in LESS PV, male violence against partners is negatively associated with masculine gender schemas (e.g. , Sugarman & Frankel, 1996) and with traditionally masculine traits of self-confidence and independence (e.g. , Murphy, Meyer, & O’Leary, 1994)
• Women are as likely to be violent: In unselected samples, women are as likely as men to be violent in their intimate relationships (Archer, 2000; Fiebert, 2010), including perpetrating severe forms of violence (Straus, 2011). For less severe PV, women maybe even more likely to be the initiators
  • Women are more likely to initiate PV: women are more likely than men to initiate PV (e.g. , Fergusson et al. , 2005), to report that they would be violent in response to unacceptable partner behavior (e.g. , Fold & Robinson, 1998; Winstok, 2006), and to be the perpetrators of PV when only one partner is violent (e.g. , Whitaker et al. , 2007)
  • One-sided and severe male-to-female violence is the least common pattern of PV in Western societies (Stets & Straus, 1992)
• In violent relationships, BOTH partners are often violent: a large body of evidence indicates that in at least half of relationships with violence, both partners report acting violently (e.g. , Anderson, 2002; Whitaker et al. , 2007).
  • The degree of violence is correlated: the higher the level of one partner’s violence (and abuse more generally), the higher the level of the other partner’s violence (e.g. , Bartholomew, Regan, White, & Oram, 2008; Fergusson et al. , 2005; Magdol et al. , 1997)
  • Most harmful PV happens when both partners are violent: the most severe violence and the greatest risk of injury occur in relationships with bidirectional abuse (e.g. , Anderson, 2002; Whitaker et al. , 2007)
• Same-sex relationships are equally or more violent, a pattern that wouldn’t exist if the patriarchy was the only driver for PV

However, there has been some more limited support in non-Western societies:

Consistent with expectations from a feminist analysis of PV, the lower the status of women in a society, the higher the society’s rate of violence against women, in absolute terms and relative to the rate of violence against men.
Additionally, the higher the proportion of men in a society who hold traditional gender role attitudes and find it acceptable for a husband to slap his wife, the higher the rate of violence against women (Archer, 2006)

And:

rates of women’s victimization are associated with lower levels of women’s empowerment in a society relative to men’s, stronger societal endorsement of traditional gender roles, and greater societal acceptance of husbands hitting wives (Archer, 2006)

So sociocultural explanations may be helpful in identifying broad social contexts that foster or inhibit aggression in close relationships.
However, they’re certainly not enough.
Even in the case of societies with low female empowerment, it’s not as black and white as a simplistic “oppressor and oppressed” view would have it.
When available, the data suggested that women’s attitudes are at least as predictive as men’s of levels of PV against women.
Indeed, women’s parallel attitudes are equally predictive and in some cases more predictive, of their victimization as are men’s attitudes.
And that suggests that women aren’t simple victims, but play a role in maintaining traditional gender roles.

Finally, women’s empowerment doesn’t cure PV.
Instead, the higher the level of women’s empowerment in a society, the higher the level of their violence toward men.

So, overall, the feminist perspective is lacking.

And even if it may explain a little part of men’s violence towards women, by focusing only on men’s aggression toward women, it still cannot provide a good explanation of VP as the larger phenomenon that it is.

Individual Psychological Perspectives

This approach looks at the background, personality, and social cognitive factors that predisposes individuals for perpetrating PV.

Some predictors of PV include:

• Childhood conduct problems is the strongest and most consistent predictors of later PV together with:
• Adolescent indicators of emotional vulnerability, including neuroticism, depression, and negative emotionality (for both, see for example: Ehrensaft et al. , 2004; Mofftt, Krueger, Caspi, & Fagan, 2000; Woodward, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2002)
• Observing or experiencing violence in families of origin (e.g. , Kwong, Bartholomew, Henderson, & Trinke, 2003), although the magnitude of these associations is generally small
  • Child maltreatment modestly predicts future PV
• Poor communication and problem-solving skills (e.g. , Anglin & Holtzworth-Munroe, 1997). And, I’d guess, these are related to IQ.
• Accepting attitudes regarding violence in close relationships (Stith et al. , 2004)
• Difficulties in regulating negative affect and developing close, trusting relationships and, associated:
  • Emotional vulnerability and reactivity, especially in the context of close relationships
• Low self-esteem
• Anxious attachment and interpersonal dependency
• Aggressive tendencies
• Negative attributions for partners’ behavior and to view partners as critical and intentionally hurtful (e.g. , Scott & Straus, 2007).
  • Hostile attribution biases (Dutton, 2006)
• Personality disorders, including borderline and antisocial
  • mood disorders (notably depression and anxiety)
  • substance use disorders (Dutton, 2006; Stith et al. , 2004)

However popular an approach, it’s challenging to develop “profiles” for abusers:

Although typological approaches have been popular in the feld of PV, they suffer from a number of limitations: Typologies are diffcult to replicate across samples, they imply qualitative differences between subtypes that are not always justifed, they fail to account for variability within subtypes, and they generally fail to account for change in violence
(…)
most perpetrator typologies more or less explicitly link types of offenders with distinct forms of aggression. For instance, antisocial perpetrators engage in instrumental or controlling aggression, whereas borderline perpetrators engage in hostile, reactive aggression. Such simple distinctions are conceptually flawed (Bushman & Anderson, 2001) and obscure the multiple and changing motives that come into play in violent interactions (Capaldi & Kim, 2007)

Dyadic perspectives: it takes 2 to tango

The single, strongest predictor of PV is psychological or physical aggression by the other partner (e.g. , K.D. O’Leary & Slep, 2003; White et al. , 2001).

The state and quality of the relationship also matters, with relationship distress as a consistent correlate of PV (e.g. , Stith et al. , 2004; Williams & Frieze, 2005), albeit the association between distress and PV is likely to be reciprocal (e.g. , Lawrence & Bradbury, 2007).
And contrary to the myth that abusive partners make others miserable, both partners in relationships with PV tend to be dissatisfied (e.g. , Williams & Frieze, 2005).

So, it seems to truly be a case of toxic embrace that drags both down.

Worth noting that some couples in violent relationships are not dissatisfied (Bauserman & Arias, 1992; K.D. O’Leary et al. , 1989).

Other relationship factors related to PV are:

• Nonegalitarian decision making (regardless of gender), which probably contributes to marital conflict (e.g. , Coleman & Straus, 1990)
• Marital discord (e.g. , Coleman & Straus, 1990)
• Problem-solving skill deficits (e.g. , Anglin & Holtzworth-Munroe, 1997)
• Attachment styles mismatch: PV was most common in couples in attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance couples (Roberts and Noller 1998). Also see our seminal article on this “anxious-avoidant trap“
• Strong women. Paradoxically, women who report severe PV by their partners rarely comply with their partner’s wishes in violent altercations, and most report fighting back physically (e.g. , Gondolf & Beeman, 2003; Goodman, Dutton, Weinfurt, & Cook, 2003).
  To me, this seems to be a case that may be covered by the power dynamics approach of the feminist perspectives

And more politically incorrect, especially because cases of true helpless victims also most likely exist:

• Birds of a feather flock together: individuals tend to select romantic partners who share risk factors for PV, and then the two partners mutually reinforce each other’s aggressive tendencies
  • Assortative mating on antisocial behavior (H.K. Kim & Capaldi, 2004; Krueger, Mofftt, Caspi, Bleske, & Silva, 1998). And, from other sources, I’ve read the same for dark triad traits

Say the authors:

couples identified for male violence are distinguished by high levels of hostility by both partners and by high reciprocity of negative affect such as anger, criticism, contempt, and belligerence (e.g. , Burman, Margolin, & John, 1993; Cordova et al. , 1993; Jacobson et al. , 1994)”
In contrast, satisfied couples tend not to reciprocate negative partner behavior during conflict, thereby avoiding escalation and containing conflict (e.g. , Cordova et al. , 1993)

Indirect evidence that the relationship dynamics matter are also longitudinal studies showing that the rate at which individuals perpetrate PV is more stable within a given relationship than with a new relationship (Capaldi & Owen, 2001; Capaldi, Shortt, & Crosby, 2003; Robins, Caspi, & Mofftt, 2002).

Of course, all individuals’ risk factors and couples’ interact and can either reinforce each other, or nullify each other.
For example, husbands’ hostility and alcohol abuse predict partner abuse, but only in distressed marriages (Leonard & Senchak, 1993). And the effect of individual dispositions on PV tends to be mediated by relationship variables such as marital satisfaction and conflict (e.g., K.D.O’Leary, Slep, & O’Leary, 2007).

The authors summarize relationship dynamics leading to PV with 3 main points:

1. Both members bring vulnerabilities for aggression to their relationship
2. The relationship becomes conflictual and distressed
3. Partners reciprocate hostile behavior, leading to escalation

Situational perspectives

This perspective looks at how specific situations lead to PV.

For example:

• It may take provocation for emotional sensitivity and impulsivity to give rise to aggression (Bettencourt, Talley, Benjamin, & Valentine, 2006)
• Threats of partner rejection or loss may lead anxious individuals to aggress
• Verbal arguments often precede PV. The few studies of interaction processes suggest that violence typically follows an escalating pattern of negativity by both

Albeit the authors don’t directly state this, I think most sensible people would agree that rejection or many non-physical provocations are no excuse for PV.

Multifactor Models

Multifactor models are heuristic frameworks to provide theoretical coherence to all the different approaches in the PV field.

by J. P. Forgas and J. Fitness, 2008, New York, NY: Psychology Press. Copyright 2008 by the Taylor & Francis Group. Adapted with permission.

Though models differ in emphasis, all acknowledge that understanding PV requires consideration of multiple levels of analysis, from individual dispositions to the cultural context

Intervention and prevention for PV

The until recently more widespread intervention programs stemming from the feminist analysis such as the Duluth model show little evidence of effectiveness.

Cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) programs for male perpetrators fare somewhat better (Babcock et al. , 2004; Dutton, Bodnarchuk, Kropp, Hart, & Ogloff, 1997; Feder & Wilson, 2005; Murphy & Eckhardt, 2005).

Couples therapy is also a good option and, if present, including treatment for substance abuse may be a good idea.

Power and social influence

Major power theories

I ended up highlighting most of this chapter.

So bear with this long summary.

Definitions

The authors “provisionally define power” as:

“as the ability of one individual in a relationship (the influence agent) to exert influence on another person (the target of influence) so that the influence agent obtains the specifc outcomes he or she wants in a given situation while being able to resist influence attempts by the target“.

The two dimensions of influence strategies

Most influence strategies exist along two dimensions:

• Directness (direct vs. indirect)
• Valence (positive vs. negative)

Influence strategies are carried out with influence tactics (e.g. , coercion, autocracy, reasoning, manipulation), which are chosen and used to help achieve the goals.

Power is central to human relationships

(…) power plays a central role in everyday social interactions, and it serves as an organizing principle in the social and behavioral sciences (Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000)

However, as we mentioned here on TPM as well, it’s been largely ignored by the social sciences:

Given its paramount importance, one might expect power would hold a privileged place in the feld of social psychology and particularly in the study of relationships.
Although there are major theoretical statements on what power is (e.g. , French & Raven, 1959; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) and how it should affect relationship dynamics (e.g. , Huston, 1983), and there are isolated pockets of research on how power influences interpersonal outcomes, power has never been a hotbed of theoretical or empirical activity. One overarching goal of this chapter is to begin to change this state of affairs.

Furthermore the research has some limitations, including:

Nearly all of this research has used self-report measures that ask relationship partners to make judgments of the relative balance of power in their relationship in general

Overview

Some general takeaways:

• Around 50% of relationships are power-unequal (Bentley, Galliher, & Ferguson, 2007; Caldwell & Peplau, 1984)
  • But even lower-power partners have some power: because most partners divide up roles and duties within their relationship, even the generally less powerful partner often has some decision-making discretion
• Highly power-imbalanced relationships are unhappy and conflictual: highly unequal power make for lower satisfaction, less stability, and greater conflict (Caldwell & Peplau, 1984; Sprecher et al. , 2006).
• Men tend to have more power: When power imbalances exist, both men and women usually indicate that the male partner has greater power in the relationship than the female partner (Felmlee, 1994; for an exception in African American communities, see Davis, Williams, Emerson, & Hourd-Bryant, 2000)
• Power imbalances tend to be stable over time (Sprecher & Felmlee, 1997; Sprecher, Schmeeckle, & Felmlee, 2006)
• Western couples prefer egalitarian relationships in which both partners have equal power (Caldwell & Peplau, 1984; Galliher et al. , 1999; Sprecher & Felmlee, 1997)

And very telling of power-craving psychology:

• Men who seek great power are more abusive. That is true for both men who enjoy having greater power in their relationships or who are less happy being less powerful. That is more true for men than for women who like being in charge (Rogers, Bidwell, & Wilson, 2005)

In general, be careful being higher power because you may forget to empathize and make it win-win:

individuals who either are given greater power within a newly formed relationship (with a stranger) or are led to believe they have relatively more power are less likely to adopt their partner’s perspective, less inclined to take into account what she or he does and does not know, and are poorer at reading their partner’s emotional expressions (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006). Higher power individuals are also shielded from being influenced by their lower power partners

Power and influence strategies

First off, a warning:

The research on influence, effectiveness, and outcomes is spotty.
And it doesn’t allow for much generalizations, or for high-confidence conclusions.

That being said, let’s see what we have:

Manipulation and supplication are weak

Howard et al. categorized responses into 24 influence tactics, and 6 strategies:

• Manipulation
• Supplication
• Bullying
• Autocracy
• Disengagement
• Bargaining

Weaker approaches such as manipulation and supplication were associated with female gender, having more feminine traits, having less power in society, and being more dependent on one’s relationship partner.

Direct talk works to affect change, coercion doesn’t

Fletcher, and Simpson (2006) looked at effectiveness, and:

Although greater use of direct strategies was perceived by both relationship partners as less effective immediately after discussions of how one partner could change or improve something (…), direct strategies produced greater self-improvement change across time than did indirect strategies (Overall et al. , 2009), with greater use of negative tactics being particularly ineffective (Overall & Fletcher, 2010)

And:

In terms of effectiveness, relationship referencing is most effective at changing partners’ opinions, whereas coercion and logic–reasoning are ineffective, often pushing targets farther away from the influence agents’ desired position (Oriña et al. , 2002, 2008).

I wish the author had directly defined “relationship referencing”, but I suppose it refers to mentioning and emphasizing the bond, and what’s good for the relationship,

The 6 main power theories

Social Power Theory

• Who: French and Raven, 1959
• Power definition: the potential to exert influence on another person

Social influence, in turn, is the process through which social power is wielded in interpersonal contexts via strategies and underlying tactics.
You socially influence someone when your presence or actions (influence agent) change the beliefs, attitudes, or behavior of another person (the target of influence).

French and Raven list six types of power:

1. Reward
2. Coercive
3. Legitimate
4. Expert
5. Referent
6. Informational

• Limitations: doesn’t deal with established relationships or the advantages/disadvantages of having VS not having power

The authors say:

does not explain how these bases of power are activated en route to exerting influence in interpersonal contexts or how being a more powerful versus a less powerful agent or target of influence affects personal or relational outcomes.
(…)
says little if anything about how power operates in established dyads …. (and) major outcomes of having versus not having power.

Resource theory

• Who: Blood and Wolfe (1960) and later extended by Saflios-Rothschild (1976)
• Power definition: an individual’s ability—either potential or actual—to change the behavior of other members in his or her social system.
  • resources are “a property of one person which can be made available to others as instrumental to the satisfaction of their needs or the attainment of their goals”.
    Examples of resources are skills, knowledge, money, and status

In this theory, imbalances in exchanges of (or access to) resources are the primary sources of power.
The lower power partner is dependent on others for access to the resources needed to satisfy his or her needs and goals.

This theory is central to the social exchange model, and thus also central to our approach.
An example to illustrate the point:

Mary has little access to money, but she is willing to give Richard a lot of affection and support, and she takes care of the house and family. In return, she expects Richard to support her fnancially, but she does not require him to return her deep love and affection.
Richard is an attractive man, and he could fnd another romantic partner without much difficulty, but he stays with Mary because he receives so much love and support from her.
Thus, Richard has more power in the relationship than Mary does; he probably obtains more tangible rewards in most of their exchanges, he typically sacrifices less, and Mary usually bends to his will to keep their relationship harmonious.
However, if Mary suddenly has access to money outside the relationship (perhaps through an inheritance), she may begin to perceive the status quo as imbalanced and may begin to expect more from Richard in return for her resources, which could alter the power dynamics in their relationship

TPM Note: Great example, but missing the most important elements
Of course, this is very much simplified.
As a matter of fact, it doesn’t include the most important elements we focus on.
For example, win-win approaches that make it fair for her and make her happy to stay, personal power through power awareness and skills that make her want Richard to lead, etc. etc.

Interdependence Theory

• Who: Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959
• Power definition: the ability of one partner in a relationship to directly influence the quality of outcomes (i.e. , the amount of rewards vs. costs) that can be obtained by the other partner in a given situation

This theory draws from game theory and negotiation.
So for example, it considers the “BATNAs” of each member and individuals with better alternatives to the current partner have greater power.

It also includes the concept of “needing less” -in sociology, “least interest” (Waller & Hill, 1951)-.
Such as, the partner in a relationship who is least interested in continuing the relationship (i.e. , the one who has better alternatives and less to lose if the relationship ended) has more power.
Including dictating important decisions or whether the relationship continues or ends.

Dyadic Power Theory

• Definition of power: the relative potential of relationship partners to influence each other’s behavior when a conflict arises between them
  • Authority are the norms regarding which partner ought to control specifc situations, events, or decisions within the relationship
  • Resources are the same as resource theory

This theory focuses on relationships.
So power emerges as a consequence of the interaction between the two.

The basis for power are the resources and authority that each partner perceives each one of them to be holding.

Power Within Relationships Theory

• Power definition: the ability of one partner in a relationship to achieve his or her desired goals by intentionally influencing the other partner to facilitate (or at least not block) what he or she wants to achieve
  • Influence occurs when one partner (the influence agent) says or does something that changes how the other partner (the target of influence) thinks, feels, or behaves during an interaction

Power-Approach Theory

• Power definition: an individual’s relative capacity to modify another person’s state by providing or withholding resources on which that person depends or by administering punishments

However, having resources is not enough.
Resources confer power only as long as the other person needs them.

Keltner et al.(2003) identified a broad range of variables linked with having high power versus low power.
These include individual variables such as personality traits (e.g. , extraversion, charisma) and physical traits (e.g. , height, physical attractiveness).
And they tend to be correlated.

My note: Finally someone who gets it :)
Not surprising I agree, since it’s exactly what we always said here at TPM.

Keltner and colleagues, who seem to have a great power-awareness, also correctly state:

Behaviorally, more powerful partners should show greater consistency of behavior across different situations, be less inclined to modify or mask their emotional expressions, and display more socially inappropriate behavior than less powerful partners, given that the behavior of more powerful partners should be less socially constrained.

Great observation.

Comparisons of Power Theories

Most theories include resources as one of the main bases of power.
And all mention the control of partner’s outcomes through reward or coercion.

However, less has been said about how power evolves over time, or how low-power individuals can gain more power.
For that, you have TPM :).
See:

• Phases of power in relationships
• How to maintain attraction
• How women control men

And, say the authors, little has been said about how power is enacted or communicated during interactions.

For that, too you have TPM :).
You can start here:

• High power behavior
• Low power behavior
• High power verbal expressions
• Low power verbal expressions

Finally, say the authors, the most under-considered topic is the outcomes of power and influence attempts on each partner and their relationship.

And to maximize that for you and for both, you have Power University :).

Towards a unified model: the dyadic power–social influence model (DPSIM)

The authors finally present their model.

And it was the best of them all and a major step forward.
Simpson, Farrell, Oriña, and Rothman did a fantastic job.

dyadic power–social influence model (DPSIM) chart

• Definition of power: the ability or capacity to change another person’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior so they align with one’s own desired preferences, along with the ability or capacity to resist influence attempts imposed by another person

There are four major sets of constructs:

1. Characteristics of each person in the relationship, which include
   • Attractiveness
   • Status and resources
   • Warmth and trustworthiness
   • Personality traits
   • Orientation toward relationships (e.g. , his or her attachment orientation, communal vs. exchange orientation; see Clark & Mills, 1979; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007)
2. Type of power each person potentially has and can use
3. Type of influence strategies and tactics that each person is able to deploy
4. Outcomes each person experiences after influence attempts

Then the authors draw from previous theories.
The bases of power are from French and Raven. The high-level influence strategies exist along the two dimensions of direct /indirect tactics (e.g. , being explicit, overt, and direct vs. being passive or covert to resolve issues or inspire change) and positive/negative.
And negotiations follow the “who has more options has higher power” general rule.

This model is more granular and nuanced.
For example, it includes rules or norms for decision making within domains (e.g. , doing the bills, deciding where to go on vacation, who cooks, etc).
And it postulates that people can change or adapt ot the power dynamics.
For example, if the relationship becomes more equitable because she provides him with better rewards and outcomes, he may change his leadership style. Or adopt a more communal orientation toward her and their relationship.
Dependencies can also change over time. For example, while he may be needing her less in the beginning, moving in together, planning to purchase a house, having children or starting a business adds more common goals.

The authors have a great grasp of power.
For example, they correctly state that the lower power partner may adapt without any negotiation needed. It’s because the lower power person anticipates and automatically abides by the higher person’s preference, who may not even need to use “influence”.
Or that a partner may confer more power to the other partner simply by over-estimating their access to certain resources. Albeit the authors don’t say so, this is also where manipulation, advanced social skills, and advanced social strategies come into play.

This chapter was so good that you can find more insights in the “practical tips” section.

Psychology of Power

This was another chapter that I heavily underlined.
Many thanks to the authors Adam D. Galinsky, Derek D. Rucker, and Joe C. Magee.

How power has been researched

The manipulations and measures of power create a sense of power that then produces a range of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences. The moderators of power can alter (a) whether power produces a sense of power or (b) whether a sense of power produces a particular outcome

Power has been manipulated in four ways in psychological and interpersonal research:

• Giving power within laboratory experiments. Structural manipulations that involve varying control over a resource, typically within the context of a laboratory experiment.
• Recalling or imagining high-power situations. Activating the experience of power via episodic recall or an imagined role manipulation.
• Priming the concept of power. For example, semantically by using word puzzles, scrambled sentence tasks, or photos
• Embodied cognition manipulation. For example, altering an individual’s physical posture or nonverbal behavior and builds on work on embodied cognition

Measures for power

There are many measures associated with power.

The authors say they’re designed to demonstrate that:

1. Individuals scoring higher on the measure are more likely to hold positions of greater power
2. Individuals in positions of greater power score higher on the measure, or
3. The correlation between the measure and another variable is similar to the pattern of results produced by a manipulation of power

Let’s now review some of the measures:

• Personal sense of power measures one’s perceived ability to influence others. That is, how powerful one feels at a given moment in time.

Can also be used to capture a person’s current feelings of power.
The authors say the scale has good external validity because individuals who occupy managerial roles at work and have more power report feeling more powerful than those occupying subordinate roles.

• Trait dominance is the tendency to behave in assertive, forceful, and self-assured ways” (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009, p.491)

The most used measures are the dominance Gough’s (1987) Personality Research Inventory scale and Jackson’s (1974) Personality Research Form.

Trait dominance is typically self-reported, and self-report measures of dominance are typically positively correlated with dominance behavior (Buss & Craik, 1980).
However, it’s important to define it well because define because men and women perceive different behaviors as dominant (Buss, 1981; Schmid Mast & Hall, 2004; cf.Carney, Hall, & LeBeau, 2005). Note: unluckily though, the authors don’t provide examples here.
And it’s important to separate the trait dominance, which is stable across contexts, from dominance behavior, which can vary across contexts.

• Motivation for power, measuring the extent to which people value having power

Traditional measures include both the desire to influence others and a concern with one’s status.
Written responses to motive-eliciting stimuli or situation have been used to measure it, but the Thematic
Apperception Test is the most popular one.

It’s important to note though that implicit or explicit measures produce empirically independent scores (Brunstein & Maier, 2005; Kehr, 2004; King, 1995; but see Emmons & McAdams, 1991) and effects (e.g., Spangler, 1992; for reviews, see McClelland et al., 1989; Schultheiss, 2001; Woike, Mcleod, & Goggin, 2003).
Albeit the authors don’t dig deeper, I suppose by “implicit” they mean subconscious motivation, while “explicit” includes conscious with more direct questions about their motives.

Given TPM’s take on the motivation for power, I was glad to read that some researchers emphasized the importance of teasing apart different types of power motives based on the intent behind that drive. Such as: for self-serving and antisocial goals (personalized power motive), or for goals that are profitable for others (socialized power motive)?

• Hormones: biologically, both testosterone and cortisol are related to dominance behavior and they are thought of as biological markers of power.

High testosterone and low cortisol appear to be the hormonal profile of high power, whereas low testosterone and high cortisol characterize people in conditions of low power

However, they’re complicated and it’s unwieldy to generalize since they fluctuate.

Hormones though explain some physiological reaction and connects to the “legitimacy” of power explained later in the book.
Josephs, Sellers, Newman, and Mehta (2006) proposed the mismatch effect to explain the findings that low-testosterone individuals had a negative physiological reaction and worse cognitive functioning to being in the dominant position. And high-testosterone individuals showed physiological distress and cognitive deficits when in the subordinate position.

Consequences of power

In general, research research has established that power has profound effects on people.
Including in cognition, self-perception, social perception, motivation, performance, behavior, and even physiological states.

Cognition processes

Power leads people to more:

• Abstractive and higher-level thinking, focusing more on the gist of information (vs. concrete details) and categorizing information and objects at superordinate levels (vs. subordinate levels).
  Example: high-power individuals tend to identify voting at a higher level (e.g., changing the government), whereas low-power individuals at a lower level (e.g. , marking a ballot)
• Better executive functioning, whereas low power tends to impair executive functioning compared with high power
• Higher and less variable pitch, and more variable in loudness, seemingly debunking lay theories that powerful “alpha male types” speak with lower pitch. However, this refers not to baseline pitch, but to the changes within individuals

Self-Perception

Power leads to:

• More positive views of the self, including increased self-esteem and “better-than-average” effect
• Larger physical self-perfection, seeing themselves as larger and underestimating the size of others (Yap, Mason, & Ames, 2013)
• High confidence and optimism on personal outcomes

In sum, say the authors, the powerful see themselves and their world through rose-colored glasses.

Social Perception

Power leads to:

• Impaired perception-taking with a reduced ability to take the perspective of others
  • Ignoring others’ perspectives
  • Lower empathy
• Higher self-value compared to others, as shown by the propensity to spend more on themselves than others (while lower power individuals were more willing to spend more on others. Unless it was for status-related objects. Status-related objects are supposed to fill a more urgent need for low-power individuals: the need for power/self-advancement).
  BUT it doesn’t mean that powerful individuals will never spend on others. Chen et al.(2001) showed that goals to serve others may be intensified in high-power individuals (see Rucker, Galinsky, & Dubois, 2012, for further discussion)
• More stereotyping and individuation
  • Prejudice VS outgroup
• Objectifcation, with a higher inclination to look at others as instruments for relevant goals achievement. For example, senior executives viewed relationships both with subordinates and peers in more instrumental terms than MBA students

Resistance to Influence

Albeit power is often conceptualized as the capacity to influence others, it protects people from influence:

• More self-trust and less trust in others, relying on own knowledge and ignoring or rejecting the advice of others (See et al. , 2011; Tost et al. , 2012). Tost et al.(2012) found that power led people to discount the advice of both nonexperts and experts
  • More trust in subjective experience (⚠️ Potential for falling into biases), since they’re more likely to rely on their own subjective experiences, such as ease of retrieval, when forming judgments (Weick & Guinote, 2008)
• Less conformity, with their attitudes less susceptible to conformity pressures and stronger resistance to pernicious pressure to act like the herd
• More freedom of expression. Powerful individuals are also more likely to express their current feelings and attitudes
• More creativity. Because powerful individuals are less influenced by others, they can be more creative.
  • More feeling of authenticity. However, this was mediated by individual’s sense of power. People’s expressions were more congruent with their self-reported emotions and traits when there was a fit between person and role
• More focused negotiations for better outcomes. High-power negotiators’ anger focuses their attention and leads them to claim value, whereas low-power negotiators are more influenced by their counterpart’s anger, which derails them from what they are trying to achieve (Overbeck, Neale, & Govan, 2010; see also Anderson & Thompson, 2004; Van Kleef, de Dreu, Pietroni, & Manstead, 2006)
  • Immune from “anger power moves”: power immunizes negotiators from the influence of their opponents’ emotional displays, with high-power negotiators conceding less to an angry opponent than to a baseline or low-power negotiator (Van Kleef et al. , 2006)

Performance and Behavior

• Better interview performance. Also see “how to ace job interviews“
• Higher status attainment. People primed with power achieved more status with more proactive behavior during the very first few minutes of group interaction
• More action-taking. Higher power has been associated with greater assertive action across a wide variety of situations
  • More risk taking. greater risk preferences, riskier gambles and choices, find risky sexual activity more attractive, and riskier tactics in negotiations
• Better motor-based performance, with studies showing more putts in gold and better dart-throwing results
• More amoral behavior when chasing self-interest. Powerful individuals are more likely to cheat but only when it benefts themselves BUT they still condemn the moral deviations of others
  • But stick to the rules more: powerful individuals relied on rule-based moral principles, whereas low power focus more on outcome and consequences. As a result, powerful individuals stick to the rules, whereas powerless individuals make more exceptions Lammers and Stapel (2009)
• Better self-regulation when pursuing a goal, but worse when not pursuing a high-priority goal. This is valid also when self-regulatory resources were depleted

Motivation and Evaluation

• More focused and “ruthless” goal-pursuit. Power helps prioritize goals and prompts goal-consistent behavior, with faster responses and performance of goal-related tasks.
  High power individuals also required less information to make decisions, reached decisions faster, and were more flexible (including when opportunities arose). They also paid less attention to constraints or obstacles
• The behavior depends on the goal and personality. Chen et al.(2001) demonstrated that individuals focused on the self behave more selfishly with power. However individuals focused on others become more generous with power. Similarly, with competitive goals and priming power leads to greater competitive responses. When the prime and goal are for cooperation, high power leads to more cooperative responses (DeMarree et al. 2012, Experiment 1).
  My note: I suppose power is associated with more general selfishness because selfishness maybe more common, and because many people never experienced power before
• Less status-seeking behavior while low-power participants were willing to pay more for an object associated with status (see also Charles, Hurst, & Roussanov, 2009; Rucker & Galinsky, 2009; Rucker et al., 2012)
• ⚠️ Less research because power increases confidence, powerful individuals are less motivated to engage in processing information carefully
  • More confirmation bias, potentially (mediated by decision certainty). Fischer et al.(2011) found that making a fist led to more decision-consistent information VS decision-inconsistent information
• Better mood and psychological well-being. Power enhanced subjective well-being and individuals high in power reported more positive affect than their partners and individuals low in power reported more negative affect
  • More psychological resilience. Power affected people’s physiological responses to different types of stress. And was a general buffer against the negative physiological effects of telling lies, increased pain tolerance, and

Interestingly, powerful individuals are also more likely to forgive relationship partners when they feel a strong bond (Karremans & Smith, 2010).
The authors say that goal-directedness explains why.

Moderators of power

Personality & Character

Machiavelli recognized that power reveals the person.
And, turns out, he was right.

As we mentioned before, Chen et al.(2001) found power-priming leads to more generous behavior in individuals with a communal orientation. But it leads to more self-serving behavior in those with an exchange orientation.

Some more studies:

• Power only predicts sexual harassment in those predisposed to harass. Bargh et al.(1995) found that men primed with power viewed female coworkers in sexual terms and flirted more openly with them. But only for those men with a predisposition toward sexual harassment
• People who trust others trusted others more when they had more power. Finally, social value orientation only signifcantly predicted the extent to which high-power negotiators trusted their opponent, but not for the baseline condition. Such as: power amplified the participants’ prior value orientations.
• Liberal CEOs invest more in corporate social responsibility when they have more power. Liberal CEOs invest in more corporate social responsibility work than do frms with conservative CEOs, and this difference is greater among CEOs with more power (Chin, Hambrick, & Treviño, 2013)

Say the authors:

Power increases the correspondence between individual traits and behavior (Bargh et al. , 1995; Chen et al. , 2001; Galinsky et al. , 2008)

The authors say this is because of more independence -and less dependence on others-:

power reduces dependence. When people are dependent on others, they are often limited in how they can act, altering their own behavior to ft the whims and tendencies of those on whom they depend.
However, with power, the constraints that normally govern thought, expression, and behavior melt away, and people are left with the truest form of themselves.

Several studies support this conclusion, say the authors.

A good book on this is “Corruptible“.

Culture

managers from Western countries took more resources when they had high versus low power because they felt entitled. In contrast, high power led managers from Hong Kong to voluntarily take fewer resources.Similarly, Torelli and Shavitt (2010)

Legitimacy

Legitimate power is deserved and appropriately exercised.
Illegitimate power is undeserved and/or abused.

Whether power is legitimate or illegitimate changes both the level of cooperation and the leader’s behavior.
Legitimate hierarchies tend to be more cooperative. In illegitimate hierarchies, the powerless tend to act -or want to act- against the status quo.

Legitimate leaders approach and lead the way.
Illegitimate leaders are more defensive and concerned with defending their position of power.

Stability

Stability refers to how stable or fluid the positions are within the hierarchy.

Unstable power and stable powerlessness produced more physiological arousal, which I suppose would also include “stress”.

The behavior of high- and low-power individuals can diverge.
For example, Mead and Maner (2012) found that leaders high in dominance motivation sought proximity to an in-group member who threatened their power when it was unstable.

Instability also led to more defensive, group-harming behavior by the leader.
Maner and Mead (2010) found that insecure, unstable power led powerful people to withhold valuable information from the group and prevented other skilled group members from having any influence.
However, these self-interested actions disappeared when the group was competing against an out-group.

Connecting legitimacy and stability, powerful individuals act aggressively and demeaningly toward others when they feel incompetent in their position of power (Fast and Chen 2009).
Somewhat confusing for me, the authors then add legitimacy and say that when one feels illegitimate and stability is called into question, people may worry about the respect they get from others, and lash out.

Status

Albeit related, power and status are different.

The authors define status as “respect and admiration in the eyes of others”.

Many roles in society afford power but lack status (e.g., airport security, administrators, clerks, etc).
People judge most negatively those with high power but low-status, see them as dominant and cold, and expect the most negative interactions with them (Fragale, Overbeck, and Neale, 2011).
The rationale is most interesting.
Studies by Fast, Halevy, and Galinsky (2012) show that the combination of high power and low status leads people to demean others. Their reasoning is that power frees those who lack status to act on the resentment from lacking respect by demeaning others. In contrast, those who lack both power and status are not free to act on this resentment. And high-status people do not have any resentment :).

This is also why Power University advises a mix of power and warmth to get the most out of clerks.

Blader and Chen (2012) found that high power and status had opposing effects on justice towards others.
Power had a positive effect when combined with status when power was low but not when it was high.
So status with low power was positively associated with justice. But when it was high power, it negatively associated with justice.

Theories of Power

This chapter as well lists power theories.

The authors say that although the approach–inhibition theory dominated the field, the theories aren’t in opposition and likely they all contribute to explaining the large construct of power.
And there is some evidence for each one of these:

Approach–Inhibition Theory

Low-power people want to understand and predict the needs of high-power people.
And high-power people are oriented toward what they want and how to obtain it (Keltner et al.).

Say the authors:

Keltner et al.(2003) argued that power produces its effects because powerful individuals have unfettered access to rewards, whereas powerless individuals lack resources and are more subject to social threats.

The relative activation of two neurobiological systems activates these different concerns: BAS and BIS.

Behavioral Activation System (BAS) attends to potential rewards and to engage in behavior that brings them closer to their goals.
Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) attends to potential threats, recognizes goal conflicts, and interrupts ongoing behavior.

Limitations:
The moderators of power put some boundaries around this theory. The meaning attached to the sense of power also matters, and not just the sense of power in general.

General Model of Disinhibition

Extending Keltner’s theorizing, Hirsh et al.(2011) presented a general model of disinhibition that, together with power, includes anonymity and alcohol.

All can have similar effects emerging from a single underlying mechanism: the decreased salience of competing response options prevents activation of the BIS (the “disinhibition effect”).

The authors say that this model is consistent with many empirical findings regarding power -albeit they don’t say whether the same is true for alcohol and anonymity-.

Agentic–Communal Model of Power

Rucker et al.(2012) suggest that high power produces an agentic orientation towards self-expression, self-expansion, and self-protection.
In contrast, states of low power produce a communal orientation focused on bonding with others and considering others in decision making.

In possible support of this theory Dubois et al found that charities appealing to competency, which can be linked to agency, got more donations form high-power individuals.
And appeals to emphasize warmth, which can be linked to a communal orientation, got more donations from low-power individuals.

Social Distance Theory

Mutual dependence make people in a relationship feel closer while a lack of dependence makes high-power individuals feel distant from their counterparts (Magee and Smith, 2013).

Possible supporting evidence comes from Lammers et al.(2012) who found that high-power individuals preferred solitary activities over collaborative or joint activities.
And their preference for social distance was explained by their perceived lack of dependence on their partners.

The authors say this may explain power holders’ resistance to social influence (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002; Berdahl & Martorana, 2006; Galinsky et al. , 2008), disinterest in others’ mental states (Galinsky et al. , 2006; Woltin, Corneille, Yzerbyt, & Förster, 2011), and empathic inaccuracy (Galinsky et al., 2006; Shirako, Blader, & Chen, 2013).

Attachment styles

We have quite some articles on this already.

And we added the golden nuggets in this book as well.
See here:

• Attachment styles: overview
• Anxious attachment
  • How to date as an anxious
• Avoidant attachment

And:

• Toxic avoidant attachment trap
• How to spot an avoidant
• Do women like avoidants?

MORE WISDOM

Dating and mating are negotiations and compromises

Both sexes would be most happy with a partner who is high on all desirable dimensions—physically attractive, wealthy, charming, agreeable, and so on (Fletcher, Simpson, Thomas, & Giles, 1999).
However, most people are not in a position to attract a partner who is perfect in every way, so they must compromise and make trade-offs. When forced to compromise in choosing a long-term partner, men and women make very different choices. Women prioritize social status and give up good looks

And:

Additionally, social exchange perspectives (e.g. , Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) suggest that individuals seek the “best” mate they can attain on the basis of the limits imposed by their own mate value, which leads partners who have similar “market value” to pair up

And yes, self-esteem does play a role (at least when it comes to expectations):

Additionally, people who have more positive selfperceptions typically hold higher and less flexible ideal standards (Campbell et al. , 2001). That is, individuals who view themselves positively tend to expect more from partners and relationships and are less willing to compromise

Also see:

• Sexual market place
• Sexual market value

Wealthy women prioritize attractiveness, poor ones resources

Correlational evidence has shown that women who state they are in control of their own resources, and presumably less dependent on a man for assistance with offspring care, place greater emphasis on attractiveness in mates than women who do not feel in control of their own resources (Moore, Cassidy, Law Smith, & Perrett, 2006)

This is in line with our take on women’s hypergamy.

See it here:

• Why hypergamy is overblown (especially in the West)

Men OR women may make for better business leaders depending on the situation

Despite men’s thirst for leadership, they do not necessarily make better leaders in modern organizations (Van Vugt et al. , 2008). Women might be more effective at what is called social–emotional leadership, whereas men might be more effective at task leadership

Men have smaller incentives to invest in their (current) offspring (because they can have more later)

The fact that men can produce offspring much later in their lives than women leads to another asymmetry women have no opportunity costs associated with future direct offspring.Men, on the other hand, who have the possibility of future offspring during most of their life span, almost always have opportunity costs associated with investing in current offspring

Culture and biology influence each other

The tendency within psychology has been to regard cultural influences as being largely independent of biological influences, but new research and theory have challenged that assumption (e.g. , Kenrick, Nieuweboer, & Buunk, 2010; Kitayama & Uskul, 2011).
For example, people facing either temporary cues to disease or living in areas bearing higher pathogen loads show decreased extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience, all traits that may elevate the chances of infection exposure (Duncan, Schaller, & Park, 2009; Mortensen, Becker, Ackerman, Neuberg, & Kenrick, 2010; Schaller & Murray, 2008; Thornhill, Fincher, Murray, & Schaller, 2010)

Groups are inherently less cooperative and more competitive than individuals

Based on interdependence theory:

Under such circumstances, groups are faced with social dilemmas (in the intergroup context, a conflict between in-group interest and common, superordinate interests), and they often exhibit considerably less cooperation than do individuals in similar situations (Insko & Schopler, 1998). The primary reasons for this have to do with the affordances of the interdependence situation. For example, some degree of conflicting interest poses a greater challenge to trust (and enhances competitive motivation more) in interactions between groups than in ones between individuals (for meta-analytic reviews, see Balliet & Van Lange, 2013; Wildschut, Pinter, Vevea, Insko, & Schopler, 2003)

Political inclinations: competitive individualists are right wing; pro-social individuals are liberal

people with prosocial orientations tend to react very automatically to a violation of equality, revealing activation in the amygdala (Haruno & Frith, 2010).
Such findings provide neuroscientifc evidence in support of the integrative model approach to relationships, which states that a prosocial orientation involves not only the tendency to enhance joint outcomes but also the tendency to enhance equality of outcomes (Van Lange, 1999).
These differences in turn might account for the finding that prosocial individuals are more likely to vote for liberal, left-wing political parties than individualists and competitors, who are more likely to vote for conservative, right-wing political parties (Van Lange, Bekkers, Chirumbolo, & Leone, 2012)

We evolved logic to solve simpler, life-relevant problems. We’re still much better at addressing and solving those practical problems, than abstract ones

Cosmides and Tooby integrated the concept of domain specifcity with the emerging discipline of evolutionary psychology in their studies of social exchange (Cosmides, 1985, 1989; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).
Their studies revealed that participants were much better at solving logic problems when the instructions framed the problems in terms of “cheater detection” rather than generic if–then reasoning.
Tooby and Cosmides (1992) suggested that this content effect reflected domain-specifc, specialized mechanisms in the mind of Homo sapiens that had been designed by natural selection to solve the specifc problem of cheater detection, not generic logic problems

Good relationships and love shield against cheating

romantically attached participants exhibited less attentional adhesion to attractive opposite-sex faces when primed with love for their partner than when primed with happiness (Maner, Rouby, & Gonzaga, 2008)
(…)
Such findings are broadly consistent with an extensive line of research demonstrating that romantically involved and psychologically committed people tend to derogate attractive alternative partners and turn their attention away from them (Finkel, Molden, Johnson, & Eastwick, 2009; Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Lydon, Fitzsimons, & Naidoo, 2003; Lydon, Meana, Sepinwall, Richards, & Mayman, 1999; R.S.Miller, 1997; Simpson, Gangestad, & Lerma, 1990)

“I love you” is more significant when said before sex

Likewise, research on the temporal sequencing of the elements contained within the passion turning point has indicated that when “I love you” is verbally expressed before frst sex, it is considered to be a much more positive turning point and to more signifcantly increase commitment and trust than when expressions of love follow the sexual episode (Metts, 2004)

But I still wouldn’t recommend that approach to TPM’s audience.

Empathy may not be so useful, after all…

Despite appearing at the top of the superpowers list, empathic accuracy may be both less elusive—and less valuable—than commonly believed.
(…) research showing that empathic accuracy predicts better outcomes for perceivers is hard to come by (and these studies are generally correlational and cross-sectional, leaving open questions about causal direction).
Empathic accuracy seems to be more a function of targets and their relationship with a perceiver; what the targets are thinking; how much perceivers want (or do not want) to know about it; and, perhaps, how much targets want (or do not want) their thoughts to be known
(…)
precious little support exists for the idea that boosting empathic accuracy would result in across-the-board improvements in people’s relationships with other people (…) some evidence has even shown that, in some circumstances, greater empathic accuracy would hurt people’s relationships with those they care most about.

So far, say the authors, “empathy” in the sense of what people think others think and feel tells more about the empathizer, than about the subject of empathic reading.

Tailor your message to people’s power

As per Dubois research, appealing to competency -and potentially other constructs linked to agency- works better for high-power individuals.

Appeals to warmth -and potentially other constructs linked to communal orientation- work better for lower power individuals.

I suspect the same can be said for political orientations.
Go agentic for conservatives and right-wing, and communal for left-wing.

There is a social price for acting too high power compared to your status

people are severely punished if they do not know their place and act with greater authority than they truly have (…) Lelieveld, Van Dijk, Van Beest, and Van Kleef (2012) found that low-power bargainers were punished for expressing the emotion of anger, a response typically associated with high power

Celebrities may not give back because they feel that low-power people are giving out of self-interest

Aptly called the “celebrity dilemma”:

They are haunted by the possibility that someone loves not them but only their celebrity. In their studies, Inesi et al. found that power undermined the quality of relationships by creating instrumental attributions for generous acts.
Powerful individuals were more likely to believe that favors they received from low-power individuals were offered for instrumental purposes, and this belief reduced their thankfulness and desire to reciprocate and trust the low-power person.

The researchers suggested that power does create a need.
Power creates a need for true relatedness.

Men / women differences in friendships may be overstated

The general trope is that “men do, women talk”.

And there is some evidence for that:

For women, talking is the central activity and goal, even when friends are involved in doing a joint activity. For men, enjoyment of shared activity (sports or a hobby) is the focus of the friendship (Fehr, 1996)

However, that difference may be overstated, and especially so for adults:

Duck and Wright (1993) reanalyzed diary data on interactions with same-sex friends to examine within-gender as well as between-gender tendencies. For both women and men, the main purpose of getting together with friends was just to talk

Self-disclosure may be another over-stated difference:

A meta-analysis of 205 studies on self-disclosure has indicated that, in interactions with others, women disclose slightly more than men do, but the effect size is small (Dindia & Allen, 1992)

Practical Takeaway Tips

Don’t give back when people are giving out of the good of their heart

It has to do with communal VS exchange norms:

(…) people not only seek internal consistency—consistent cognitions and selfassessments—but also consistency between the norms they desire for a given relationship and the norms the other person displays. In particular, research on exchange and communal norms has demonstrated that people tend to be especially attracted to others who immediately reciprocate benefts and favors when people desire exchange norms, which are built on principles of reciprocity. In contrast, they tend to be especially attracted to others who do not immediately reciprocate benefts when they desire communal norms, which are built on principles of responsiveness to needs (M.S. Clark & Mills, 1979)

In simple terms, exchange means “I give you, you should give back for a good win-win”.

Communal means “I give you because I like you, because it seems you may need or benefit from it, and for the pleasure of giving, you shouldn’t give back right away (or it frames my giving as self-interested)”.

To gain trust or assess other people’s trustworthiness, observe whether they put their interest or the relationship’s interests first

In fledgling relationships, the degree which an individual can trust his or her partner should be inferred from clear conflicts of interest in which the partner forgos what is best for him or her and instead does what is best for his or her partner or the relationship (Simpson, 2007)

Trust is the balm to make relationships run smoother, as well sharing power and domains of power:

a basic level of trust allows both partners to feel comfortable relinquishing some decision-making power in certain relationship domains, which should facilitate the differentiation of decision-making roles within the relationship

Share power with your partner: assign domains of decision-making to each one of you

I was surprised to read this, but I couldn’t have agreed more:

partners should have divided up specifc decision-making domains so that each partner assumes primary responsibility for making certain decisions (e.g. , paying the bills, shopping, household decisions). This partitioning of decision making is more effcient than one partner making all the relationship-relevant decisions or both partners

Not being able to “let go” of a certain domain is the sign/red flag that trust is not there yet:

However, this assumes that sufficient trust has developed between the partners; individuals in established relationships who do not trust their partners should continue to attend closely to the balance of power within their relationship just as they did during the fledgling stage, given their continued concerns that their partners might not be sufficiently responsive to their needs and best interests.

During transition phases in the relationships where old domains may not matter anymore and new ones become salient, a re-negotiation is expected.
However, if trust is there, the re-negotiation should be easier and faster.

To get better behavior from leaders, remind them of the “responsibility of power”

You may get more honest behavior if you remind leaders and powerful people of the expectations and responsibility that come with power:

Rucker et al.(2014) also divided expectations into two types—prescriptive and descriptive.
They found that in the domain of unethical behavior, people expected that powerful individuals would act more dishonestly than powerless individuals but they thought the former should act more honestly than latter.
When they focused participants on the prescriptive expectations for power, the powerful participants cheated less. However, when they focused participants’ attention on the descriptive expectations, the powerful participants cheated more.

🙋🏼‍♂️ Lucio’s Analysis

My main critiques are:

• Wished for more background on whether it’s consensus, or individual study that led to a certain statement

Ever since the replication crisis, I think it’s good to be a bit more skeptical of anything that has been published before the crisis.

And to generally be skeptical of any individual study’s conclusions, especially when with small samples.

In that sense, I wished the authors shared more background information on some key studies.
Not all of them, but some key ones.

Or better yet, I wish the authors would provide background on what led to a certain statement.
For example, is it based on consensus, many studies with most of them reaching similar conclusions, or is it a single individual study?
Then, if it’s just one or a few, share some more about the methodology and sample size.

• Made me curious by raising doubts, but didn’t provide enough evidence to help me make up my minds :)

For example, discussing the criticism of social theorists to evolutionary studies, the authors say:

When controlling for both the proposer’s sexual skills and the perceived stigma associated with engaging in casual sex, the massive sex difference in receptivity to casual sex disappears (Conley, 2011)

The MASSIVE difference disappeared… but then SOME difference was still there?
I wanted to see the data -instead, it forced me to look it up-.

Same here:

Consistent with their social role theory analysis, Eagly and Wood (1999) reanalyzed the data from Buss’s (1989) 37-cultures study, demonstrating that sex differences in the preference for good fnancial prospects and youth in a mate were smaller in countries with greater gender equality. In other words, as the roles occupied by men and women in a society converged, so did their romantic partner preferences. Subsequent research showed that the sex difference in sociosexuality shows a similar trend, shrinking as a culture becomes more gender equal (Schmitt, 2005)

Smaller… Shrinking?

The differences still persists, obviously.
So criticism doesn’t invalidate the evolutionary perspective.

But it’s still a potentially highly significant criticism and correction that I wanted to know of.

The authors say the debate is still raging, which I bet it is.

But they could have misspelled a lot of those doubts by simply sharing BY HOW MUCH they decreased.

Finally, much of Conley’s counter-research seems is based on imagination and recall.
Much different than real-life -something the authors should have mentioned-.

• Too long evolutionary psychology overview

There are plenty of books for that.
I felt this one didn’t need to provide an overview of what’s evolutionary psychology. Or, at least, it could have been briefer.

• Simplifying the language may help (yes, even if it’s not meant for mass-market)

For example:

Temporally extended situations afford the expression of self-control, delay of gratification, and the inclination to stick with it, raising the issues of dependability versus unreliability and loyalty versus disloyalty

It does make sense, especially in context.
But it you simplify sentences like that one, you also help people learn faster, and potentially retain more.

• Sometimes I felt it mis-attributed some empirical evidence as supporting the wrong construct

For example, this should be evidence that “consistency” is attractive:

In an influential study (Aronson & Cope, 1968), participants tended to be especially attracted to another person who had punished their enemies and rewarded their friends

Sounds to me a lot more like attraction to power and an “honorable character” to me.

• Sometimes jumps to unfounded explanations

For example:

participants in one study who expected to initiate a new same-sex relationship preferred somebody who they believed possessed dissimilar interests, presumably because the dissimilarity would provide an opportunity for selfexpansion (Aron, Steele, Kashdan, & Perez, 2006)

Props to add the “presumably”.
But it still seems a major stretch.
Could it be instead that dissimilarity provides better genetic match for survival and thriving of the offspring? COULD be, but… Let’s just not assume too much maybe -or let’s be even clearer that we’re just guessing-.

• End-of-chapter summaries weren’t always good summaries, or summaries at all

This is a bummer for me because some chapters may not be in-scope for me or TPM, but I’d still like to get the gist

• Sometimes endorses some contentious research (power poses)

For example:

Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010) demonstrated that power could be activated by one’s posture by placing people into an expansive pose (presumed to create a state of high power) or constrictive pose (presumed to create a state of low power).

That raised some suspicion for me.

• Two different chapters both have “theories of power”

And that led both to repeating similar concepts and quoting the same research, as well as adding more theories that may confuse readers.

Editing could have been better on that.
Combine all of them, cut the repetitions, integrate the differences, and provide an overview that’s both briefer, and more extensive.
That would make for a better book.

REVIEW

The APA Handbook of Interpersonal Relations is a treasure trove for anyone seeking an overview of the empirical evidence on interpersonal relationships.

Just by judging this summary you can see how much value I found in it -and it’s not even all the notes I took-.

The chapters on power were a bomb.
I had been looking for a handbook on power and turns out… It was hidden here :).
And there is a ton more than just power.

Some of the wisdom I learned from this book already went into improving several of our articles.
And some more wisdom is also making Power Univeristy better and better.
That is one of the greatest compliments I can pay to any resource.

So I’m very grateful to the authors and editors of this book.

As for recommending, it wouldn’t probably be at the top of the recommended list for the general public.
But it may be perfect for researchers starting their careers in interpersonal relationships and related fields.

Check the best books to read or get this book on Amazon.