Interpersonal circumplex (Leary, Wiggins)
A map of social behaviour on two axes: dominance, or agency (control, assertion, status), running from dominant to submissive, and warmth, or communion (affection, affiliation), running from warm to cold. Every interpersonal act, and every person's typical style, sits somewhere on the circle.
What drives it
Two coordinates describe most of how a person treats people. Placing someone tells you what they pull from others, what they find hard to do, and where their trouble with people lies, since the problems sit at the extremes of each sector.
How it shows
Work
The eight octants, in Wiggins's terms with the problem form in brackets: assured-dominant (domineering), arrogant-calculating (vindictive), cold-hearted (cold), aloof-introverted (socially avoidant), unassured-submissive (non-assertive), unassuming-ingenuous (exploitable), warm-agreeable (overly nurturant), gregarious-extraverted (intrusive). To place someone, ask two questions after a meeting: did they take control or yield, and did they move toward people or away from or against them? Then watch them under pressure, when people move to the extreme of their sector: the warm-dominant chair becomes intrusive, the cold-submissive analyst disappears.
Relationships
Couples often sit in opposite sectors: a hostile-dominant partner with an exploitable, warm-submissive one. The problem statements from Horowitz's inventory are useful at home: 'I find it hard to say no' (exploitable), 'I try to control other people too much' (domineering), 'I keep other people at a distance' (cold). Benjamin's SASB adds a third reading: whether an act is aimed at the other, is a reaction to them, or is turned on the self.
Self
Run the two questions on your last hard conversation. Then notice which sector you are never in: the leader who is never submissive or the helper who is never cold has a blind spot there.
What tells it apart
Big Five (Five-Factor Model): The circle is a rotation of extraversion and agreeableness and covers only how people treat each other; if the issue is mood, reliability or curiosity, the circle won't capture it.
Dominance and prestige: Dominance and prestige are two routes to rank; on the circle dominance-based status sits hostile-dominant and prestige sits warm-dominant. Use it when the question is how someone gets rank, not how they relate in general.
Conflict modes (Thomas-Kilmann): Thomas-Kilmann plots assertiveness against cooperativeness in conflict only, which is nearly the same two axes; the circumplex covers all interaction and stable personality, so use it when the pattern shows outside conflict too.
A test
Place them on the two axes in three settings (with their boss, their peers and their reports); a stable spot is their style, while a big shift with rank tells you their style depends on power.
Questions to carry
- With the boss, with peers and with juniors, where does the person sit on warmth and on control?
- Where would I place myself on warmth and control with people above me, and where with those below?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
Timothy Leary, 1957 (Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality); Lorna Smith Benjamin, 1974 (Structural Analysis of Social Behavior); Jerry Wiggins, 1979 (Interpersonal Adjective Scales); Leonard Horowitz and colleagues, 1988 (Inventory of Interpersonal Problems)
Sources
- Timothy Leary, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality (1957)