Interpersonal complementarity
Each interpersonal act invites a particular reply. On the warmth axis like invites like: warmth draws warmth, hostility draws hostility. On the dominance axis opposites are invited: dominance draws submission and submission draws dominance. When both people give the invited reply, the interaction is stable and repeats.
What drives it
It explains why people keep getting the same reactions from different people, and why you act out of character with certain people. It also gives the lever: refuse the invited reply and the loop has to change.
How it shows
Work
The cold, dominant director talks over everyone; the room goes quiet and compliant; the team's passivity then confirms his belief that he has to drive everything. The submissive manager asks 'what do you think I should do?', gets told, and never grows. To break a loop, give what Kiesler called the anticomplementary reply, opposite on both axes to the one invited. With a domineering, cold colleague, stay warm and hold your ground: 'I'll finish my point, then I want yours.' With a helpless report, stay warm and don't take over: 'What would you do?' With a hostile attack, don't return the hostility and don't fold: friendly, calm, firm.
Relationships
Hostility escalates symmetrically ('you always' meets 'well, you never'). One partner decides everything and the other defers, and both complain about it. A partner who goes quiet and helpless reliably gets the other to take charge, and then resents being managed.
Self
You act unlike yourself with one person: smaller, harsher or more caretaking than usual. That shift is the invitation, and you can decline it.
What tells it apart
Emotional contagion: Contagion copies the feeling; complementarity on the dominance axis produces the opposite behaviour. Around a dominant boss you don't become dominant, you go quiet.
Projective identification: Complementarity works on almost anyone and the pull is ordinary; projective identification pushes a specific disowned feeling that feels foreign to you. If everyone goes quiet with this boss, it's complementarity; if you alone feel a contempt that isn't yours, look at projective identification.
Psychological games (Berne): A game has a hidden payoff and a switch at the end; complementarity is a moment-to-moment pull with no hidden script. If changing your reply simply changes theirs, it was complementarity; if they push harder to get you back into role, suspect a game.
A test
Next time you feel pulled, give the anticomplementary reply for a few exchanges (warm and firm with a domineering person, warm and non-directive with a helpless one) and see whether their behaviour shifts or they push harder.
Questions to carry
- What reply was this person's last move inviting, and what happened when a different reply was given?
- Around whom do I act out of character, and what does their behaviour seem to pull out of me?
How strong the research is
moderate. Warmth inviting warmth is well supported; the dominance-invites-submission half holds in many lab and moment-to-moment studies but is weaker and less consistent, and Orford (1986) found hostile behaviour often draws hostile, dominant replies rather than submission.
Where it comes from
Timothy Leary, 1957; Robert Carson, 1969; Donald Kiesler, 1983
Sources
- Timothy Leary, Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality (1957)