Interpersonal complementarity: Integrating interpersonal measurement with interpersonal models.

Abstract

Research on interpersonal complementarity has been beset by various methodological problems, including the lack of a consistent and theoretically coherent measurement approach for quantifying and statistically evaluating effects. The purpose of this article is to propose and demonstrate such a method, one that is integrative with interpersonal circumplex models of behavior and that also provides a means for establishing statistical significance levels in relation to an appropriate base-rate model. Two demonstrations of the method are reported. The first study involves an analysis of mother-self relationship data and is based on L. S. Benjamin's (1994) Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) system; the second study, which is based on the Interpersonal Circle Model (IPC), is a reanalysis of peer interaction data originally presented by S. R. Strong et al. (1988). The results were supportive of theoretical predictions for both the SASB and IPC models. The present method has advantages for testing and refining theory and, with its tie to the circumplex model, makes salient several problematic issues for complementarity research.