The Chemistry Between Us: Momentary Complementarity Effects in Interpersonal Assessment Methods

Abstract

Interpersonal complementarity has emerged as a key principle to structure and regulate everyday interactions. This begs the question whether interpersonal complementarity also influences ratings in interpersonal assessment methods. Unfortunately, we still lack a solid understanding of what happens in these assessments at the behavioral exchange level. Prior studies used single-point, retrospective self-reports of one party’s independent interpersonal behaviors. This study integrates Interpersonal Theory with Situational Strength Theory and conducts a fine-grained examination of how interpersonal behavior continuously unfolds to advance our understanding of interpersonal and temporal dynamics in interpersonal assessment methods. Ninety-six junior managers participated in four interpersonal simulations (“flash” role-plays) as part of diagnosing their strengths and weaknesses. In all interpersonal simulations, people consistently showed momentary interpersonal adaptation patterns in line with complementarity principles: Affiliative behavior led to affiliative behavior (correspondence), whereas dominant behavior resulted in submissive behavior (reciprocity). For affiliation, mutual interpersonal influence also occurred in that both parties’ temporal trends in affiliative expressions were correlated over time. Complementarity effects were significantly related to ratings of in situ (role-playing) assessors but not of ex situ (remote) assessors. Importantly, however, complementarity effects did not contain erroneous, nondiagnostic information because they did not decrease predictive validity.