Personality Pathology and Spouses' Moment-to-Moment Interpersonal Behaviors

We assessed the association of personality pathology with romantic couples' observed interpersonal behaviors. Couples engaged in four discussion tasks, after which observers used the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics method to continuously rate each participant's dominance and warmth over the course of each discussion. Using these ratings, we derived indices of average behaviors and changes in behaviors over the course of discussions. Generally, results indicated that the more personality pathology either spouse reported, the colder husbands were on average, and the colder they became toward their wives over time. However, personality disorder symptoms and overall interpersonal problems were largely unassociated with wives' behaviors. Results also indicated that the more dominance-related problems husbands and wives reported, the more dominantly and coldly they behaved, the more submissive or withdrawn their partners were, and the colder wives became over time; and the more warmth problems wives reported, the more dominantly, they behaved.