Interpersonal responses to threats to status and interpersonal relatedness: effects of dependency and self-criticism

Previous research investigating the interpersonal environments of dependent and self-critical individuals has focused primarily on attachment issues, such as relationship satisfaction.

In the present study, we examined how dependent and self-critical individuals respond to experimentally manipulated events that threaten or bolster self-worth and status.

Forty pairs of female college students were allowed to believe, first, that they outperformed a close friend or were outperformed by a close friend on 14 trials of a behaviour detection task and, second, that friends generally agreed or disagreed with them on a second 14 trials, in which participants informed friends who had the better response.

Dependent women were more concerned with maintaining interpersonal relatedness, whereas self-critical women were more concerned with preserving self-worth and status. Dependent women adopted the responses of friends they outperformed, praised friends even when friends disagreed, and minimized disagreement with disagreeing friends. In contrast, self-critical individuals contested threats to status and self-worth, withheld praise from friends who challenged them, and did not minimize disagreement with disagreeing friends.

Results support the utility of an interactional framework in which depressive personality styles, such as dependency and self-criticism, and situational events interact to regulate interpersonal behaviour.