Dominance-Submission in Students and Their Partners as a Function of Parental Dominance

Abstract

In Study 1, scores on the dominance-submission scale of The Personality Inventory were obtained from 60 students equally divided among four groups of males and females who reported that their fathers or mothers were the more dominant parents. Males from father-dominant families scored higher than their female peers and than males from mother-dominant families, whose scores were equivalent to their female peers'. These results were replicated precisely with a similar sample (n = 60) in Study 2, which also obtained data from each subject's steady partner. With the exception of males from father-dominated families, who scored higher than their mates, dominance levels for the members of each pair were similar. However, the majority of the partners in three of the four conditions reported that they came from father-dominated homes, the exception being the female mates of males from mother-dominated backgrounds, who reported the two parental relationships in equal numbers. Together, these results ate interpreted as supporting a model in which dominance in student couples is a joint function of social norms (which imply higher dominance scores for males) and the parental power structure in their immediate families. However, dominance scores for females from father-dominated homes were higher than predicted by this model, a finding which may reflect the contemporary emphasis on females' equality.