According to Heatherington and Parke ( 1975), dominance is a sex-linked trait since society expects males to be more assertive and competitive than females.
Psychological Reports, 1985, 57, 1327-1334. @ Psychological Reports 1985
DOMINANCE-SUBMISSION I N STTJDENTS AND THEIR PARTNERS AS A FUNCTION OF PARENTAL DOMINANCE1 SANDRA A. MC CARTNEY A N D STUART J. MCKELVIE
Bishop's University Summary.-In Study 1, scores on the dominance-submission scale of The Personaliy 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 facher-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 fatherdominated homes, the exception being the female mates of males from motherdominated backgrounds, who reported the two parental relationships in equal num'bers. Together, these results are 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 fatherdominated homes were higher than predicted by this model, a finding which may reflect the contemporary emphasis on females' equality.
According to Heatherington and Parke ( 1975), dominance is a sex-linked trait since society expects males to be more assertive and competitive than females. If individual levels of dominance are determined largely by t h i s social norm, then fathers and sons would be more dominant than mothers and daughters, respectively; moreover, if, in a particular family, the parental structure is reversed so that the mother is the more assertive partner, the children would continue to display the traditional, culturally-transmitted pattern. On the other hand, if personality traits are mainly a function of identification with the sarnesex parent (Lynn, 1969) rather than of social norms, the levels of dominance in sons and daughters would reflect the relative power structure in the family, with males displaying higher levels than females from father-dominant relationships but females displaying higher levels than males from mother-dominant ones. Finally, if social norms and family structure interact so that they combine additively and equally to determine personal dominance, then sons from fatherdominant families would remain higher in dominance than corresponding 'This manuscript was completed while the second author spent a sabbatical leave at Dalhousie Universiry during the 1984-85 academic year. Acknowledgement is made to Dr. R. S. Rodger of the Department of Psychology for provision of the relevant facilities. Send reprint requests to Stuart J. McKelvie, Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec J I M 127, Canada.
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daughters, since the two effects would reinforce each other, whereas sons from mother-dominant families would be equivalent to the daughters, since the two effects would cancel each other out. The son's position in this case might be particularly ambivalent since it has been suggested (Lynn, 1969) that all children initially identify with the primary caretaker who is usually the mother, which implies that males must switch role model. If that model displays characteristics which reflect social norms (e.g., father-dominance), the transfer will be eased (Heatherington, 1965; Loeb, 1975; Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965); but if it does not (e.g., father-submissiveness), chen it will be more difficult (Heatherington, 1965). The specific predictions inferred from che societal, family, and joint alternatives are set out in Table 1. TABLE 1
PREDICTED PAlTERNS OP DOMINANCE-SUBMISSION FOR SOCIETAL,FAMILY, AND JOINTMODELS Parental Dominance Father Mother Note.-a > b > c *Sex of subject.
Societal Male* Female d b b
d
Family Male Female b d d
b
Joint Male Female a e c
c
> d.
Past research has demonstrated parental effects on the development of general personality traits (Peck & Everson, 1975) and of paternal (Lynn, 1969) and maternal (Heatherington, 1965; Heatherington & Parke, 1975; Levine, 1975; Sears, et al., 1965) influences on sex-typed behaviour. Moreover, Proudian ( 1983) has found paternal and maternal power correlated significancly with paternal and maternal identification in boys and girls, respectively. However, there does not appear to be much evidence on the relationship between the power structure of parents and dominance in their children. The purpose of the first study was to gather such data to evaluate the three competing accounts of personal dominance.
Method Subjects.-The subjects were 60 Bishop's University undergraduate students ( 3 0 males, 30 females) aged between 18 and 25 yr. Half of them (15 males, 15 females) were classified as members of father-dominated and half as members of mother-dominated families. Materialr.-The Personality Inventory (Bernreuter, 1959) was employed to measure dominance-submission. It has 125 items which are answered by encirding Yes, No, or ?, and generates scores on six personality traits. How-
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ever, for present purposes, only those on B4-D (dominance-submission) were considered. The manual reports that the items ate based on an earlier ascendance-submission reaction study by Allport and Allport and that the split-half reliability and validity coefficients (correlation with the original study) for the scale are .88, .67 (men), and .82 (women), respectively. In addition, Snyder ( 1949) concludes that the original Allport and Allport scale is the best available test of dominance. Procedzcle.-Potential subjects were approached at various campus locations and asked if they were willing to take part in a questionnaire study. If agreeable, they were asked to assess which parent, mother or father, was "the more dominant or powerful" in the family context, dominance being defined as "the tendency to take the leading part or to have control in relations with others." Subjects who indicated that they came from single-parent families, or who could not answer the question (because of uncertainty or because of parental equality) were thanked for their cooperation but interviewed no further. It proved to be more difficult to obtain subjects in some categories (particularly males who rated their mothers as more dominant than their fathers) than others, but sampling was continued until each cell contained 15 cases. All subjects were administered The Personality Inventory individually or in small groups at their convenience.
A 2 X 2 (Parental Dominance X Sex of Subject) independent groups analysis of variance conducted on the dominance scores in each condition (see Table 2 ) gave two significant effects: parental dominance (P1,56 = 5.04, p < .05) and the interaction of parental dominance X sex of subject (PIv50= 4.09, p < .05). Individual post hoc t tests carried out among the means of the four conditions showed that father-dominant scores were higher than motherdominant ones for males (t50 = 3.37, fi < .01) but not for females, and that males' scores were higher than those for females for the father-dominant (t,, = 2.51, p < .O1) but not the mother-dominant condition. TABLE 2
MEANDOMINANCE-SUBMISSION SCORESAND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR SUBJECTS IN EACH CONDITION IN S m Y 1
Parental Dominance
Sex of Subject
N
15 Father Mother 15 hTote.-Range of scores = -200
Males 85.3 32.4 to 245.
Females 37.6 47.9
45.3 42.5
48.9 58.2
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&
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Since subjects were selected on the basis of questioning about the parental power structure in their families, it is possible that their responses on the dominance-submission scale were contaminated by demand characteristics (Ome, 1962). To minimize this possibility, subjects were required to complete the total inventory, in which the items from the different scales are intermingled, so that they were unlikely to perceive the focus on one scale. Comparison of the pattern of scores with the predictions set out in Table 1 indicates that they fit best with the joint model in which dominance scores are determined both by social norms and family experience. Sons from fatherdominant homes were higher in dominance than daughters from these homes and than sons from mother-dominant homes; however, the latter were equally dominant to females from mother-dominant families. The only scores to deviate from this model were those for daughters from father-dominant homes, which were higher than expected; they were similar to rather than less than those from mother-dominant families. The purpose of the second study was to attempt to replicate these results and to extend the investigation to include partners of subjects from families differing in parental dominance. The societal model predicts that males and females would choose partners less and more dominant, respectively, than themselves, irrespective of their family background. The family model predicts that the parental relationship would be preserved in the current one so that males from father-dominant and females from mother-dominant homes would choose partners less dominant than themselves, whereas males from mother-dominant and females from father-dominant homes would be associated with individuals more dominant than themselves. The joint model also predicts less and more dominance respectively in mates of males and females from father-dominant families but it predicts similar levels of dominance in subjects and mates from mother-dominant homes, since the societal and family effects would cancel each other out. Little effort has been made to compare these models systematically, although various studies have investigated family (parental) effects. Strauss (1946) claims that people choose mates on the basis of the kind of relationship experienced between parents and self during childhood, and Luckey ( 1960) argues that in satisfying marriages the husband-wife relationship reflects previous parental experience. In addition, in a study of ethnicity of parents and partners, Jedlicka ( 1980) found that, in both first and second marriages, people tended to select mates who resembled the opposite-sexed parent. Since students had been used in the first study, and a replication was desired, it was not possible to obtain a complete sample of married couples here. However, in an attempt to obtain data from relationships which were relatively stable, all pairs of subjects were required to have dated for at least two months.
DOMINANCE-SUBMISSION IN CI-IILDREN/PARENTS
STUDY 2 Method Sabjects.Sixty dating (or, on a few cases, married) couples participated in this study. Fifty of them were undergraduate students at Bishop's University, and 10 were students at universities in Montreal. The 120 subjects were divided into the following four groups: 15 males and 15 females from fatherdominant homes and their partners, and 15 males and 15 females from motherdominant homes and their partners. The small number of married couples were scattered nonsystematically among the four conditions. The vast majority of subjects were aged between 18 and 25 yr., the remainder being under 36 yr. Materials and pro.cedzlre.-The recruitment and testing of subjects was essentially the same as in the first study. However, subjects were required to satisfy the additional criterioa that they had been dating their current partners (who also had to be able to state parental dominance) for at least two months. In fact, the average length of the relationships was about three years. As before, it proved difficult to locate individuals, particularly males, who reported motherdominant backgrounds; this, combined with the dating requirement, necessitated recruiting some subjects outside the local university population so 10 couples were obtained from universities in the Montreal area.
R eszclts Self scores.-The dominance scores of the 15 subjects defining each condition (see Table 3 ) were treated with a 2 X 2 (parental dominance X sex of subject) independent-groups analysis of variance, which gave two significant effects: sex of subject ( P l V 5 = ~ 7.77, p < .01) and the interaction of parental dominance X sex of subject ( F 1 , 5 G= 12.74, p < .01). Post hoc t tests among TABLE 3 MEANDOMINANCE-SUBMISSION SCORESAND STANDARD DEVIATIONSFOR SUBJECTS (SELFSCORES) AND THEIRPARTNERS IN EACHCONDITIONIN STUDY 2 Parental Dominance
N
Sex of Subject
Males M
Females
SD
M
SD
Own scores 15 104.3 Father 37.3 19.2 50.1 Mother 15 40.9 70.2 51.4 45.11 Partners' scores Father 15 53.1 65.3 51.1 66.1 Mother 15 43.1 56.2 81.5 58.7 Note.-Range of scores = -200 to 245. Partners' scores pertain to the partners of the subjects defined in each column of the table; for example, 53.1 is the mean score for the females associated with males from father-dominant families (whose mean score was 104.3).
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the four conditions showed that scores for father-dominant males were higher than those for the corresponding females (tso = 8.07, fl .01), but that scores for mother-dominant males were similar to those for the corresponding females; in addition, males' scores from father-dominant were higher than those from mother-dominant families (tS0 = 3.25, p < .01), whereas females' scores in the two parental dominance conditions were not significantly different. Inspection of Table 2 indicates that the latter appear to be lower in the motherdominant (19.2) than father-dominant (51.4) conditions, but the t value was only 1.96 (2.00 required for p < .05). Partners' scores.-A similar 2 X 2 analysis of variance showed that these scores (see Table 3 ) did not vary among the four conditions, all three effects being nonsignificant. However, the main interest here was in their values relative to those of the subjects defining each pair. Since each partner was matched with another subject, dependent-groups t tests were conducted between the mean scores for self and partner in each of the four conditions. The only one of the four to attain significance was for father-dominant males ( t l l = 2.38, p < .05), mean self scores being higher than that for partners. For each condition, the number of partners who reported that their fathers were dominant was as follows: 10 (father-dominant, males), 1 3 (fatherdominant, females), 7 (mother-dominant, males), and 11 (mother-dominant, females). A binomial test (in which a value of 11 out of 15 is required for significance at the .05 level) on each of the four numbers indicated that those for females in both parental conditions were significant, with that for males in the father-dominant condition ( 1 0 ) being close. Partners of females and those of males from father-dominant homes then mostly came from fatherdominant backgrounds, whereas those of males from mother-dominated homes were equally distributed between the two parental relationships.
