Abstract
Dominance is often considered as a coherent construct, although many types are described (e.g. relationship vs. social, perceived vs. ascribed, situational vs. trait dominance). Few studies address the question of how various types of dominance are related.
We asked 52 long-term couples to fill Pulerwitz's SRPS, Leary's ICL indicate their power bases and social status and measured their dominance in two experimental situations - sociodrama about their typical conflict and the Picture ranking task. Three strongest factors revealed by Factor analysis were named 1) Relationship dominance (loaded by self-ascribed relationship dominance and Pulerwitz's Decision- Making- and Control Scale) 2) Social dominance (social status, Learys' Dominance Scale and sociodrama) and 3) Situational (objective) dominance (sociodrama and Picture ranking, self ascribed situational power and Pulerwitz's Control Scale).
Our results are in dispute with the conception of dominance as a coherent factor and differentiate independent scales of Relationship Dominance, Social Dominance and Situational (objective) dominance.