Dark personality, interpersonal rejection, and marital stability of Chinese couples: An actor–partner interdependence mediation model

Personality and Individual Differences 134 (2018) 232–238

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Dark personality, interpersonal rejection, and marital stability of Chinese couples: An actor–partner interdependence mediation model Qiong Hea, Yuchen Wangb,d, Yaxin Xinge, Yue Yub,c,

T

⁎

a

Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China c Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China d Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China e Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China b

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Machiavellianism Psychopathy Marital stability Interpersonal rejection Actor–partner interdependence mediation model

Previous studies revealed the association between personality and relationship outcomes. Our research aimed to explore the concurrent relationship between dark personality traits and marital stability and further explore its mechanism in an actor–partner interdependence mediation model. The present study recruited 260 married couples using Mach-IV and the Levenson self-report psychopathy scale for both self- and partner-ratings of Machiavellianism and psychopathy and chose the interpersonal rejection subscale from the interpersonal cognitive distortions scale as the indicator of interpersonal cognition. Additionally, the marital instability scale (short form) was used to measure marital stability. Results showed that self- and partner-rating of Machiavellianism and psychopathy had both direct and indirect actor–partner effects on marital stability. Furthermore, dark personality by partner-rating is more likely to affect marital stability by the partial mediation of interpersonal rejection. In conclusion, interpersonal rejection plays a total or partial mediation role between dark personality and marital stability. The current study improves the theoretical framework of the relationship between personality and marital stability and provides practical significance for the maintenance of intimate relationships.

1. Introduction Almost everyone hopes to get married to an appropriate partner and possesses a stable marriage. However, increasingly more couples are getting divorced in recent years. The crude divorce rate of China has risen rapidly annually, and 3.84 million couples divorced each other in 2015 alone (National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China, 2016). Obviously, the crisis of the high divorce rate is becoming a serious social problem. Therefore, the factors influencing marital stability have received increasing attention from researchers for a long time. Many factors were already shown to be related to marital stability, including spouses' race (e.g., Udry, 1966), religion (e.g., Call & Heaton, 1997), sex (e.g., Udry, 1966), education (e.g., Karney & Bradbury, 1995), and age at marriage (e.g., Booth, Johnson, & Edwards, 1983). Personality also plays a critical role in relationship stability. Back and Vazire (2015) reviewed the social consequences of personality and underscored that personality plays an important role in social

Abbreviations:APIMeM, actor–partner interdependence mediation model ⁎ Corresponding author at: 16 Lincui Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Yu). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.003 Received 4 February 2018; Received in revised form 16 May 2018; Accepted 2 June 2018 0191-8869/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

relationship (such as marital stability and satisfaction). The literature has suggested that further research on the association between personality and social outcomes is needed, and the internal mechanism should also be explored. In general, there are two kinds of studies focusing on the relationship between romantic relationship and personality. First, some researchers concentrate on the effects of similarity and complementarity of couples' personalities on the quality of their relationships. Most research has found that the similarity of couples is more important to the sound development of romantic relationship. Specifically, the similarity of partners' personality has been proved to have effects on both marriage quality and marriage stability (e.g., Antill, 1983; Arrindell & Luteijn, 2000). Other research is about the relationship between some specific personality traits on intimate relationship, which is more concerned about by the current study. In related studies, the Big Five Personality traits have been referred for most time, and frequently considered to be predicators of marital stability. Among the five personality traits, neuroticism has been found to be the most stable and influential trait negatively associated with

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inappropriately rigid, illogical, or absolute beliefs, describing people who have negative attitudes toward others (DiGiuseppe & Zee, 1986). Meanwhile, previous studies confirmed that interpersonal rejection is an important predictor of romantic relationship (Hamamci, 2005). Therefore, we hypothesized that interpersonal rejection can mediate the association between dark personality and marital stability.

marital stability (e.g., Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Solomon & Jackson, 2014) while the other four failed to reach a consistent conclusion (e.g., Bouchard, Lussier, & Sabourin, 1999). This may be because neuroticism is a more specific and undesirable trait, and previous research found that such traits have a more stable negative association with marital outcomes (Mund, Finn, Hagemeyer, & Neyer, 2016). On this basis, we inferred that some other typical social undesirable personality traits may also have similar effects on the stability of relationship with neuroticism, such as dark personality. According to previous research, the relationship between dark personality and marital stability has not yet been systematically examined (Kardum, Hudek-Knezevic, Schmitt, & Covic, 2017; Muris, Merckelbach, Otgaar, & Meijer, 2017). However, a few studies have already begun to investigate dark traits in subclinical samples and their impact on intimate relationship (e.g., Jonason, Li, & Buss, 2010; Smith et al., 2014). Dark personality, which was integrated by Paulhus and Williams in 2002, consists of three negative personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The three personality traits (Dark Triad) are associated with some negative patterns of behavioral and mental performance (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). To be exact, people with the Machiavellian trait always perform in a ruthless, manipulative, and pragmatic way; psychopathy is usually marked by impulsiveness, thrillseeking, and lack of empathy and sense of responsibility; and narcissism is linked with egocentricity, vanity, dominance, presumptuousness and condescension (James, Kavanagh, Jonason, Chonody, & Scrutton, 2014). Moreover, some researchers have already paid attention to the relationship between dark personality and romantic relationship, and most of the research found that Machiavellianism and psychopathy influence romantic relationship in a negative way (e.g., Ali & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2010; Jonason et al., 2010). Studies also found that the Dark Triad, especially Machiavellianism and psychopathy, are predictors of conflict communication, which is a vital influencing factor leading to relational termination (Horan, Guinn, & Banghart, 2015). However, consensus has not been reached on the influence of narcissism on romantic relationship (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus, 2013; Muris et al., 2017). It is worth mentioning that the mechanism of the effect between dark traits and romantic outcomes is seldom explored, which could help provides practical implications for maintaining intimate relationship. The review of Back and Vazire (2015) suggested that searching for mechanisms that can explain the correlations between personality and social outcomes was important in the future research about personality and relationship. Considering numerous studies focus on the relationship between personality and the outcome of intimate relationship, a more in-depth mechanism of the effect of dark personality traits on marital stability should also be explored. Furthermore, personality traits are thought to reflect an individual's habitual style of feeling, thinking, and behaving; thus, the key to understanding the effects of personality on relationships lies in the consideration of basic psychological functions such as affection and cognition (Mund et al., 2016). Additionally, Karney and Bradbury (1995) indicated that adaptive process is the mediating variable between enduring vulnerability (personality) and marital stability in the vulnerability–stress–adaptation model of marriage. For example, there was an impressive study finding that negative relationship-specific interpretation bias partially mediated the associations between neuroticism and lower relationship satisfaction (Finn, Mitte, & Neyer, 2013). It is mentioned that both neuroticism and dark personality are traits with social undesirable characteristics, and individuals with such traits are more likely to have negative cognition bias (Muris et al., 2017). Moreover, previous study revealed that interpersonal cognitive distortion is a kind of irrational cognition that harms relationships (Ellis, 1986). Among the several factors of interpersonal cognitive distortion, interpersonal rejection is the most important part of cognitive distortion, accounting for the most explained variance (Hamamci, 2005). Interpersonal rejection is also a kind of cognitive distortion associated with highly exaggerated,

2. Method 2.1. Participants and procedure Two hundred and ninety-two pairs of heterosexual couples mainly from Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen in China were recruited to join the research by convenience sampling. Considering the balance of demographic variables such as age, marriage time, occupation, and educational background, the data of two hundred and sixty pairs of couples were eventually adopted, accounting for 89.04% of the total participants. The age of the couples ranged from 23 to 40 for men and 20 to 39 for women, and the mean age was 28.28 (SD = 3.836) for men and 26.61 (SD = 3.959) for women. The lasting years of the couples' marriages ranged from 0.5 to 7; the mean was 2.677 (SD = 1.574). 2.2. Measures 2.2.1. Dark personality The results of meta-analysis showed that the interrelation between Machiavellianism and psychopathy is closer than the correlation between either of the two traits and narcissism. And Machiavellianism and psychopathy are darker than narcissism (Muris et al., 2017). Furthermore, Machiavellianism and psychopathy consistently showed negative correlation with relationship outcome (Jonason et al., 2010), but the results of narcissism failed to reach agreement (Rauthmann, 2012). For these reasons, we choose Machiavellianism and psychopathy as dark personality variables in the current study. 2.2.2. Mach IV The Mach IV inventory (Christie & Geis, 2013) was adopted to measure Machiavellianism in the current study. The inventory consists of 20 items about cheating in interpersonal relationships. The participants should value each item from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5) according to their agreement with a given statement. The Cronbach's alphas of this scale in the current study were 0.75 for selfrating and 0.79 for partner-rating. 2.2.3. The Levenson self-report psychopathy scale Couples' psychopathy was measured by the Levenson self-report psychopathy scale (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995). The original inventory includes two subscales and twenty-six items in total. Sixteen items belong to the primary psychopathy subscale, and the remaining ten items form the secondary psychopathy subscale. Since the participants in the current study are all sub-clinical samples, we only used the primary psychopathy subscale (Newman, MacCoon, Vaughn, & Sadeh, 2005). Participants are asked to choose from 1 to 5 to stand for strongly disagree to strongly agree for their agreement with the statements. In current research, the Cronbach's alphas of Levenson self-report psychopathy scale were 0.77 for self-rating and 0.81 for partner-rating. 2.2.4. Marital instability scale (short form) We measured the instability of marital relationship for marital stability. The measurement used was the short form of the Marital Instability Scale (Booth et al., 1983), including five items. The couples were asked to tell the frequency of the given incidents using never (1) to very often (4). The higher the score is, the less stable the relationship is. The Cronbach's alpha of the Marital Instability Scale was 0.89. 233

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2.2.5. Interpersonal rejection Interpersonal rejection was measured by a subscale of the interpersonal cognitive distortions scale (Hamamci & Buyukozturk, 2004). Eight items described the behaviors reflecting negative attitudes toward others. Participants in the scale are asked to choose from 1 to 5 to stand for strongly disagree to strongly agree for the description of each item. The Cronbach's alpha in our study was 0.81.

Muthén, 1998–2012). After controlling for a series of confounding variables, including marital length, income, age, and degree, the two hypothesized models showed good fit to the data given the complexity of the overall model. For Model 1 (Machiavellianism), χ2 = 91.16 (df = 28, p < 0.001), CFI = 0.936, RMSEA = 0.073 (as depicted in Fig. 1). For Model 2 (Psychopathy), χ2 = 92.33 (df = 28, p < 0.001), CFI = 0.925, RMSEA = 0.078 (as depicted in Fig. 2).

2.3. Actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM)

3.2.1. Direct effect analysis Direct effects were found between dark personality traits and marital stability. For example, women's partner rating of both Machiavellianism and psychopathy had direct effects on women's marital stability (actor effect, b = 0.045, t = 2.248; actor effect, b = 0.070, t = 3.476). Direct effects were also found between dark traits and interpersonal rejection, interpersonal rejection, and marital stability. The details of direct effect are shown in Table 2 and Figs. 1 and 2. The results of direct effects provide the basis for further exploration of indirect effect.

We used actor–partner interdependence mediation models (APIMeMs; Ledermann, Macho, & Kenny, 2011) to separately examine the actor, partner, and mediation effects. In the present study, actor effects occurring within individuals described the relationship between one's own personality traits and one's own marital stability. Otherwise, partner effects occurring between individuals described the association between one's own personality traits and one's partner's marital stability. We also tested the mediation effect of interpersonal rejection between dark personality and marital stability in the APIMeM, which is increasingly common in the relationship research. Above all, to avoid social desirability bias, we adopted the evaluations of self- and partnerratings of both dark traits in the models rather than only considering each partner's individual personality evaluation, making the results more objective.

3.2.2. Indirect effect analysis The details of the indirect effects between Machiavellianism and marital stability via interpersonal rejection are shown in Table 3, and the specific paths of relationships appear in Fig. 1. Indirect effects were found in both self- and partner-rating. The results showed that the selfrating of both men and women affected marital stability of both men and women (both actor and partner effect) by the fully mediation of their respective interpersonal rejection (actor effect, see lines 1–4 of Table 3). The effects of men's partner-rating on both men's and women's marital stability (actor and partner effect) were partly mediated by both men's and women's interpersonal rejection (actor effect and partner effect, see lines 5 and 6 of Table 3). In addition, women's partner-rating could affect the marital stability of both men and women (actor and partner effect), partly mediated by men's interpersonal rejection (partner effect, see lines 7 and 8 of Table 3). The details of the indirect effects between psychopathy and marital stability via interpersonal rejection results appear in Table 3, and the specific paths of relationships are shown in Fig. 2. It was found that the relations about self-rating of men and women to their own marriages (actor effect) were fully mediated by their own interpersonal rejection (actor effect, see lines 9 and 12 of Table 3). The self-rating of men also affected women's marital stability (partner effect) partly through men's interpersonal rejection (actor effect, see line 10 of Table 3). Men's partner-rating affected the marital stability of both men and women (actor and partner effect) fully mediated by men's interpersonal rejection (actor effect, see lines 13 and 14 of Table 3). Additionally, men's partner-rating also affected women's marital stability (partner effect) fully mediated by women's interpersonal rejection (partner effect, see line 14 of Table 3), and women's partner-rating influenced both men

2.4. Procedure The participants were invited to the laboratory in pairs or were given a private link online and asked to finish a series of questionnaires independently using computers in two separate rooms. The questionnaires were presented in a balanced order. The couples were all in a self-committed relationship, and both volunteered to join the research and were given the digital feedback report and 80 RMB for their participation. 3. Results 3.1. Correlations As shown in Table 1, the results showed that all the measures are correlated with each other. The data were fit for further exploration of path analysis. Since the current study is an explorative study, we bounded our effects sizes (rs) with 90% CIs (Funder et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2014). 3.2. The structural equation model The structural equation model was tested in Mplus 7 (Muthén & Table 1 Correlations for all variables.

1 Marital stability_men 2 Marital stability_women 3 Interpersonal rejection_men 4 Interpersonal rejection_women 5 Machiavellianism_men_self 6 Machiavellianism_women_self 7 Machiavellianism_men_partner 8 Machiavellianism_women_partner 9 Psychopathy_men_self 10 Psychopathy_women_self 11 Psychopathy_men_partner 12 Psychopathy_women_partner

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

1 0.685⁎⁎ 0.396⁎⁎ 0.287⁎⁎ 0.264⁎⁎ 0.173⁎⁎ 0.229⁎⁎ 0.321⁎⁎ 0.248⁎⁎ 0.227⁎⁎ 0.233⁎⁎ 0.347⁎⁎

1 0.356⁎⁎ 0.355⁎⁎ 0.187⁎⁎ 0.271⁎⁎ 0.330⁎⁎ 0.317⁎⁎ 0.185⁎⁎ 0.245⁎⁎ 0.256⁎⁎ 0.356⁎⁎

1 0.303⁎⁎ 0.485⁎⁎ 0.220⁎⁎ 0.237⁎⁎ 0.364⁎⁎ 0.388⁎⁎ 0.218⁎⁎ 0.285⁎⁎ 0.342⁎⁎

1 0.199⁎⁎ 0.482⁎⁎ 0.332⁎⁎ 0.263⁎⁎ 0.303⁎⁎ 0.415⁎⁎ 0.359⁎⁎ 0.297⁎⁎

1 0.331⁎⁎ 0.257⁎⁎ 0.507⁎⁎ 0.599⁎⁎ 0.189⁎⁎ 0.260⁎⁎ 0.303⁎⁎

1 0.373⁎⁎ 0.342⁎⁎ 0.320⁎⁎ 0.535⁎⁎ 0.298⁎⁎ 0.298⁎⁎

1 0.243⁎⁎ 0.206⁎⁎ 0.306⁎⁎ 0.637⁎⁎ 0.169⁎⁎

1 0.407⁎⁎ 0.287⁎⁎ 0.230⁎⁎ 0.611⁎⁎

1 0.338⁎⁎ 0.412⁎⁎ 0.606⁎⁎

1 0.531⁎⁎ 0.361⁎⁎

1 0.336⁎⁎

1

Note. N = 260 couples. ⁎⁎ p < 0.01. 234

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Fig. 1. Actor–partner interdependence model results for the direct and mediated (via interpersonal rejection) associations between Machiavellianism and marital stability for 260 couples. Numbers are unstandardized regression coefficients. †p < 0.10. *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01.

Fig. 2. Actor–partner interdependence model results for the direct and mediated (via interpersonal rejection) associations between psychopathy and marital stability for 260 couples. Numbers are unstandardized regression coefficients. †p < 0.10. *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01.

example, negative interpretation bias as a cognitive variable was confirmed to mediate the association between relationship satisfaction and personality development (Finn et al., 2013). Specifically, negative interpretation bias partly explained the relationship between high neuroticism and low relationship satisfaction. It was also shown that negative interpretation bias was able to predict the higher level of neuroticism nine months later (Finn, Mitte, & Neyer, 2015). Furthermore, plenty of research has shown that dark personality correlated positively with neuroticism, and both belong to socially undesirable traits (Muris et al., 2017). Since dark personality and neuroticism have characteristics in common, we can infer that they have similar effects on relationship. Thus, the mediating effect of interpersonal rejection between dark traits and marital stability can indicate that people with dark personality are more likely to hold unrealistic beliefs in romantic relationships and can decrease their marital stability (Epstein, Baucom, & Rankin, 1993; Paulhus & Williams, 2002). Second, considering that most of the former studies regarding personality and relationship measured personality only through self-rating, the current study used not only self-rating but also partner-rating to measure dark personality traits to investigate the association between

and women's marital stability (both actor and partner effect) partly mediated by men's interpersonal rejection (partner effect, see lines 15 and 16 of Table 3). 4. Discussion Based on the APIMeM, the current study systematically investigated the relationships between martial stability and dark personality traits using both self-rating and partner-rating and explored the internal mechanism of this effect. The results showed that both Machiavellianism and psychopathy had direct and indirect effects on marital stability, and interpersonal rejection was found to be a mediating variable between dark personality and marital stability. The details will be discussed further. First, interpersonal rejection as a cognitive variable was found to either fully or partly mediate the relationships between dark traits and marital stability in different paths. Moreover, the review of Mund et al. (2016) emphasized that, to understand the effects of personality on relationship, consideration of basic psychological functions such as affection (how one feels) and cognition (how one thinks) is needed. For 235

Personality and Individual Differences 134 (2018) 232–238 [−0.056, 0.013] [−0,086, −0.009] [−0.019, 0.054] [−0.028, 0.050] [0.030, 0.087] [−0.004, 0.062] [0.012, 0.078] [0.037, 0.104] [0.033, 0.149] [0.044, 0.152] [0.006, 0.121] [0.032, 0.142] −1.009 −2.047⁎ 0.773 0.451 3.360⁎⁎ 1.432 2.248⁎ 3.476⁎⁎ 2.597⁎⁎ 2.963⁎⁎ 1.829† 2.586⁎⁎ −0.021 −0.047 0.017 0.011 0.058 0.029 0.045 0.070 0.091 0.098 0.063 0.087 [−0.024, 0.041] [−0.051, 0.019] [−0.053, 0.015] [−0.025, 0.048] [0.000, 0.053] [−0.017, 0.045] [0.014, 0.075] [0.024, 0.085] [0.066, 0.173] [0.081, 0.181] [0.010, 0.117] [−0.002, 0.100] 0.439 −0.733 −0.906 0.508 1.649† 0.735 2.386⁎ 2.903⁎⁎ 3.676⁎⁎ 4.315⁎⁎ 1.961⁎ 1.581 0.009 −0.016 −0.019 0.011 0.027 0.014 0.044 0.054 0.120 0.131 0.064 0.049 [−0.076, 0.046] [−0.014, 0.130] [0.186, 0.312] [0.109, 0.254] [0.040, 0.146] [0.018, 0.145] [−0.002, 0.119] [−0.013, 0.113] – – – −0.404 1.331 6.527⁎⁎ 4.130⁎⁎ 2.879⁎⁎ 2.115⁎ 1.587 1.310 – – – −0.015 0.058 0.249 0.182 0.093 0.082 0.059 0.050 – – – –

b [90% CI] t [90% CI]

Note. N = 260 couples. † p < 0.10. ⁎ p < 0.05. ⁎⁎ p < 0.01.

0.223 0.145 0.004 0.010 0.056 0.072 0.082 0.079 – – – – Machiavellianism Psychopathy Women_self Machiavellianism Psychopathy Men_partner Machiavellianism Psychopathy Women_partner Machiavellianism Psychopathy Interpersonal rejection_men (Machiavellianism) Interpersonal rejection_men (Psychopathy) Interpersonal rejection_women (Machiavellianism) Interpersonal rejection_women (Psychopathy) Men_self

t

⁎⁎

[0.163, 0.283] [0.072, 0.218] [−0.059, 0.066] [−0.063, 0.084] [0.003, 0.108] [0.008, 0.136] [0.022, 0.142] [0.015, 0.143] – – – –

b b

Variable

Table 2 APIMeM results for the direct effects.

dark personality and marital stability. In general, dark traits by selfrating affected marital stability with full mediation of interpersonal rejection while dark personality using partner-rating affected marital stability with partial mediation. The results could reflect the manipulation and pragmatic side of dark personality traits (James et al., 2014). Because of such features of dark traits, recognizing the existence of dark personality traits in oneself will not affect the evaluation to marital stability, for there may be additional value in romantic relationship. As Social Exchange Theory maintains (Levinger, 1965), barriers to breaking up the relationship, such as worrying about losing one's political ends and economic purposes, can be the reasons to maintain romantic relationship for those with high levels of dark traits. Only when such dark traits really affect their cognition of interpersonal relationship will they accept the fact of relationship deterioration. However, partners' perceptions of dark personality traits affected marital stability not only directly but also indirectly. Compared with selfrating, partner-rating showed more objective evaluation of dark personality traits (Furler, Gomez, & Grob, 2014; Rauthmann, 2012); thus, it would better predict marital stability as well as accounting for the variables in different ways. Third, there were some interesting findings that may not reach agreement with previous research. First, we found that men's self-rating of psychopathy had a direct positive effect on women's marital stability; in other words, the higher score of psychopathy the husband has, the more stable their marriage is in the wife's opinion. However, other results consistently show negative effects between dark traits and marital stability. Such a result reflects the social desirability aspect of psychopathy. The study of Ali and Chamorro-Premuzic (2010) showed that psychopathy has a positive effect on imitate relationship, which may be due to the intimacy, enthusiasm, and commitment psychopathic people show in romantic relationship. As the saying goes, a woman does not fancy the nice guy. Second, women's partner-rating psychopathy only affected marital stability mediated by men's interpersonal rejection while men's partner-rating psychopathy could affect marital stability mediated by the interpersonal rejection of both men and women. There were also obvious direct effects between women's partner-rating and stability but not for men's partner-rating. These asymmetric effects may be attributed to the different perspectives from men and women. Numerous studies revealed that women are more efficient in predicting irrational cognition and marital stability, which means that women have better ability in empathy than their mates. On the contrary, men are more likely to overestimate relationship quality and ignore risk in romantic relationships (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Levenson, Carstensen, & Gottman, 1993). In addition, previous study showed that psychopathy had a higher effect size on men than on women (Muris et al., 2017). Therefore, the psychopathy of men may have a better capacity of predicting and is able to influence women's marital stability both directly and indirectly. Compared to previous studies, the current study has several advantages. First, we focused on the relationship between dark personality and marital stability while most previous studies only paid attention to general personality and socially desirable personality. The current study enriches the theoretical framework of personality and relationship. Second, we explained the mechanism of the relationships between dark personality traits and romantic relationship using an APIMeM model, which enriches the theoretical framework of personality-relationship theory and lays the foundation for the future research. Third, the partner-rating was added here, not only increasing the explanation rate for relationship outcomes but also getting rid of the common method bias caused by self-rating. However, some limitations also exist in the current study. The psychometric method may be not objective enough to explore the dark side of people, although the partner-rating was adopted. Further research must use more objective methods like behavior observation or diary study. Longitudinal study could also be adopted to test whether imitate relationship affects the development of a couple's personality.

6.072 3.286⁎⁎ 0.098 0.235 1.751† 1.848† 2.239⁎ 2.038⁎ – – – –

b

Men Women Men

t

Marital stability Interpersonal rejection

[90% CI]

Women

t

[90% CI]

Q. He et al.

236

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Table 3 APIMeM results for the indirect effects. Indirect effects

Machiavellianism_men_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Machiavellianism_men_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Machiavellianism_women_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Machiavellianism_women_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Machiavellianism_men_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Machiavellianism_men_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Machiavellianism_women_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Machiavellianism_women_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Psychopathy_men_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Psychopathy_men_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Psychopathy_women_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Psychopathy_women_self → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Psychopathy_men_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Psychopathy_men_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women Psychopathy_women_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_men Psychopathy_women_partner → interpersonal rejection → Marital stability_women

Via men's interpersonal rejection

Via women's interpersonal rejection

b

[90% CI]

b

t

[90% CI]

[0.013, 0.041] [0.006, 0.034] [−0.007, 0.008] [−0.005, 0.006] [0.000, 0.014] [−0.001, 0.011] [0.001, 0.018] [0.000, 0.015] [0.007, 0.031] [0.004, 0.025] [−0.008, 0.011] [−0.006, 0.008] [0.000, 0.019] [0.000, 0.014] [0.001, 0.020] [0.000, 0.015]

−0.001 −0.001 0.016 0.016 0.006 0.006 0.004 0.004 0.003 0.005 0.009 0.016 0.004 0.007 0.002 0.004

−0.396 −0.394 1.878† 1.761† 1.621† 1.544† 1.234 1.199 1.018 1.183 1.477 2.192⁎ 1.266 1.637† 1.009 1.168

[−0.005, 0.003] [−0.005, 0.003] [0.002, 0.030] [0.001, 0.031] [0.000, 0.012] [0.000, 0.012] [−0.001, 0.009] [−0.001, 0.009] [−0.002, 0.007] [−0.002, 0.012] [−0.001, 0.019] [0.004, 0.028] [−0.001, 0.009] [0.000, 0.014] [−0.002, 0.006] [−0.002, 0.010]

t

0.027 0.020 0.000 0.000 0.007 0.005 0.010 0.007 0.019 0.014 0.001 0.001 0.009 0.007 0.010 0.008

⁎⁎

3.145 2.388⁎ 0.098 0.098 1.581† 1.452† 1.912† 1.696† 2.614⁎⁎ 2.201⁎ 0.234 0.234 1.699† 1.568† 1.843† 1.679†

Note. N = 260 couples. † p < 0.10. ⁎ p < 0.05. ⁎⁎ p < 0.01.

Finally, the current study was related to comprehensive theoretical and practical significance. In theory, we enriched the theoretical framework of personality-relationship. In practice, the results of the study can provide suggestions on how to improve marital relationships, hinting that interfering in the interpersonal cognitive distortions of couples may be a new angle for solving this kind of problem.

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