Attachment

Four questions to ask yourself

Sorting the other person out from a distance is unreliable, even when you know them well. Your own experience is more accessible because you can observe it directly. The questions below are this chapter's own compilation and not a validated scale. They have no fixed order and say nothing about which label fits. The experiences they describe can point to a burdensome dynamic, but they also occur for other reasons.

First. Do you run conversations through again afterwards, trying to work out what just happened? That happens in every relationship and under many kinds of strain; if it happens often and for long, it can be a sign.

Second. Do you tell friends a milder version, not out of loyalty, but because the real one would sound too clear once said out loud?

Third. Does your own perception become negotiable? Do you start sentences with “maybe I am imagining it”, including about things you heard?

Fourth. Do you get smaller in your own account? Does what you are good at come up less, and what you get wrong come up more? Noticing that in yourself is an observation worth taking seriously, and it does not depend on whether the other person would qualify for a diagnosis. It does not replace counselling.

What is not a sign

Confidence, success, a polished appearance, or liking to be photographed. Those are traits, not patterns.

That someone hurt you. People hurt each other for many reasons, such as fear, carelessness, overload and cowardice. A personality disorder is only one of them.

That someone says little, shows little, or finds closeness hard to bear. That can fit an avoidant attachment pattern, which is a different thing.

A list on the internet that fits a former partner. Such lists are written so that they fit almost anyone; it is the same mechanism the birth chart chapter demonstrates with the Forer effect.

And the other way round: recognising yourself here as the empath proves no virtue. Having no boundaries is not kindness, and the role of the counterpart is comfortable because it makes your own share in the dynamic invisible.

The assumption that narcissists cannot read other people at all is not supported by the group findings, and neither is its opposite. In three studies with non-clinical samples (N = 282, 95 and 88; Hepper, Hart and Sedikides 2014), the maladaptive component of narcissism (entitlement, exploitativeness, exhibitionism) went with lower empathy for a suffering person without special instructions (self-report, heart rate). When participants in two of these studies were instructed to put themselves in the person's place, that association could no longer be shown statistically. The authors conclude that low empathy here is not an inability, but cannot separate ability that takes effort from a lack of motivation or avoidance. The studies say nothing about a diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder.

A more recent study (Shahri et al. 2024; N = 87, healthy students in Iran, sorted by a questionnaire into a group with high and a group with low scores) found no difference in perspective taking in self-report, but lower feeling with. On a task, people with high scores did worse at attributing emotions; there was no group difference in attributing pain. The affective sub-measures were lower throughout. The sample was small and consisted of two extreme groups with an unequal share of women; the authors call for replication, including in people with the disorder.

In 47 inpatients with narcissistic personality disorder and 53 healthy controls, one study found lower emotional empathy, while the recognition of emotions did not differ (Ritter et al. 2011). This too is a small inpatient sample with many additional diagnoses, and the study did not test an instruction to take the other's perspective. The experiments in non-clinical groups therefore cannot be transferred to patients.

Read together: in groups with raised narcissism scores, lower empathy depends in part on whether people are guided to take the other's perspective, and affective feeling with is lower in several studies. The abilities, intentions or readiness to change of any one person cannot be derived from that, and no forecast follows about whether a particular conversation will succeed.

A great deal is said about people with a narcissistic pattern, much of it plausible and often repeated. This section sets out what could be found in studies (web search, no specialist database; as of 7 October 2026). Two notes first. Almost all the studies read here measure narcissism as a personality trait with questionnaires, mostly in students or in adults recruited online. They describe group averages, not “the narcissists” and not any particular person. And they distinguish the grandiose form (the loud side) from the vulnerable form (the quiet side); what holds for one often does not hold for the other.

Where a statement could not be checked against studies in this research, it is listed as a popular model. That is a provisional classification and no judgement on whether there is anything in it.

The loop that destroys itself

The pattern has one property that separates it from ordinary inconsiderateness: it consumes exactly what it lives on. Confirmation only works when it comes from someone whose judgement counts. Whoever counts gets close enough to see the cracks. Whoever sees the cracks becomes a threat and has to be made smaller. And the devaluation removes precisely the person whose confirmation would have worked.

That is not a moral verdict but the description of a circuit that looks inevitable from inside. From outside you can see it using up its own supply. From inside you only see that people have once again turned out to be disappointing.

Distance, then, is not a by-product but the protection. Let nobody close enough and you never have to devalue anybody. The price is that the confirmation has to come from further and further away and wears off faster each time.

Why the next one can look better

A cross-sectional study with three samples of people in relationships (531 people in all; Campbell and Foster 2002) found a negative association between narcissism and commitment (r = −0.20, −0.25 and −0.20). It was linked mainly to perceived alternatives and hardly to satisfaction or investment in the relationship: people who scored higher saw more and better options elsewhere and paid more attention to them. Cause and direction cannot be read from questionnaires answered at one point in time.

One possible interpretation, which the study does not test: if perceived alternatives accompany commitment more strongly than satisfaction does, a break-up might depend less on a bad phase than on something else becoming available, and effort inside the existing relationship would then change little.

What happens to the other person

What looks like weakness from outside can be connected with the alternation between warm and cold. In the laboratory, above all in animals, learned behaviour after irregular reward often persists longer once the reward stops than after continuous reward (Haselgrove et al. 2004; Nevin 2012). In humans the findings are mixed (Segers et al. 2018; Hochman and Erev 2013), and no direct test for staying in relationships was found (web search, no specialist database). That this mechanism explains why people hold on to changeable affection is an assumption. Changeable affection can contribute to people staying in a burdensome relationship; among other things, attachment, hope, dependencies and the concrete life situation also play a part.

A possible second effect belongs here as an interpretation: when your own perception is repeatedly contested, trust in your own judgement can fall (on gaslighting there is mainly qualitative work, see the tab What holds up). Whether that explains why someone stays in a relationship has not been studied. The question “why did you stay” assumes a single reason; there can be several, and some do not lie with the person.

Part of the loop does come from the other side, and that belongs here without assigning blame. On this chapter's reading, an anxious attachment pattern supplies exactly what the arrangement needs: a great deal of attention, little boundary, and a readiness to put the other person's state before one's own. The tab Who meets whom describes the same pairing as a scenario with no diagnosis at all.

What cannot be shown

Three parts of the usual story do not survive testing, and those matter more than the parts that do.

The parasite image. Draining energy, vampire, host: these are pictures, not mechanisms. What gets measured is a regulation loop that needs confirmation from outside. The picture turns that into a kind of creature, and therefore into something that cannot change. Which is exactly why it is so popular: it ends the question.

That he does not understand other people exist. That the ability to take another's perspective is generally missing at raised narcissism scores is not supported by the group findings of the previous section: with a matching instruction, the association with lower empathy could no longer be shown in two experiments. At the same time feeling with is lower in several studies. That says nothing about the abilities, intentions or readiness to change of any one person, and no forecast follows from it about whether a conversation will change anything.

The lonely old age. It is the ending that makes the story just, and it is not supported. A study of 200 middle-aged and older people found less narcissism and more loneliness among the older group, with narcissism acting as a buffer rather than an accelerant. For the vulnerable form it runs the other way, where more narcissism goes with more loneliness. Both findings rest on small samples. What is documented is a course among groups of strangers and first-year students, neither the balance of a whole life nor the course of a single relationship.

The uncomfortable consequence: expecting it to even out in the end is a story about justice, not a finding. Anyone staying because they are waiting for that settlement is waiting for something the numbers do not promise.

The reading. The pairing is described so consistently because the two strategies fit each other like a lock and a key. One person regulates their self-image through the attention of others and therefore needs someone who supplies attention and does not walk away. The other reads the state of the room before their own and treats another person's need as the more urgent fact. Each gets exactly what their strategy requires, which is why the arrangement is stable long after it stopped being good.

What speaks against it. The same course can be described without any diagnosis. An anxious pattern meeting a dismissing-avoidant one can produce a similar course: fast closeness, changing warmth and an abrupt end. That this course is typical of this pairing has not been measured; what is measured are the dimensions and their average associations with satisfaction (see the tab What holds up). On this view, adding a disorder to the description explains nothing extra; it rather supplies a villain (interpretation). It also travels badly: once someone has been named a narcissist, their behaviour is easily read as confirmation. A claim that confirms every behaviour cannot be tested.

What both readings agree on. What holds the second person in place need be neither love nor weakness. Changeable affection can be one reason; attachment, hope, dependencies and the life situation can also play a part. The learning effect of irregular reward is well documented in the laboratory, above all in animals; for staying in relationships it is an assumption.

A large part of the vocabulary that turns up in these conversations does not come from research but from a single source: the self-published writing of an anonymous author who says he is a diagnosed narcissist and who has, since the twenty-tens, built an extensive private terminology. The super empath, the golden period, the fuel and the supernova all come from there. The terms are internally consistent, they are used consistently, and they rest on not a single study.

Only the core is older. The idea that a fragile self-image needs a continuous supply of confirmation from outside comes from psychoanalysis in the nineteen thirties and forties. Everything added since is embellishment.

That is no reason to look down on the vocabulary. Someone who has lived through something for which there was no language reaches for the language on offer, and this one is vivid, accurate in tone and free. It is only a reason not to mistake it for a finding.

The story goes like this. When a narcissist meets an ordinary empath he uses them up and moves on. When he meets a super empath, someone who gives just as much but who fights back at the end and leaves of their own accord, the relation tips over. That one person becomes the benchmark. He looks for her in every one who follows, does not find her, and never gets over it.

It is immediately clear why this story is needed. It reverses the power exactly: the person who was used up becomes the person who could not be replaced. It gives the ending a justice it otherwise does not have, and the experience a meaning. As consolation it works. That does not make it true.

Three things, and none of them has been measured. What is set against them below are counter-arguments from related findings, not a refutation of the story.

First, super empaths would have to exist as a distinct group. Empathy is measured as several continuous characteristics. There is no threshold, no category, and no instrument that could place somebody in one.

Second, the loss would have to have lasting effect. There is no measurement of that. Something else was measured, in the laboratory and over minutes: in two experiments with 260 and 280 students, narcissism predicted aggressive behaviour after an insult (measured as noise), while self-esteem did not, and in the second study the aggression was aimed at the person who had given the insult and hardly at uninvolved third parties (Bushman and Baumeister 1998). That shows a short-term reaction to injury. It does not refute that someone later thinks back to a relationship, and it does not show it either.

Third, the search for what was lost would have to steer the behaviour. Something else was measured. In a cross-sectional study, lower commitment at higher narcissism was linked mainly to perceived alternatives, that is, to other options looking better (Campbell and Foster 2002). Whether someone stays attached to the previous person was not measured.

Something does remain, and it can be explained without anyone having to be unique.

That an episode broken off abruptly stays in memory better than one carried to an end is described in psychology as the Zeigarnik effect. The findings on it are inconsistent, and it was not tested here for break-ups.

And the idealisation phase can set a benchmark against which everything later is measured. That can work on both sides. Whoever lived through the golden period compares against it afterwards, and so does the person who produced it.

Together those could explain why someone says later that they never had anything comparable again. They do not explain why that should have been down to one particular person. Both are possibilities, not tested explanations.

Marked as an assessment. What follows puts the findings of this chapter together and goes beyond them in doing so. That is why it sits here and not in the evidence ladder.

The answer is yes, for three reasons that reinforce one another.

First, production. The pattern manufactures the conditions of a difficult relationship itself. Conditional warmth, alternating attention, criticism turned around: someone treated that way starts checking, asking, distrusting and explaining. After a year that looks like two difficult people, and a substantial part of it is the effect of one on the other. Anyone who looks only late can hardly tell cause from consequence.

Second, selection on one side. People with firm boundaries leave early, usually the first time attention is made conditional. They barely appear in the relationship history at all. What remains are the people who stay, and those who stay usually have a reason that itself has to do with attachment.

Third, selection on the other side. The opening phase is extraordinarily attractive to an anxious pattern, because it delivers exactly what is permanently missing there. So both move toward each other, and neither of them is doing anything unreasonable.

What speaks against it. No study has measured the sentence “narcissists have more difficult relationships” directly. Parts of it are measured: shorter relationships, lower commitment, more conflict, declining popularity over time. Putting those parts together is precisely the step that makes an assessment an assessment.

And the thought cuts both ways. If the same kind of relationship over and over points to the common denominator, that holds for anyone looking back on three similar relationships. That is uncomfortable and still the better use of it: the thought serves self-examination better than it serves sorting somebody else.

The most striking line in the chart is not a line but a distance: the area between the highest and the lowest thing felt in the same week. At the start it is narrow, because everything is up. In the devaluation it widens, because the lows arrive and the highs remain. In the alternation phase it is at its widest, and that is the point. It is not the height that produces the strong feeling, it is the distance travelled.

First, contrast. The same warmth registers as larger after cold than after warmth. Someone who has not known where they stand for three days experiences an ordinary friendly message as relief. What is registered is not the state but the change, and here the change is enormous.

Second, arousal. A body under constant tension can experience the situation as significant. The usual evidence for this is a 1974 experiment on a suspension bridge, and that evidence is shakier than it is usually quoted: the method has been criticised, replications came out mixed, and the effects are small to moderate. The current reading is that arousal amplifies a tendency that is already there rather than being mistaken for attraction. In practice both come to the same thing: an agitated body makes everything larger, including the good parts.

Third, memory. In laboratory experiments with short episodes, such as pain stimuli and film clips, the retrospective rating depended strongly on the highest point and the end, and duration hardly mattered (Kahneman et al. 1993; Fredrickson and Kahneman 1993; meta-analysis: Alaybek et al. 2022). Fredrickson and Kahneman themselves urge caution for episodes of days or months. In conflict conversations of 101 couples, the emotional peaks, not the end, went with the mood afterwards (Sels et al. 2019), and for couples in everyday life the mean of experienced satisfaction described the memory best (Zygar-Hoffmann and Schönbrodt 2020). Whether a relationship with great peaks is therefore remembered mainly by its peaks is an assumption and not a rule for all people.

And a cautious conclusion. Intensity and depth are not the same. How strong arousal is interpreted can vary with the situation (see the suspension-bridge study above, with its limits). The sense of specialness is real as a feeling and by itself says little about the quality of the relationship. That is an interpretation by this chapter on the basis of the findings named, not a neurobiological statement.

That can also be a reason why a calm relationship afterwards can feel like too little. The comparison is then perhaps not with quality but with amplitude. As a measure of how well you are doing, the height of the curve serves better than its swing (interpretation). It can help to say that to oneself deliberately for a while.

A pattern is described (in counselling and self-help sources): a person is provoked repeatedly and finally reacts strongly. They shout, insult or throw something. Afterwards the other person uses this reaction as proof and presents themselves as the victim, and what happened before no longer appears in the story. According to these sources the reaction is often recorded or told to third parties.

The term is reactive abuse. The name is disputed: according to Thriveworks it can be misleading, because a strong reaction to abuse one has experienced is not always abuse; often it is simply self-defence. DomesticShelters writes that the term shifts blame onto the person affected, and describes that perpetrators invoke it when those affected defend themselves. Other counselling pages use it for the pattern above: the reaction is triggered and afterwards used against the person (Wright; The Hotline). The term comes from counselling and self-help sources, and its origin is unclear. According to two websites from therapy practice it is not a formal diagnosis (Wright; The Peaceful Place). A specialist study that measures it as a construct of its own was not found in this research (web search, no specialist database). This tab therefore treats it as a popular term, not as a finding.

What lies behind it can be described with building blocks that have each been studied. How strongly provocation and aggressive behaviour go together also depends on personality: some characteristics went with aggressive behaviour with and without provocation, others only under provocation (Bettencourt et al. 2006). Even quite mild, acute, uncontrollable stress can, according to a review, quickly cause a marked loss of cognitive abilities of the prefrontal cortex, in animals and humans (Arnsten 2009), and acute stress impaired working memory and cognitive flexibility in humans in a meta-analysis (Shields et al. 2016). Outsiders tend to explain behaviour by character rather than by circumstances (Gilbert and Malone 1995). In an experiment with invented cases of sexual assault, the person harmed seemed less credible when the accused person responded with denying, attacking and reversing victim and offender (Harsey and Freyd 2023). And when retelling a story, participants coloured it according to the role they had been assigned (Stillwell and Baumeister 1997). The sequence as a whole, by contrast, is a model, not a measured result; no study of it was found in this research. Whether it is present in a particular case cannot be told from a single account, not even from one's own.

Evidence. Bettencourt et al. 2006; Arnsten 2009; Shields et al. 2016; Gilbert and Malone 1995; Harsey and Freyd 2023; Stillwell and Baumeister 1997. They appear below in the source block and in the cards.

How to read this. “Not found” in this tab means: nothing was found in the research (web search, no specialist database). It does not mean that nothing exists. Examples without a source are invented.

In the model the pattern rests on an imbalance of visibility. The triggers are quiet, scattered and deniable. The outburst is loud, happens at one point and can be recorded. Whoever asks later then finds only the outburst. Two more things come in: how outsiders judge and how the story is told afterwards.

First: people tend to infer the traits of a person from behaviour, even when the situation could explain it. In technical language this is called correspondence bias (Gilbert and Malone 1995); Ross (1977) called the related tendency to underestimate the power of the situation the fundamental attribution error (cited in Gilbert and Malone 1995). The tendency is not equally strong everywhere: East Asian participants are more likely to avoid it as long as the constraints of the situation are clear (Choi et al. 1999). And among more stressed judges it was greater: in two studies by one research team, more stressed participants more often attributed behaviour to character, among 56 people after a cold-pressor test in the laboratory, among 204 people with self-reported stress (Kubota et al. 2014). In the model this means: whoever sees only the outburst, such as a manager, a family member or a court, easily reads it as a trait of the person.

It is also often said that those involved explain their actions by the situation and observers explain the actions of others by character (actor-observer asymmetry). As a general rule that does not hold: a meta-analysis of 173 studies with 14,686 people found on average only a very small difference (d = 0.095; the mean effects lay between −0.016 and 0.095 according to the abstract). According to the abstract the asymmetry applied only when the actor was portrayed as highly idiosyncratic, when hypothetical events were explained, when actors and observers were close to each other, or when freely formulated explanations were analysed. In the results section of the paper the mean effects were 0.318 for freely formulated explanations, 0.280 for hypothetical events and 0.245 for people who are close, but only 0.059 for actual events; for negative events table 3 gives the value 0.241. The author calls the asymmetry neither firmly established nor robust and general (Malle 2006). The text therefore claims only the tendency of observers, not this two-part rule.

Second: the story afterwards. In the experiment on DARVO (see step 4; Harsey and Freyd 2023) the person harmed seemed less credible when the accused person responded with denying, attacking and reversing. What was measured was how readers judged fictional cases, including a case of partner violence (Harsey and Freyd 2020), not how it goes for people who defend themselves, and not the sequence drawn here in real relationships, families or workplaces; no study of that was found (web search, no specialist database). How self-view and others' view play a part is shown in the tab Self-view and others' view.

Not every quarrel in which someone loses control is such a pattern. In ordinary conflicts too, each side can feel provoked, and each can tell what happened in a way coloured by their role (see the tab Self-view and others' view; Stillwell and Baumeister 1997, laboratory study with stories that were read). Interpreted with caution, that applies to the person who experiences themselves as provoked too: this person's account needs a view from outside (interpretation, not measurement).

A typology of partner violence (Johnson 2008) distinguishes by the context in which violence happens: violence as part of a general pattern of coercion and control (intimate terrorism), violence that arises from the escalation of single conflicts (situational couple violence), and violence as resistance to coercion and control (violent resistance). According to the catalogue text of the book, the distinctions between these forms are as much about control as they are about violence. In the US National Violence Against Women Survey, two forms of violence by husbands against their wives differed in their consequences. Among those affected by intimate terrorism (violence with control), the violence stopped less often than among those affected by situational couple violence. They were attacked and injured more often, showed more symptoms of post-traumatic stress, used painkillers more often, missed work more often and had left their husbands more often (Johnson and Leone 2005). The distinction is debated: an editorial of 2024 reports that more than 40 percent of the empirical studies do not apply the typology correctly (Cares et al. 2024; according to the editorial the figure comes from a systematic review in the same issue, which was not read in this research). In custody proceedings, according to the same editorial, accused people sometimes claim that it was only situational violence.

The term coercive control also starts from control and not only from violence: according to the abstract of Stark and Hester (2019, review), coercive control is not a type of violence; that is a conceptual distinction (this chapter's reading): what is meant is a continuing pattern and not a single physical act, and psychological, economic and other forms of violence or control are not excluded by it. The level of control predicts a range of negative outcomes that were previously associated with physical violence. According to the text of the paper it is a pattern of coercion and control, experienced as a condition of unfreedom. In Austria, section 107b paragraph 1 of the criminal code (StGB, version from 1 January 2020) reads, in the German original: “Wer gegen eine andere Person eine längere Zeit hindurch fortgesetzt Gewalt ausübt, ist mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren zu bestrafen.” (Own translation: whoever continuously uses violence against another person over a longer period is to be punished with imprisonment of up to three years.) Paragraph 2 determines what counts as violence within the meaning of paragraph 1: physical abuse and intentional criminal acts against life and limb or against liberty, excluding some expressly named offences. Paragraph 3 reads, in the German original: “Mit Freiheitsstrafe von sechs Monaten bis zu fünf Jahren ist zu bestrafen, wer durch die Tat eine umfassende Kontrolle des Verhaltens der verletzten Person herstellt oder eine erhebliche Einschränkung der autonomen Lebensführung der verletzten Person bewirkt.” (Own translation: whoever through the act establishes comprehensive control over the injured person's behaviour or brings about a considerable restriction of the injured person's autonomous living is to be punished with imprisonment of six months to five years.) The section does not name provocation, belittling and manipulation as such; single acts may fall under other offences. For a legal assessment, counselling services and legal advice are available.

The following questions go beyond the intensity of a reaction. They are derived partly from characteristics that are described in research on forms of violence and coercive control (Johnson 2008; Stark and Hester 2019), partly from descriptions in counselling sources. The compilation was made for this page, is not a tested scale and not a diagnosis, only questions that an outsider could also answer:

• Is it a pattern over weeks and months, or a single evening?
• Who in this relationship can say no or leave without paying for it?
• Who is afraid of whom?
• Does one person decide about the other's everyday life: contacts, money, time, availability?
• Who benefits from the escalation?
• Is the reaction afterwards collected, shown or retold?
• Would a person who knows both sides and takes neither side confirm the history?

According to the text of Stark and Hester (2019), coercive control can also exist without any notable incidents of violence: most cases, it says, include physical or sexual assaults, but a considerable share do not, and fear, constraints on autonomy and belittlement can produce a feeling of entrapment. Anyone who answers the questions only about the other side has not answered them.

Not as a label for others. “That is reactive abuse”, said as an accusation to the other person, settles nothing. According to two websites from therapy practice the term is not a formal diagnosis (Wright; The Peaceful Place), according to Thriveworks it can be misleading, and even Johnson's distinction, according to an editorial of 2024, is often applied incorrectly (Cares et al. 2024). This tab therefore recommends not using terms like this one to classify others.

Not as a diagnosis. Provoking is a behaviour, not a diagnosis. According to Greenberg (Psychology Today, blog post), not every abuser who is called a “narcissist” meets the criteria of narcissistic personality disorder (see the tab Patterns and labels).

Not as proof of a lack of self-reflection. The self-view is on the whole accurate but has omissions, and self-view and others' view differ on average, in different directions depending on the characteristic: for inner characteristics such as anxiety the person tends to know themselves better, for characteristics that are visible from outside and strongly evaluated, others can judge better (Vazire and Carlson 2011; Vazire 2010). Self-assessment and measured performance agree only moderately on average (Zell and Krizan 2014, details under “Self-view and others' view”). That someone does not know how others see them is not documented for people with narcissistic traits: they understood that others see them less positively and had partial insight into the fading first impression (Carlson et al. 2011). For people who deliberately provoke others, no study was found in this research. The same goes for the catchword Dunning-Kruger effect (see chapter 09) and for similar labels: using such labels for others tempts one to take one's own view to be the clear one (interpretation; on the blind spot Pronin et al. 2002). Evidence in the tab Self-view and others' view.

Not as a free pass. “You provoked me” is a sentence both sides can say: the person who really was provoked, and the person who wants to shift responsibility. The Power and Control Wheel of the Duluth model, a conceptual tool of counselling practice and not a theory (Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs; according to the publishers' text developed in 1982 by Ellen Pence, Coral McDonnell and Michael Paymar), has a spoke “Minimizing, Denying and Blaming”. According to the explanation of Rockland Community College, this includes, among other things, shifting responsibility for abusive behaviour and saying that the victim caused it (SUNY Rockland). “You provoked me” can be meant in that sense (interpretation). This cannot be decided from a single account, not even for the person who tells it.

Not as an excuse. Explaining is not excusing. Someone who, when provoked, shouted at, threatened or hurt another person did that. Two websites from therapy practice stress that both can hold together: responsibility for one's own hurtful behaviour and the recognition that lasting intimidation, manipulation or coercion may have prepared the ground for it (The Peaceful Place; Wright). Another counselling service stresses that defending oneself against an abusive partner is not abuse (The Hotline). What counts legally as self-defence depends on the individual case. Legal advice and the courts settle that. Counselling services help, for example, with a safety plan.

What these counselling and self-help sources name, to different extents depending on the source: talk to people one trusts or to a professional (The Hotline; Praxis gesunde Psyche), write down what happens, with dates (The Hotline; similarly the coaching glossary narzissmus-coach.de), keep messages and other evidence in order to show the pattern and not only a single incident (The Hotline; DomesticShelters), and make a safety plan (DomesticShelters; Praxis gesunde Psyche). This is the state of counselling practice and, for this pattern, not tested by studies.

For one's own reaction there is an approach studied in the laboratory, self-distancing: seeing oneself from the viewpoint of an observer while worked up (“fly on the wall”). In two experiments with 94 and 86 students, provoked participants who did this had fewer aggressive thoughts and less anger (experiment 1) and showed less aggressive behaviour (experiment 2) than participants who immersed themselves in their own situation and than the control group (Mischkowski et al. 2012). These were laboratory studies with a short-term effect. On long-lasting relationship patterns they say nothing.

A well-known strategy is called grey rock. According to a reference text (EBSCO Research Starters) it means answering briefly and without emotion and suppressing reactions; the term was coined in 2012 by a blogger. The same text states that there is almost no scientific research on its effectiveness, that the strategy can reinforce the unwanted behaviour, and that experts recommend seeking professional help before starting. DomesticShelters too describes it as a temporary measure that belongs in a safety plan and that can make the situation worse if the expected reaction does not come. Both are reference and counselling sources, not studies.

Men and boys in acute conflict and crisis situations, including those who have used violence in the family or fear they will, can find help at the Männerinfo crisis helpline on 0800 400 777; it can be reached around the clock and is free and anonymous. For everyone else the numbers in the box “One practical note” below apply. The Telefonseelsorge can be reached on 142 every day around the clock.

Sources. Title, journal, volume and pages are given where they were read on the original page; otherwise only authors, journal and year are given.

Provocation, stress and self-control. Bettencourt, Talley, Benjamin & Valentine, Personality and aggressive behavior under provoking and neutral conditions: A meta-analytic review, Psychological Bulletin 132(5), 751 to 777 (2006) · Dodge & Coie, Social-information-processing factors in reactive and proactive aggression in children's peer groups, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53(6), 1146 to 1158 (1987) · “Proactive and Reactive Aggression”, encyclopedia entry at Springer · Arnsten, Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10(6), 410 to 422 (2009), review article · Shields, Sazma & Yonelinas, The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 68, 651 to 668 (2016) · Mischkowski, Kross & Bushman, Flies on the wall are less aggressive: Self-distancing “in the heat of the moment” reduces aggressive thoughts, angry feelings and aggressive behavior, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48(5), 1187 to 1191 (2012)

Attribution and visibility. Gilbert & Malone, The correspondence bias, Psychological Bulletin 117(1), 21 to 38 (1995) · Ross (1977), cited in Gilbert & Malone (1995), not read in the original · Choi, Nisbett & Norenzayan, Causal attribution across cultures: Variation and universality, Psychological Bulletin 125, 47 to 63 (1999) · Kubota, Mojdehbakhsh, Raio, Brosch, Uleman & Phelps, Stressing the person: Legal and everyday person attributions under stress, Biological Psychology 103, 117 to 124 (2014) · Malle, The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin 132(6), 895 to 919 (2006)

Self-view and others' view. Vazire, Who knows what about a person? The self-other knowledge asymmetry (SOKA) model, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98(2), 281 to 300 (2010) · Vazire & Carlson, Others sometimes know us better than we know ourselves, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20(2), 104 to 108 (2011) · Zell & Krizan, Do people have insight into their abilities? A metasynthesis, Perspectives on Psychological Science 9(2), 111 to 125 (2014) · Pronin, Lin & Ross, The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(3), 369 to 381 (2002)

Roles and accounts. Stillwell & Baumeister, The construction of victim and perpetrator memories: Accuracy and distortion in role-based accounts, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23(11), 1157 to 1172 (1997)

Narcissism. Carlson, Vazire & Oltmanns, You probably think this paper's about you: Narcissists' perceptions of their personality and reputation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(1), 185 to 201 (2011) · Bushman & Baumeister, Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1), 219 to 229 (1998)

Denying and blaming, DARVO. Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, The development of the Power and Control and Equality Wheels · Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, Understanding the Power and Control Wheel (publisher's page, with the spoke “Minimizing, Denying and Blaming”) · Rockland Community College (SUNY Rockland), Understanding the Power and Control Perspective Wheel · Freyd, Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory, Feminism & Psychology 7, 22 to 32 (1997), details from Freyd's page on DARVO, original not read · Harsey & Freyd, The influence of deny, attack, reverse victim and offender and insincere apologies on perceptions of sexual assault, Journal of Interpersonal Violence 38(17 to 18), 9985 to 10008 (2023)

Gaslighting, coercive control, forms of violence. Sweet, The sociology of gaslighting, American Sociological Review 84(5), 851 to 875 (2019) (abstract read; for the kind of work the methods section of a copy on asanet.org) · Klein, Li & Wood, A qualitative analysis of gaslighting in romantic relationships, issue 4, 1316 to 1340 (2023), DOI 10.1111/pere.12510 (abstract read) · Stark & Hester, Coercive control: Update and review, Violence Against Women 25(1), 81 to 104 (2019) (abstract read on the Bristol page; definition and details on the offence from a copy of the accepted manuscript) · Johnson, A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence, Boston: Northeastern University Press (2008), catalogue entry · Johnson & Leone, The differential effects of intimate terrorism and situational couple violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, Journal of Family Issues 26(3), 322 to 349 (2005) · Cares, Haselschwerdt, Hardesty & Few-Demo, “After All This Time: Clarifying Misconceptions and Charting Clear …”, editorial, Journal of Family Violence (2024) · § 107b StGB, Austrian federal legal information system (RIS), version from 1 January 2020 (BGBl. I No. 105/2019), and jusline, legal information page; both read in the wording

Frequency and authorities. Statistik Austria, Geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt gegen Frauen in Österreich (title in German), prevalence study, published 2022 (survey October 2020 to March 2021), report as PDF (question list section 4.3, pages 29 to 30) · Black, Basile, Breiding, Smith, Walters, Merrick, Chen & Stevens, The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010 Summary Report, CDC (2011) · Nancarrow, Thomas, Ringland & Modini, Accurately identifying the “person most in need of protection” in domestic and family violence law: Key findings and future directions (short version), ANROWS, Research to policy and practice papers 23/2020 (short version and project page read, full text not retrievable)

Term, counselling and reference works (advice and reference sources, not studies). The Hotline, What is reactive abuse? · DomesticShelters, Isn't reactive abuse just victim-blaming? · Thriveworks, article on reactive abuse · Wright (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist), Reactive Abuse: When Your Reaction Becomes Their Evidence Against You, blog post, 9 April 2026 · Young, The Peaceful Place (therapy practice), blog post on reactive abuse · Praxis gesunde Psyche (Austria), article on reaktiver Missbrauch, 2 September 2024 · narzissmus-coach.de, glossary: Reactive Abuse · Greenberg, Psychology Today, blog post on “narcissistic victim syndrome”, January 2024 · EBSCO Research Starters, Grey rock method (grey rocking), 2024 · DomesticShelters, Using the grey rock method to avoid abuse · Britannica, Gas Light

Help services (as of 30 September 2026). Frauenhelpline gegen Gewalt · Männerinfo and gesundheit.gv.at, Krisentelefon · toolbox-opferschutz.at, contact points across Austria (for the violence protection centres) · gesundheit.gv.at, Notrufnummern (Telefonseelsorge, police)

In counselling and self-help literature on narcissistic abuse, a smear campaign means this: after a conflict, a separation or a confrontation, one person tells others a version in which the other person is the problem. The listeners are friends, relatives, colleagues, sometimes offices and courts. The person talked about often learns of it late and second hand. The descriptions name recurring moves: telling first, giving each listener a version that suits them, retelling odd moments from conversations without what came before, repeating, winning helpers who carry the story on (in this literature called flying monkeys) and, when confronted, denying. This tab follows the moves one by one and notes for each what has been measured.

Neither smear campaign nor flying monkeys is a technical term. No study was found in this research that measures either as a construct of its own (web search, no specialist database; the search for both terms is not complete). The building blocks have been studied one by one: how much people talk about absent others and how readily listeners believe it (Robbins and Karan 2020; Dores Cruz et al. 2021), how a mere question harms a reputation (Wegner et al. 1981; Letourneau and Gawronski 2024), how repetition makes a statement seem truer (Hassan and Barber 2021), why corrections do not remove the whole effect (Walter and Tukachinsky 2020), how the teller's own memory gives way (Sedikides and Green 2004; Carlson et al. 2020), how narcissism goes with devaluing others (Back et al. 2013; Park and Colvin 2015) and how denying, attacking and reversing victim and offender affects readers (Harsey and Freyd 2020). The sequence as a whole is a model.

Two things limit the pattern. First, telling others about harm is not a smear in itself. In experiments, people who had watched someone behave selfishly and could warn the next player felt less frustrated afterwards; the authors call this prosocial gossip (Feinberg et al. 2012, according to secondary sources). Second, the accusation can be turned around. Jennifer Freyd, who coined the term DARVO, notes that an innocent person may also deny, attack and present themselves as the victim, so DARVO alone does not show who is guilty (Freyd, definition of 2003). “That is a smear campaign” is a sentence both sides can say. Whether it applies cannot be told from a single account, not even from one's own.

Evidence. Robbins and Karan 2020; Dores Cruz et al. 2021; Wegner et al. 1981; Letourneau and Gawronski 2024; Hassan and Barber 2021; Walter and Tukachinsky 2020; Sedikides and Green 2004; Carlson et al. 2020; Back et al. 2013; Park and Colvin 2015; Harsey and Freyd 2020; Feinberg et al. 2012. They appear below in the source block and in the cards.

How to read this. As in the tab Reactive abuse, “not found” means that nothing was found in this research, not that nothing exists. Examples without a source are invented. A and B are placeholders: A tells, B is the person told about. In a real case the roles can be the other way round.

“That never happened” can mean three different things, and from outside they are hard to tell apart. A lie: A knows it happened. A memory that has given way: A no longer remembers it as it happened. A justification: A remembers, but sees it differently.

The second kind has been measured. In experiments by Sedikides and Green, participants read behaviours said to describe either themselves or an invented other person; later they were asked to recall them. Negative behaviours about central traits were recalled worse when they concerned oneself: 25 percent against 38 percent for the other person (304 students in the United States; Sedikides and Green 2004). In recognition tests the difference disappeared: the information was stored but came back less readily. The authors call this mnemic neglect; among other things it shrank after self-affirmation (Sedikides et al. 2016, review). Whether narcissism strengthens it is, according to the authors, an open question (Sedikides and Green 2009). The misremembered amounts of money in Carlson et al. (2020) point the same way (move 3).

The third kind has a classic description. Sykes and Matza (1957) described five ways in which young offenders neutralised their guilt (techniques of neutralisation); Bandura later described eight mechanisms of moral disengagement: moral justification, euphemistic labelling, advantageous comparison, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, disregard or distortion of consequences, dehumanisation and attribution of blame (Bandura et al. 1996). The table applies the five techniques to invented sentences from a quarrel.

Sykes and Matza studied young offenders, Bandura perpetrators of severe harm. Carrying the categories over to quarrels in couples and families is an interpretation of this page (Sykes and Matza not read in the original; names after an encyclopedia entry). The answer that combines denying with an attack is DARVO (move 6 and Reactive abuse); what research on denying, minimising and blaming among perpetrators of violence found is in Self-view and others' view.

Narcissism research distinguishes two sides. Admiration seeks to shine. Rivalry protects the self by devaluing others; devaluing others is one of its three facets, next to striving for supremacy and aggressiveness (Back et al. 2013). In a scenario in which a good friend had talked badly about the participant to someone else, rivalry went with the wish for revenge (r = 0.35), admiration did not (r = 0.10; Back et al. 2013, study 5).

In three studies in the United States, narcissism went with judging other people more negatively, even without any threat beforehand (pooled r = 0.22; Park and Colvin 2015). After an insult, people high in narcissism derogated their evaluators whether these had high or low status (Horton and Sedikides 2009, abstract). They were less willing to apologise (r = −0.37 and −0.33 in two studies with 191 and 202 adults); in a fourth study with 282 adults this held for rivalry and not for admiration, and it ran through lower empathy and lower guilt (Leunissen et al. 2017). In an online study with 372 adults, narcissism and psychopathy went with gossip meant to influence others negatively; when the overlap between the traits was controlled, only one form of psychopathy remained (Lyons and Hughes 2015, abstract).

The findings have limits. In a registered study with 422 people in 54 competing groups, rivalry did not predict blaming others for failure beyond the other traits (Kraft et al. 2024, abstract). When participants imagined infidelity by their partner, Machiavellianism predicted the likelihood of revenge through goals of power and justice; for narcissism no such path was found (Rasmussen and Boon 2013, 165 students in Canada). After break-ups, 0.8 percent of those who had been left said they had released harmful information about the former partner, and 1.9 percent of those who had ended the relationship said this had happened to them (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. 2000, 282 students in the United States, narcissism not measured). No study measures smear campaigns by people with narcissistic traits as such.

Not every negative account is a campaign, and not every warning is malicious. The following questions were put together for this page from the findings above; they are not a tested scale and not a diagnosis. They apply to every account, one's own included:

• Is it about events (when, what, who was there) or about character (unstable, crazy, dangerous)?
• Does the person telling want something from you: to take sides, to break off contact, to pass it on?
• Does B know what is being said? Has B been able to answer?
• Did several people see it themselves, or did several people hear it from one source?
• Do you know the whole conversation, or a quotation?
• Does the story change with the listener?
• Is there something outside the accounts: messages in full, dates, records?

Warnings that name specific events, allow a reply and ask for nothing have the marks of what research calls prosocial gossip (interpretation, after Feinberg et al. 2012). Anyone who answers the questions only about the other side has not answered them.

At work the same moves are called mobbing when they are systematic and last. Heinz Leymann set the threshold statistically at at least once a week over at least six months and listed 45 actions in five groups; one group is attacks on social standing, among them spreading rumours (Leymann 1996; German group names after the Chamber of Labour of Lower Austria). A meta-analysis of 86 samples with more than 130,000 respondents found 11.3 percent when people rated themselves against a given definition, 14.8 percent when behaviours were counted and 18.1 percent when people rated themselves without a definition (Nielsen et al. 2010, according to three secondary sources). In Austria 3.2 percent of employed people named bullying or harassment as a risk to their mental health at work (Statistik Austria, labour force survey 2020, special module, according to the Chamber of Labour).

In Austria mobbing is not a criminal offence of its own; criminal law punishes single acts (Chamber of Labour of Lower Austria). Under civil law the employer has a duty of care (section 1157 ABGB, section 18 AngG). According to the Supreme Court the employer must see to it that an employee's personal sphere is not impaired by unobjective harassment by other employees. If it is, the employer must remedy it promptly; a culpable breach can lead to damages (legal principle RS0119353, first 8 ObA 3/04f). The court describes mobbing as a systematic, excluding process over a longer period and names damage to reputation among its forms (1 Ob 39/21y).

Between businesses a rule of its own applies. Whoever, for purposes of competition, asserts or spreads facts about another business that can damage its operation or its owner's credit is liable for damages unless the facts are proven true; the injured party can also demand that it stop, and a retraction with its publication (section 7 of the Austrian Act against Unfair Competition, UWG).

What can apply when someone is talked down to others; wording read on the Austrian legal information system RIS on 6 October 2026. This is information, not legal advice: whether something applies in a case is for legal advice and the courts to decide.

Limitation for offences carrying at most six months: one year (section 57 StGB). In civil law a narrow exception from liability applies (section 1330, paragraph 2, last sentence): it requires that the communication was not public, that the communicator did not know the untruth, and that they or the recipient had a legitimate interest. Whether that is the case in a particular instance is for legal advice and the courts to decide. Before a broad public, good faith does not protect under criminal law (section 111, paragraph 3). In Germany sections 186 (üble Nachrede) and 187 StGB (Verleumdung) apply, with higher penalties when committed in public (Research Services of the German Bundestag 2022).

Sources. Title, journal, volume and pages are given where they were read on the original page or in an author's copy; otherwise only authors, journal and year are given. Read on 6 October 2026.

Talking about others. Robbins & Karan, Who gossips and how in everyday life?, Social Psychological and Personality Science 11(2), 185 to 195 (2020) (abstract read, plus the press release of the University of California, Riverside) · Dores Cruz et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376(1838), article 20200301 (2021) · Feinberg, Willer, Stellar & Keltner, The virtues of gossip: Reputational information sharing as prosocial behavior, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102(5), 1015 to 1030 (2012) (according to Berkeley News and other secondary sources) · Lyons & Hughes, Malicious mouths? The Dark Triad and motivations for gossip, Personality and Individual Differences 78, 1 to 4 (2015) (abstract read)

Insinuation, repetition and correction. Wegner, Wenzlaff, Kerker & Beattie, Incrimination through innuendo: Can media questions become public answers?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40(5), 822 to 832 (1981) (the scan in Wegner's list of publications is not machine readable; described after the replication) · Letourneau & Gawronski, Social Psychology 55(1), 51 to 61 (2024), authors' copy · Leventhal & Gray, Psychological Reports 69(3), 801 to 802 (1991) (abstract read) · Kassin, Williams & Saunders, Law and Human Behavior 14(4), 373 to 384 (1990) (abstract read) · Hasher, Goldstein & Toppino, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16(1), 107 to 112 (1977) (abstract read) · Dechêne, Stahl, Hansen & Wänke, Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(2), 238 to 257 (2010) (according to secondary sources) · Fazio, Brashier, Payne & Marsh, Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144(5), 993 to 1002 (2015) (abstract read) · Hassan & Barber, The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 6, article 38 (2021) · Henderson, Simons & Barr, Journal of Cognition 4(1) (2021) · Ye et al., Nature Communications 17, article 3270 (2026) · Walter & Tukachinsky, A meta-analytic examination of the continued influence of misinformation in the face of correction, Communication Research 47(2), 155 to 177 (2020) (accepted manuscript) · Nyhan & Reifler, Displacing misinformation about events: An experimental test of causal corrections, Journal of Experimental Political Science 2(1), 81 to 93 (2015) · Lewandowsky et al., The Debunking Handbook 2020

First impressions and narcissism. Paulhus, Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A mixed blessing?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(5), 1197 to 1208 (1998) · Back, Schmukle & Egloff, Why are narcissists so charming at first sight?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98(1), 132 to 145 (2010) (according to secondary sources) · Leckelt, Küfner, Nestler & Back, Behavioral processes underlying the decline of narcissists' popularity over time, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109(5), 856 to 871 (2015) (according to secondary sources) · Back, Küfner, Dufner, Gerlach, Rauthmann & Denissen, Narcissistic admiration and rivalry: Disentangling the bright and dark sides of narcissism, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 105(6), 1013 to 1037 (2013) · Park & Colvin, Journal of Personality 83(3) (2015) · Horton & Sedikides, Narcissistic responding to ego threat: When the status of the evaluator matters, Journal of Personality 77(5), 1493 to 1526 (2009) (abstract read) · Leunissen, Sedikides & Wildschut, Why narcissists are unwilling to apologize: The role of empathy and guilt, European Journal of Personality 31(4), 385 to 403 (2017) · Kraft et al., European Journal of Personality 38(3) (2024) (abstract read) · Rasmussen & Boon, Personality and Individual Differences 55(8), 938 to 943 (2013) · Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Palarea, Cohen & Rohling, Violence and Victims 15(1), 73 to 90 (2000)

Denying and memory. Sedikides & Green, Social Cognition 22(1), 4 to 29 (2004) · Sedikides & Green, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3(6), 1055 to 1068 (2009) · Sedikides, Green, Saunders, Skowronski & Zengel, Mnemic neglect: Selective amnesia of one's faults, European Review of Social Psychology 27(1), 1 to 62 (2016) · Carlson, Maréchal, Oud, Fehr & Crockett, Motivated misremembering of selfish decisions, Nature Communications 11, article 2100 (2020) · Sykes & Matza, Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency, American Sociological Review 22(6), 664 to 670 (1957) (not read in the original; after Copes & Maruna, encyclopedia entry, SAGE 2010) · Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara & Pastorelli, Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(2), 364 to 374 (1996) · Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, aphorism 68 (1886); English translation by Helen Zimmern (public domain)

DARVO. Freyd, Violations of power, adaptive blindness, and betrayal trauma theory, Feminism & Psychology 7, 22 to 32 (1997) (not read in the original) · Freyd, DARVO (web page) and definition of 2003 (University of Oregon repository) · Harsey, Zurbriggen & Freyd, Perpetrator responses to victim confrontation: DARVO and victim self-blame, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 26(6), 644 to 663 (2017) (figures from the authors' poster of 2016) · Harsey & Freyd, Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility?, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 29(8), 897 to 916 (2020) · Rosenthal & Freyd, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 31(4), 459 to 477 (2022)

Abuse after separation, proceedings, related terms. Spearman, Hardesty & Campbell, Post-separation abuse: A concept analysis, Journal of Advanced Nursing 79(4), 1225 to 1246 (2023) (according to Child Justice and a further secondary source) · Douglas, Legal systems abuse and coercive control, Criminology & Criminal Justice 18(1), 84 to 99 (2018) (author's version) · Crick & Grotpeter, Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment, Child Development 66(3), 710 to 722 (1995) (not read in the original) · Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), source of the winged monkeys and the golden cap (not consulted in this research)

Work. Leymann, The content and development of mobbing at work, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 5(2), 165 to 184 (1996) (read in a Spanish translation) · Arbeiterkammer Niederösterreich, brochure on mobbing (2023) · Nielsen, Matthiesen & Einarsen, The impact of methodological moderators on prevalence rates of workplace bullying. A meta-analysis, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 83(4), 955 to 979 (2010) (according to secondary sources, among them Lange et al. 2019) · Statistik Austria, labour force survey 2020, special module, according to Arbeiterkammer Wien · Arbeiterkammer, Mobbing (information page) · OGH, legal principle RS0119353 (first 8 ObA 3/04f, 26 August 2004) and 1 Ob 39/21y (21 April 2021)

Law. Rechtsinformationssystem RIS, read on 6 October 2026: § 111 StGB, § 115 StGB, § 117 StGB, § 152 StGB, § 297 StGB, § 107c StGB, § 57 StGB, § 71 StPO, § 1330 ABGB, § 1157 ABGB, § 7 UWG, BGBl. I Nr. 148/2020 (HiNBG, § 549 ZPO) · § 18 AngG, Forum Media (secondary) · Federal Ministry of Justice, Das Mandatsverfahren (fee as of 1 August 2026) · Research Services of the German Bundestag, WD 7 052/22 (2022)

Help services (as of 6 October 2026). Opfer-Notruf (Federal Ministry of Justice, run by WEISSER RING) · ZARA counselling · 147 Rat auf Draht · further numbers in the tab Reactive abuse

No perspective sees a person completely. In one study with 165 students, the judgements of the people themselves, of their friends and of strangers were compared with behaviour and test scores from the laboratory. It tested the self-other knowledge asymmetry model (SOKA): according to it, the self judges characteristics that are hard to observe, such as anxiety, better, and others judge strongly evaluated characteristics, such as intelligence, better. The results fitted, but not equally clearly for every characteristic: depending on the characteristic, the self-rating was ahead, the friends' rating, or neither perspective. The highest value was 0.36: this is the mean of the judgements of four friends for intelligence; a single friend reached 0.27 (Vazire 2010; the values for each characteristic are shown in the chart below). Averaged across 22 meta-analyses, the correlation between the self-assessment of abilities and measured performance (test scores, grades, ratings by supervisors) is r = 0.29, with a range of 0.09 to 0.63 (Zell and Krizan 2014).

On average, people rate themselves better than others (better-than-average effect). In 124 articles with 291 samples and more than 950,000 participants it appeared with dz = 0.78, stronger for traits than for abilities and stronger in European American samples than in East Asian ones (Zell et al. 2020). Similarly, in 266 studies participants on average attributed positive events more to inner, stable and global causes than negative ones (d = 0.96); the effect was stronger in US samples (d = 1.05) than in Asian ones (d = 0.30), and smaller in depression, anxiety and ADHD (Mezulis et al. 2004). And participants considered themselves less biased than the average American, seminar participants and airport travellers (bias blind spot; Pronin et al. 2002).

Others see some things better. According to a review, the self-image is on the whole accurate but has important omissions. For characteristics that are strongly desirable or undesirable, others can judge better, because there motives can distort the self-image (Vazire and Carlson 2011). A paper with three meta-analyses (263 samples in all, 44,178 people rated) found: when the criterion was academic or job performance, judgements by others predicted it considerably better than self-ratings and beyond them (Connelly and Ones 2010). In a sample of 991 adults aged 55 to 65, Big Five ratings by spouses, relatives and friends predicted the scores for outward-directed and/or antagonistic personality disorders better than self-ratings; for most inward-directed disorders the self-ratings were ahead. The criterion was a composite that also included reports by others (Carlson et al. 2013).

The role colours the account. In three studies participants read a story and retold it from the role of the person who caused harm or the person harmed. Those who took the role of the person who caused harm stressed mitigating circumstances and their own goodwill and tended to leave out severity and responsibility. Those who took the role of the person harmed stressed the severity and played down what was good about the other. Both roles departed about equally from a control group, mainly by leaving things out (Stillwell and Baumeister 1997). In a study of couples, those harmed included fewer details that played the act down than those who caused harm, but did not portray the event as worse (Kearns and Fincham 2005).

The perception of intent can be coloured too. In children, aggressive behaviour went with a greater tendency to attribute hostile intent to peers: a meta-analysis of 41 studies with 6,017 participants found this link, stronger for severe aggression (De Castro et al. 2002). Even earlier, Dodge and Coie (1987) found such distortions in children in peer groups with reactive, not proactive, aggression. The abstracts that were read concern children. No study of adults in relationships was read in this research. Carried over, this would not mean that the impression of being provoked on purpose is wrong. It would mean that it is not evidence by itself and needs a view from outside. Outsiders too can judge in a distorted way.

“Lack of self-reflection” is a popular term, not a research finding. There are studies on narcissism and self-insight, and what they show is more narrowly limited. The studies used here measure narcissism as a personality trait, mostly in non-clinical samples and often in students, not as a diagnosis, and an average correlation does not allow conclusions about an individual person.

Self-enhancement is documented, above all in the characteristics the study calls “agentic”, that is, those related to power and achievement. A meta-analysis of 36 studies with 6,423 people compared self-reports with judgements by others or objective measures and found a correlation between narcissism and self-enhancement of r = 0.21, corrected for the measurement error of narcissism. For agentic characteristics it was 0.29, for communal ones, which relate to closeness and belonging, 0.05, and there not reliably different from zero (Grijalva and Zhang 2016). Ten areas were examined, among them the Big Five, task performance, intelligence, leadership, attractiveness and likeability. After an insult to their essay, people high in narcissism punished the person who had insulted them particularly strongly with noise, in two laboratory experiments with 260 and 280 students. In study 2, aggression against an uninvolved person was low overall and went with neither narcissism nor self-esteem. Self-esteem played no part in aggression against the insulting person either (Bushman and Baumeister 1998).

That these people do not know how others see them could not be documented in this research. In three studies (201, 110 and 274 people, among them US Air Force recruits) narcissism went with a more positive self-view (for example in study 1 extraversion r = 0.43, intelligence r = 0.31). People with stronger narcissistic traits understood that others see them less positively than they see themselves (so their estimate of how others see them was less distorted than their self-view), had partial insight into the fading first impression, and described themselves as arrogant (Carlson et al. 2011). On empathy, a meta-analysis with 32,200 people in all found mostly negative, small associations with empathy for both forms, not every one of them significant (associations, not causes). According to Jauk and Kaufman (2018), grandiose narcissism is characterised by self-importance, feelings of superiority and exploiting others, vulnerable narcissism by hypersensitivity, defensiveness and withdrawal. Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognise and understand what others feel, affective empathy what one feels oneself in response to others' feelings (Greater Good Science Center). For grandiose narcissism, the association with affective empathy was r = −0.251 in behavioural measures and r = −0.145 in self-report, with cognitive empathy r = −0.085 in self-report and r = −0.052 in behavioural measures, where it was not significant. For vulnerable narcissism, in self-report it was r = −0.179 for cognitive empathy and r = −0.105 for affective empathy, and in behavioural measures r = −0.069 for cognitive empathy, not significant (Urbonaviciute and Hepper 2020; figures from the abstract).

No study was found that measures self-insight in people who deliberately provoke others. Also not found was a survey of the sequence of trigger, pressure, outburst and reframing as a whole (web search, no specialist database). Anyone who describes the pattern is therefore describing a model made of parts that have been studied one by one.

In research on perpetrators of violence, denying, minimising and blaming have been measured. Among 2,824 convicted men who had used domestic violence, there was little sign that these attitudes went with more reoffending (Henning and Holdford 2006). In a survey of 139 students, minimising the conflict and blaming the partner went with self-reported aggression against the intimate partner among men, while among women only blaming did (Scott and Straus 2007). The Power and Control Wheel of the Duluth model has a spoke of its own for this attitude (“Minimizing, Denying and Blaming”, in German Verharmlosen, Leugnen und Beschuldigen). It was developed in 1982 from the experiences of battered women in Duluth, Minnesota, and according to its publishers is not a theory but a conceptual tool (Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, publisher's page and history of its development). What was studied were convicted perpetrators and students who themselves reported aggression against partners. The findings cannot simply be carried over to people who provoke others without using violence.

According to the short version of an Australian research report (Nancarrow et al. 2020), police practice is said to concentrate on single incidents of visible or physical violence. Women, especially women of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, are said to be misidentified as perpetrators in protection orders, and perpetrators are said to use tactics of systems abuse, such as false accusations, which could lead to the wrong person being identified as in need of protection. Frequencies cannot be derived from this. A study of coercive control in England and Wales urges care in using the term misidentification: the moment of misidentification is neither simple nor straightforward (Barlow and Walklate 2025, according to the abstract). Nothing was found on this for Austria in this research.

Nothing follows from all this for this pattern that would be a verdict on one side. On average people judge themselves more favourably and consider themselves less biased than others, with differences between cultures and groups of people. What this means for one side in one quarrel, the studies do not show, and no account substantiates itself. According to counselling practice (not tested by studies for this pattern), evidence lies outside the account: messages, dated records and the course of events. Anyone who looks for a “lack of self-reflection” only in the other side risks, on this interpretation, taking their own view to be the clear one; this fits with the finding that in studies participants on average considered themselves less biased than others (Pronin et al. 2002).

Sources. Title, journal, volume and pages are given where they were read on the original page; otherwise only authors, journal and year are given.

Provocation, stress and self-control. Dodge & Coie, Social-information-processing factors in reactive and proactive aggression in children's peer groups, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53(6), 1146 to 1158 (1987)

Attribution and visibility. Gilbert & Malone, The correspondence bias, Psychological Bulletin 117(1), 21 to 38 (1995) · Choi, Nisbett & Norenzayan, Causal attribution across cultures: Variation and universality, Psychological Bulletin 125, 47 to 63 (1999) · Kubota, Mojdehbakhsh, Raio, Brosch, Uleman & Phelps, Stressing the person: Legal and everyday person attributions under stress, Biological Psychology 103, 117 to 124 (2014) · Malle, The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin 132(6), 895 to 919 (2006)

Self-view and others' view. Vazire, Who knows what about a person? The self-other knowledge asymmetry (SOKA) model, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98(2), 281 to 300 (2010) · Vazire & Carlson, Others sometimes know us better than we know ourselves, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20(2), 104 to 108 (2011) · Connelly & Ones, An other perspective on personality: Meta-analytic integration of observers' accuracy and predictive validity, Psychological Bulletin 136(6), 1092 to 1122 (2010) (abstract read; the address leads to an aggregator) · Carlson, Vazire & Oltmanns, Self-other knowledge asymmetries in personality pathology, Journal of Personality 81(2), 155 to 170 (2013) · Zell & Krizan, Do people have insight into their abilities? A metasynthesis, Perspectives on Psychological Science 9(2), 111 to 125 (2014) · Zell, Strickhouser, Sedikides & Alicke, The better-than-average effect in comparative self-evaluation: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin 146(2), 118 to 149 (2020) · Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde & Hankin, Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias, Psychological Bulletin 130(5), 711 to 747 (2004) · Pronin, Lin & Ross, The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(3), 369 to 381 (2002) · Pronin & Kugler, Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43(4), 565 to 578 (2007)

Roles and accounts. Stillwell & Baumeister, The construction of victim and perpetrator memories: Accuracy and distortion in role-based accounts, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23(11), 1157 to 1172 (1997) · Kearns & Fincham, Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal transgressions: Self-serving or relationship-serving biases?, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31(3), 321 to 333 (2005) · De Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch & Monshouwer, Hostile attribution of intent and aggressive behavior: A meta-analysis, Child Development 73(3), 916 to 934 (2002)

Narcissism. Grijalva & Zhang, Narcissism and self-insight: A review and meta-analysis of narcissists' self-enhancement tendencies, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 42(1), 3 to 24 (2016) · Carlson, Vazire & Oltmanns, You probably think this paper's about you: Narcissists' perceptions of their personality and reputation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(1), 185 to 201 (2011) · Bushman & Baumeister, Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1), 219 to 229 (1998) · Urbonaviciute & Hepper, When is narcissism associated with low empathy? A meta-analytic review, Journal of Research in Personality 89, article 104036 (2020) · Jauk & Kaufman, The Higher the Score, the Darker the Core: The Nonlinear Association Between Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism, Frontiers in Psychology 9, article 1305 (2018) (introduction as the source of the short descriptions of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism) · Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley), Empathy Definition | What Is Empathy (reference source for the terms cognitive and affective empathy)

Denying and blaming, DARVO. Henning & Holdford, Minimization, denial, and victim blaming by batterers: How much does the truth matter?, Criminal Justice and Behavior 33(1), 110 to 130 (2006) · Scott & Straus, Denial, minimization, partner blaming, and intimate aggression in dating partners, Journal of Interpersonal Violence 22(7), 851 to 871 (2007) · Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, The development of the Power and Control and Equality Wheels · Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, Understanding the Power and Control Wheel (publisher's page, with the spoke “Minimizing, Denying and Blaming”)

Frequency and authorities. Nancarrow, Thomas, Ringland & Modini, Accurately identifying the “person most in need of protection” in domestic and family violence law: Key findings and future directions (short version), ANROWS, Research to policy and practice papers 23/2020 (short version and project page read, full text not retrievable) · Barlow & Walklate, Who is the victim? Exploring the complexities of misidentification, Criminology & Criminal Justice (2025), abstract read

A prospective study (Owenz and Fowers 2019) followed 599 students in couple relationships over two measurements about ten weeks apart; a hundred of them went through a break-up in that time. After the break-up, distress and perceived growth were high. The separately measured change was unrelated to distress, unrelated to perceived growth, and unrelated to whether a break-up had happened at all. Optimism at the start went with perceived growth, not with measured growth. Reported growth and measured change are different measures; in this study they were not connected. (Read from the abstract.)

That is not a reason to dismiss what people feel. It only shows that reported growth does not tell you whether anything has changed on a measure. The study was short and says nothing about what happens in the months and years afterwards; that later change fails to occur, or that it is inevitable, does not follow from it.

Attachment dimensions are moderately stable, not fixed. The test-retest correlation is about r = 0.40 and smaller at longer intervals and in earlier phases of life. What follows comes from a review without data of its own (Chopik et al. 2024), which itself names only a few isolated tests and calls for more studies that can speak to cause. The start of a relationship and positive experiences in it went with more attachment security. According to one model, reaching a goal one has set oneself can evoke feelings of autonomy and so help. Among avoidantly attached people, a larger number of small good events between partners went with more security over time. Job loss was linked to a lasting rise in attachment anxiety in a longitudinal study, and after a reported argument both anxiety and avoidance rose.

In studies of emotion-focused couple therapy both dimensions decreased; the review gives no figures for this. In a four-month longitudinal study, the wish to become more secure went with later security. How large and how lasting such changes are has, according to the review, been tested in only a few studies.

Narcissism declines on average across the life span. A meta-analysis of 51 longitudinal samples with 37,247 people aged 8 to 77 (Orth et al. 2024) found decreases on all three forms; the values are extrapolated to 69 years from small annual rates: agentic d = −0.28, antagonistic d = −0.41, neurotic d = −0.55. Those are small to medium effects. The rank order over an average of eleven years, by contrast, was 0.73 (agentic), 0.68 (antagonistic) and 0.60 (neurotic), lower over very long intervals.

Read together: on average the level comes down while the position in the ranking is largely preserved. These are averages across many people; they do not show whether or when a particular person changes. Clinical samples (9 of 51) declined more steeply. The authors name, among other things, elevated starting levels (regression to the mean) and some degree of recovery; whether treatment contributed was not examined. The samples came mostly from Western countries and were on average about 23 years old at the first measurement.

A pattern is not a diagnosis, and nobody makes a diagnosis from a distance or about a person who is not there to be asked.

The model explains a dynamic. It does not excuse behaviour. Control, threats, humiliation and violence are not an attachment style, and they are not answered by understanding them better.

The useful part is not sorting the other person. It is knowing your own threshold: what a short reply does to you, and what an insistent question does to you.

A label for a former partner ends the thinking instead of starting it. The question worth keeping is not what they were, but what you did with what they did.

Sources. As of 7 October 2026. Title, journal, volume and pages are given as far as they were seen on a publisher, database or author page. For a few sources, volume and pages come from the reference lists of other papers or from publication lists (Hazan and Shaver: last page; Mickelson et al.; Candel and Turliuc; Li and Chan; Schrodt et al.; Roisman et al.; Chopik et al.; Dutton and Aron 1974); these have not yet been checked against the publisher page. Where only authors, journal and year are given, title or pages have not yet been seen. Books and advice sources are listed only to show where an idea comes from, never as evidence.

Attachment. Bowlby, Attachment and Loss (1969 to 1980) · Ainsworth et al., Patterns of Attachment (1978) · Hazan & Shaver, Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52(3), 511 to 524 (1987) · Bartholomew & Horowitz, Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61(2), 226 to 244 (1991) · Mickelson, Kessler & Shaver, Adult attachment in a nationally representative sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73(5), 1092 to 1106 (1997) · Roisman et al., The Adult Attachment Interview and self-reports of attachment style: An empirical rapprochement, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92(4), 678 to 697 (2007) · Granqvist et al., Attachment & Human Development 19(6), 534 to 558 (2017), doi 10.1080/14616734.2017.1354040 (consensus review of disorganised attachment in infancy) · Candel & Turliuc, Insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analysis of actor and partner associations, Personality and Individual Differences 147, 190 to 199 (2019) · Li & Chan, How anxious and avoidant attachment affect romantic relationship quality differently: A meta-analytic review, European Journal of Social Psychology 42(4), 406 to 419 (2012) · Schrodt, Witt & Shimkowski, A meta-analytical review of the demand/withdraw pattern of interaction and its associations with individual, relational, and communicative outcomes, Communication Monographs 81(1), 28 to 58 (2014) · Chopik, Weidmann & Oh, Attachment security and how to get it, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 18(1), article e12808 (2024)

Empathy and sensitivity. Aron & Aron, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1997) (sensory processing sensitivity) · Davis, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1983) (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) · Lionetti et al., Translational Psychiatry (2018), doi 10.1038/s41398-017-0090-6 (dandelions, tulips and orchids) · Hepper, Hart & Sedikides, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40(9), 1079 to 1091 (2014), doi 10.1177/0146167214535812 (can narcissists be moved to empathise) · Shahri et al., Frontiers in Psychology 15, article 1350133 (2024), doi 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1350133 (lower affective empathy in narcissism) · Ritter et al., Psychiatry Research 187(1 to 2), 241 to 247 (2011) (empathy in inpatients with narcissistic personality disorder)

Narcissism: prevalence and course. Stinson et al., Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM-IV narcissistic personality disorder: Results from the Wave 2 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 69(7), 1033 to 1045 (2008) · Trull et al., Journal of Personality Disorders 24(4), 412 to 426 (2010), doi 10.1521/pedi.2010.24.4.412 (re-analysis of the NESARC data with a stricter impairment criterion) · Dhawan, Kunik, Oldham & Coverdale, Comprehensive Psychiatry 51(4), 333 to 339 (2010) (review of seven studies on prevalence in the general population) · Orth, Krauss & Back, Psychological Bulletin 150(6), 643 to 665 (2024), doi 10.1037/bul0000436 (meta-analysis of the development of narcissism across the life span, 51 longitudinal samples, N = 37,247) · Carter & Douglass, Frontiers in Psychology 9, article 1254 (2018), doi 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01254 (the aging Narcissus, narcissism as a moderator between age and loneliness, N = 200) · Finch et al., Personality and Mental Health (2024) (loneliness in narcissistic vulnerability)

Narcissism in relationships. Paulhus, Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A mixed blessing?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(5), 1197 to 1208 (1998) · Leckelt et al., behavioural processes underlying the decline of narcissists’ popularity, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2015) and a longitudinal field investigation, N = 126, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2020) · Campbell & Foster, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(4), 484 to 495 (2002), doi 10.1177/0146167202287006 (narcissism and commitment, an investment model analysis, three samples, N = 531 in total) · Back, Küfner, Dufner, Gerlach, Rauthmann & Denissen, Narcissistic admiration and rivalry: Disentangling the bright and dark sides of narcissism, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 105(6), 1013 to 1037 (2013) · Park & Colvin, Journal of Personality 83(3) (2015) · Kraft et al., European Journal of Personality 38(3) (2024), doi 10.1177/08902070231199366 · Ameen et al., Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (2025), doi 10.1177/02537176251406477 (the narcissistic abuse cycle deserves clinical and research attention)

Narcissism: self-view, shame, anger and aggression. Grijalva & Zhang, Narcissism and self-insight: A review and meta-analysis of narcissists’ self-enhancement tendencies, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 42(1), 3 to 24 (2016) · Carlson, Vazire & Oltmanns, You probably think this paper’s about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality and reputation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(1), 185 to 201 (2011) · Bushman & Baumeister, Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1), 219 to 229 (1998) · Kjærvik & Bushman, The link between narcissism and aggression: A meta-analytic review, Psychological Bulletin (2021) · Krizan & Johar, Narcissistic rage revisited, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108(5), 784 to 801 (2015) · Freis, Brown, Carroll & Arkin, Shame, rage, and unsuccessful motivated reasoning in vulnerable narcissism, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 34(10), 877 to 895 (2015) · Czarna, Zajenkowski, Maciantowicz & Szymaniak, The relationship of narcissism with tendency to react with anger and hostility: The roles of neuroticism and emotion regulation ability, Current Psychology 40(11), 5499 to 5514 (2021) · Green & Charles, Voicing the victims of narcissistic partners: A qualitative analysis of responses to narcissistic injury and self-esteem regulation, SAGE Open 9(2), article 2158244019846693 (2019)

Where terms come from (not evidence, not read in the original). Winnicott, Ego distortion in terms of true and false self (1960) · Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (1971)

Learning, memory and growth. Dutton & Painter, Emotional attachments in abusive relationships: A test of traumatic bonding theory, Violence and Victims 8(2), 105 to 120 (1993) · Dutton & Painter, Traumatic bonding: The development of emotional attachments in battered women and other relationships of intermittent abuse, Victimology 6(1 to 4), 139 to 155 (1981) (a theory, as described in the 1993 text, not read in the original) · Dutton & Aron, Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30(4), 510 to 517 (1974) (with the methodological criticism and the mixed replications noted in the text) · Haselgrove, Aydin & Pearce, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 30(3), 240 to 250 (2004) (rats, partial versus continuous reinforcement) · Nevin, Behavioural Processes 90(1), 89 to 97 (2012) (review, pigeons and rats) · Hochman & Erev, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 20(6), 1336 to 1342 (2013) · Segers et al., Frontiers in Psychology 9, article 394 (2018) (97 children aged 6 to 10) · Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber & Redelmeier, Psychological Science 4(6), 401 to 405 (1993) (when more pain is preferred to less; on the peak and the end of an episode) · Fredrickson & Kahneman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(1), 45 to 55 (1993) (film clips, duration hardly mattered) · Alaybek et al., Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 170, article 104149 (2022) (meta-analysis with 174 effect sizes) · Sels, Ceulemans & Kuppens, European Journal of Social Psychology 49, 794 to 806 (2019) (101 couples in a conflict conversation) · Zygar-Hoffmann & Schönbrodt, Collabra: Psychology 6(1), article 7 (2020) (two samples, N = 130 and 510) · Owenz & Fowers, Perceived post-traumatic growth may not reflect actual positive change: A short-term prospective study of relationship dissolution, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(10), 3098 to 3116 (2019)

Statistics. Funder & Ozer, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 2(2), 156 to 168 (2019), doi 10.1177/2515245919847202 (evaluating effect size in psychological research; source of the everyday correlations)

Vocabulary. The super empath, the golden period, the fuel and the supernova come from the self-published writing of an anonymous author and from the online community around it; they are named here because they are in wide use, and they are deliberately not cited as a source.

A correlation is a bet, not a rule

Take one of the stronger numbers in this chapter. Avoidance and relationship satisfaction go together at r = −0.44. That does not mean: whoever is avoidant is dissatisfied.

It means: if two people stand in front of you and all you know is which of them is the more avoidant, and you had to guess which is less satisfied in their relationship, you would with such an association be right more often than wrong on average. Under the simplifying assumption that both quantities are roughly normally distributed, that would be just under two cases in three (a worked example, not a measurement). Not always. More often.

With no information at all you would be at fifty-fifty. With this one piece of information you are better off, and you are still wrong in a substantial share of cases. That is the difference between a bet and a rule, and it is how the correlations in this chapter are to be read: as an association on average, not as a rule for the individual case.

The share explained, with an example

Picture a hundred couples who differ in how satisfied they are: some very, some not at all, most somewhere in between. The question is how much of those differences can be described statistically by another quantity.

At r = −0.44 about nineteen parts in a hundred of those differences go together with avoidance in the simple linear model. The remaining eighty-one stay unexplained in that model. That does not mean they trace back to particular other causes such as money, health or children: they can come from much that was not measured here, from measurement error and from chance.

That is not a criticism of the number. It states how much of the differences this simple model describes once you know this one quantity: about a fifth. The value says nothing about causes, and Funder and Ozer (2019) consider squaring misleading for judging the practical importance of an association.

Why a tiny number can still matter

Two figures from outside this chapter, for calibration (after Funder and Ozer 2019). The effect of aspirin on the risk of a heart attack corresponds to a correlation of about 0.03. That is very little, and it can still matter, because the event is severe and very many people are concerned.

The other way round, height and weight in adults go together at about 0.44, as strongly in magnitude as avoidance and satisfaction in the meta-analysis. And yet everyone knows tall thin people and short heavy ones, and nobody would think of reading weight off height.

Together those are the actual lesson. A small number can matter a great deal when many people or severe consequences are involved. Even a large number allows no safe statement about the one person in front of you.

How strict the yardsticks are

The old rule of thumb comes from Cohen: 0.10 small, 0.30 medium, 0.50 large. Funder and Ozer (2019) propose lower thresholds, because large, reliably estimated studies have shown how rare high values are: 0.05 very small (for single events, but consequential in the long run), 0.10 small, 0.20 medium (useful even in the short term), 0.30 large; a value from 0.40 upward is, with reliable estimation, likely to be a gross overestimate.

Depending on the yardstick, the same number falls into a different category: an r of 0.32 counts as medium by Cohen and as large by Funder and Ozer. What a number means in practice also depends on the consequences and on how many people are concerned. So the scale below carries the old yardstick, and next to it figures from everyday life that are easier to picture than any word.