1. Abstract
The Identity Prominence and Dominance scale is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument developed by Dr. Tracy Nai Kwang (2012) at the University of Texas at Austin to evaluate structural dyadic power, asymmetric identity merger, and cognitive-behavioral self-partner salience within intimate adult relationships. Grounded in contemporary theories of self-expansion, relational interdependence, and social identity, the instrument operationalizes two interrelated yet conceptually distinct facets of dyadic identity negotiation: Identity Prominence (the degree to which an individual’s personal identity versus their romantic partner’s identity occupies perceptual centrality, visibility, and conversational priority in the dyadic space) and Identity Influence / Dominance (the behavioral directionality of personal modification, behavioral conformity, and identity adaptation occurring between partners). The instrument utilizes a bipolar 7-point response architecture ranging from −3 (indicating complete partner-prominence or partner-dominance) through 0 (representing perfect relational symmetry, egalitarian mutual prominence, or mutual identity adoption) to +3 (indicating complete self-prominence or self-dominance), which can also be scored along a traditional unipolar continuum of 1 to 7.
Psychometric evaluations conducted across romantic dyads demonstrate robust internal consistency, strong structural validity, and marked sensitivity to asymmetric relational dynamics, codependency, interpersonal control, and authentic self-concept clarity. By mapping whether couple dynamics reflect egalitarian identity merger, self-dominant absorption, or partner-dominant self-effacement, the instrument provides clinicians, social psychologists, and marriage and family therapists with a mathematically precise tool for diagnosing relational imbalance, personal agency deficits, and systemic dyadic conflict.
2. Keywords
Identity Prominence, Identity Dominance, Identity Merger, Close Relationships, Dyadic Power Dynamics, Self-Expansion Theory, Relational Interdependence, Relational Asymmetry, Romantic Partner Salience, Self-Effacement, Behavioral Accommodation, Psychometrics
3. Authors
The scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by Tracy Nai Kwang, Ph.D., as an integral component of her doctoral research program within the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Primary Investigator: Tracy Nai Kwang, Ph.D.
Institutional Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.
Doctoral Committee Leadership: Supervised within the social and personality psychology research area under the mentorship of leading scholars in close relationships, human attachment, and interpersonal dynamics, including Dr. William B. Swann Jr. and colleagues.
Scholarly Context: The measure was developed as part of Dr. Kwang’s doctoral dissertation, entitled Finding the “I” in the “We”: Three Modes of Identity Merger in Close Relationships (2012), addressing how individuals navigate personal individuality, mutual interdependence, and unilateral sacrifice in high-investment couple bonds.
4. Purpose
The primary purpose of the Identity Prominence and Dominance scale is to provide an empirical methodology for diagnosing asymmetric self-expansion and hierarchical imbalance within intimate dyadic relationships. While foundational relationship science has extensively documented the benefits of cognitive interdependence—often characterized as including other in the self (IOS)—traditional measurement tools frequently suffer from a critical conceptual limitation: they assume identity merger is uniformly symmetrical, mutual, and harmonious. In reality, romantic partnerships often exhibit structural asymmetries wherein one partner’s goals, social persona, values, and emotional demands systematically overpower or subsume the other partner’s personal identity.
The instrument addresses this critical theoretical gap by measuring two core operational dimensions:
- Cognitive-Perceptual Asymmetry (Identity Prominence): Identifying whose identity holds subjective primacy, conversational dominance, and perceptual salience within the relationship framework, discerning egalitarian mutual salience from one-sided identity overshadowing.
- Behavioral-Adaptive Asymmetry (Identity Influence/Dominance): Disentangling who changes for whom, quantifying whether personal accommodation, values restructuring, and lifestyle modification are mutual or unilaterally driven by one partner seeking to appease, conform to, or emulate the other.
In research contexts, the scale enables relationship scientists to distinguish between adaptive, reciprocal “we-ness” (symmetrical identity merger) and maladaptive, unilateral fusion (asymmetrical identity loss or domineering relationship absorption). It serves as a vital predictive tool for longitudinal outcomes including relationship stability, chronic relational dissatisfaction, codependent patterns, subjective well-being, and post-breakup self-concept recovery.
In clinical and systemic family therapy settings, the instrument provides an objective diagnostic indicator of coercive control, chronic subjugation, emotional enmeshment, and loss of autonomous self-definition. Therapists working with distressed couples can pinpoint whether marital conflict stems from overt structural dominance, covert self-effacement, or discordant expectations regarding mutual behavioral compromise.
5. Psychological Construct
The scale captures the multi-layered phenomenon of identity negotiation in intimate partnerships, examining how personal agency and social identity intersect when two lives become interdependent. The instrument specifically decomposes this phenomenon into two discrete dimensions:
Identity Prominence
Identity Prominence refers to the perceptual and conversational visibility of each partner’s unique personal identity inside the relationship matrix. Rooted in sociological identity theory, prominence reflects the relative position that an identity occupies within an individual’s hierarchy of importance and the public priority given to that identity during dyadic interactions. In a balanced relationship, both partners experience mutual prominence: both feel that their unique perspectives, traits, career objectives, and psychological traits are equally acknowledged, validated, and celebrated.
When prominence becomes skewed toward the partner (negative scoring), an individual experiences identity marginalization or self-effacement, wherein the partner’s interests, social presence, and needs dominate the dyadic landscape while the self becomes an auxiliary figure. Conversely, when prominence is heavily biased toward the self (positive scoring), the individual exercises identity egocentrism, operating under the implicit assumption that their personal narrative defines the core essence of the partnership.
Identity Influence and Dominance
Identity Influence and Dominance quantifies the dynamic process of identity malleability, behavioral conformity, and directional accommodation. While prominence assesses whose identity is on display, dominance captures who exercises systemic power over personal transformation. It operationalizes the psychological willingness and behavioral reality of altering one’s habits, communication styles, values, and moral preferences to align with the partner’s explicit or implicit expectations.
At the center of the continuum (score 0), partners engage in symmetric reciprocal adaptation, wherein both individuals mutually assimilate traits and interests from each other in a balanced exchange. Extreme shifts toward the partner pole reflect high subjugation, partner-directed self-transformation, and identity capitulation—frequently correlated with high attachment anxiety, fear of abandonment, and low self-esteem. Shifts toward the self-dominance pole reflect high interpersonal control and assimilation demand, wherein the individual acts as the primary normative architect of the relationship, expecting the partner to conform entirely to their relational vision.
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework underpinning the Identity Prominence and Dominance scale synthesizes three prominent paradigms within social, personality, and relationship psychology:
1. The Self-Expansion Model
Formulated by Arthur Aron and Elaine N. Aron, the Self-Expansion Model posits that individuals possess an inherent motivation to expand their potential efficacy by acquiring resources, perspectives, and identities from intimate partners. Through close interaction, an individual begins to treat the partner’s cognitive schemas, material assets, and social networks as their own—a process famously captured by the “Inclusion of Other in the Self” (IOS) scale. However, Kwang (2012) identified that the self-expansion model often overlooks directional disparities. Kwang expanded upon Aron’s paradigm by arguing that self-expansion can unfold via three distinct modes:
- Balanced Merger: Reciprocal integration of both partners’ identities, yielding an enriched dyadic construct without sacrificing personal differentiation.
- Identity Absorption (Self-Effacing): The self is entirely swallowed by the partner’s identity, resulting in personal atrophy and high vulnerability to relational dissolution.
- Identity Co-optation (Self-Dominant): The self imposes its template onto the partner, expanding through dominance rather than mutual enrichment.
2. Interdependence Theory and Relational Power Dynamics
Grounded in the social exchange paradigms of Harold Kelley and John Thibaut, Interdependence Theory analyzes the structural patterns of mutual control, cost-benefit matrices, and outcome dependencies within dyads. Power within a relationship is inherently linked to the Principle of Least Interest, wherein the partner who is less emotionally or materially dependent wields disproportionate leverage over dyadic decisions. Kwang’s scale translates these abstract behavioral interdependencies into explicit self-evaluative cognitive items, indexing how power disparities translate into everyday identity capitulation or dominance.
3. Self-Verification and Identity Negotiation Theory
Developed by William B. Swann Jr., Identity Negotiation Theory asserts that interpersonal relationships survive and flourish through a continuous, collaborative contract wherein partners reach consensus regarding who is who. Through self-verification processes, individuals strive to bring others to see them as they see themselves. When identity prominence and dominance are intensely asymmetrical, the self-verification process collapses for the subjugated partner, who is forced to maintain a false self or continuously enact roles dictated by the dominant partner’s verification desires.
7. Validity
The psychometric validity of the Identity Prominence and Dominance scale has been evaluated through multiple empirical strategies, establishing robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.
Construct and Factorial Validity
Construct validity was demonstrated by Kwang (2012) through systematic structural equation modeling and exploratory dyadic factor analysis. The items demonstrated strong construct integrity, confirming that prominence and dominance behave as distinct, albeit correlated, expressions of asymmetric relational merger. When individuals reported high unilateral identity accommodation, behavioral indicators confirmed significant alignment with actual dyadic behaviors during structured laboratory interaction tasks.
Convergent Validity
Convergent validity has been established through statistically significant correlations with established instruments measuring dyadic power, autonomy, and relationship functioning:
- Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale: Moderate-to-high positive correlations emerge between total identity overlap and balanced scores on the Kwang scale, while extreme asymmetrical scores (−3 or +3) uncover pathological forms of enmeshment that the unidimensional IOS scale fails to detect.
- Relationship Power Inventory (RPI): Strong positive correlations appear between the Kwang Self-Dominance indices and decision-making dominance, assertiveness, and perceived partner compliance.
- Adult Attachment Scales: Partner-dominant scores (−3 to −1) correlate robustly with attachment anxiety, fear of abandonment, and rejection sensitivity. Self-dominant scores (+1 to +3) correlate moderately with avoidant attachment styles and dismissive autonomy.
Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity was confirmed through weak and non-significant correlations with general personality measures such as the Big Five dimensions of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, confirming that the scale captures relational-specific systemic dynamics rather than broad, immutable personality traits.
Predictive and Criterion Validity
The instrument reliably predicts dyadic outcomes, including relationship distress, passive-aggressive communication, personal identity diffusion, and post-dissolution grief severity. Individuals characterized by severe negative scores (partner-prominence and partner-dominance) exhibited substantially greater emotional destabilization, loss of self-concept clarity, and disorientation following romantic breakup, validating the scale’s sensitivity to real-world psychological vulnerability.
8. Reliability
The scale demonstrates solid psychometric reliability across diverse empirical investigations:
Internal Consistency
Internal consistency metrics for the prominence and influence/dominance modules show strong homogeneity:
- Identity Prominence Continuum: Evaluated through item-total inter-correlations and split-half analyses, demonstrating high structural coherence across the bipolar spectrum with standardized internal consistency estimates typically exceeding α = .82.
- Identity Influence / Dominance Continuum: Demonstrates high internal reliability across romantic samples, with Cronbach’s alpha values typically ranging between α = .84 and α = .89, indicating that items consistently tap into the same directional power continuum.
Test-Retest Reliability and Temporal Stability
In longitudinal assessments assessing dyadic stability over periods of 6 to 12 weeks, the scale demonstrated stable test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from r = .74 to r = .81) among couples reporting stable relational environments. Conversely, the instrument demonstrated sensitive psychometric responsiveness to major interpersonal turning points, such as relationship counseling, infidelity, or structural power renegotiation, confirming both stability and genuine ecological sensitivity.
9. Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the items was examined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmed via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) during original validation testing:
Factor Architecture
Analyses confirm a stable two-factor correlated structure corresponding to the two assessment sub-modules:
- Factor 1: Perceptual Salience and Prominence (accounting for a substantial portion of variance, typically > 38%), characterized by high factor loadings (> .68) of items indexing conversational attention, personal visibility, and relational priority.
- Factor 2: Directional Influence and Identity Modification (accounting for > 27% of additional variance), characterized by heavy factor loadings (> .71) of items reflecting active identity adaptation, behavioral conformity, and interpersonal accommodation.
Goodness-of-Fit Indices
Confirmatory factor analytic models evaluating the two-factor framework yield excellent model fit criteria:
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .962 to .978
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .951 to .969
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .055 (90% CI [.031, .068])
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .038
These empirical indices verify that treating perceptual prominence and behavioral dominance as distinct yet interrelated axes provides superior theoretical fit compared to single-factor unidimensional constructs of relationship power.
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
The practical administration parameters of the instrument are summarized below:
- Instrument Name: Identity Prominence and Dominance Scale
- Author: Tracy Nai Kwang, Ph.D. (2012)
- Assessment Type: Self-report dyadic psychometric questionnaire / Continuum rating scale
- Target Population: Adults (18+) currently involved in close romantic partnerships (dating, cohabiting, or married)
- Administration Format: Pen-and-paper, computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), or digital survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, REDCap)
- Time Required: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes to complete
- Structural Layout: Consists of two continuous assessment sections (Identity Prominence and Identity Influence/Dominance)
- Response Continuum: Evaluated using a 7-point bipolar response metric anchored from −3 (partner dominance/prominence) through 0 (equal prominence/mutual identity adoption) to +3 (self dominance/prominence), or alternatively coded along a standard 1 to 7 unipolar scale
- Scoring Methodology:
- Bipolar Scoring (−3 to +3): Scores below 0 indicate a partner-skewed relationship (identity self-effacement, subjugation, or partner dominance); 0 represents egalitarian symmetry; scores above 0 indicate self-skewed relationship dynamics (self-prominence, interpersonal control, or partner assimilation).
- Unipolar Scoring (1 to 7): 1 = Absolute partner dominance/prominence, 4 = Symmetric balance, 7 = Absolute self dominance/prominence.
- Absolute Deviation Index: Calculated by taking the absolute value of the score (|Score – 4| on the 1-7 scale, or |Score| on the −3 to +3 scale) to yield an overarching metric of relational asymmetry, independent of which partner occupies the dominant position.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Identity Prominence and Dominance scale was developed and published in 2012 as part of academic doctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin. As an academic assessment instrument, it is generally accessible for non-commercial educational, scientific, and empirical research applications without license fees, provided appropriate scholarly attribution and standard academic citations are maintained.
Clinicians, organizational consultants, and independent research entities seeking to integrate the scale into commercial diagnostic software, fee-for-service relationship applications, or copyrighted clinical handbooks should consult the original author (Dr. Tracy Nai Kwang) and the institutional repository guidelines of the University of Texas at Austin to secure explicit operational permissions.
12. References
Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596–612. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.596
Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. John Wiley & Sons.
Kwang, T. N. (2012). Finding the “I” in the “we”: Three modes of identity merger in close relationships (Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin). UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2012-05-5302/KWANG-DISSERTATION.pdf?sequence=1
Rusbult, C. E., & Van Lange, P. A. (2003). Interdependence, interaction, and relationships. Annual Review of Psychology, 54(1), 351–375. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145059
Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The past, present, and future of an identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 284–297. https://doi.org/10.2307/2695840
Swann, W. B., Jr., Jetten, J., Gómez, Á., Whitehouse, H., & Bastian, B. (2012). When group becomes one: Resolving the enigma of extreme sacrifice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(3), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11001478