Associations Among Psychopathy, Relationship Satisfaction, and Professional Success in Couples

Individuals' psychopathic personality traits can have negative effects on the people around them. This research investigated whether the negativity of someone's psychopathic personality crosses over to their partner and then spills over into their partner's workplace. Using a nationally diverse community sample of 490 employed romantic couples from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses examined the associations among psychopathy facets (fearless dominance, self-centered impulsivity, and coldheartedness), relationship satisfaction, and professional success. Cross-sectional dyadic modeling indicated that an individual's coldheartedness was negatively associated with their partner's occupational prestige, although there was no evidence that partner's relationship satisfaction mediated this link. Furthermore, the associations between psychopathy and professional success at the individual level were partially mediated by a person's own relationship satisfaction. Longitudinal dyadic modeling suggested that an individual's self-centered impulsivity negatively predicted their partner's relationship satisfaction and positively predicted their partner's occupational prestige over time. Collectively, this research suggests that an individual's psychopathic traits may foster negativity in relationships that spills over into their own workplaces but do not cross and spill over to their partner's workplace.