Social Relations Model: An Introduction

ABSTRACT People behave differently in the company of specific others in a way that can be predicted neither from their own nor others’ personalities. Such unique dyadic combinations can account for sizeable variances in the behavior of employees. Therefore, I will introduce a conceptual and methodological tool to study dyadic behavior—the social relations model (SRM; Kenny et al., 2006; Malloy, 2018; Warner et al., 1979)—and demonstrate its use in management and other domains. First, I will review the various designs in which it can be used, including round-robin design (e.g., when everyone rates every other person in one’s group), asymmetric-block design (e.g., speed-dating), a one-with-many-reciprocal design (e.g., when manager and subordinates rate each other on relationship quality), and half-block design (e.g., when committee members rate multiple candidates). I will next review the relevance of SRM to behavior in general (e.g., granting audience among world leaders). Next, I will show that (a) the dyad explained over 40% of the variance in listening in work teams and is accompanied by dyadic reciprocity (Kluger et al., 2021), (b) even constructs considered a trait such as humility at work are modulated dyadically (Lehmann et al., 2023), and (c) that dyadic variance can be estimated for binary outcomes such as in interest in having a second date after a speed-dating event (Kluger et al., 2025). I will conclude that if research on relational phenomena considers the dyad rather than merely the individual, it will yield new insights for organizational behavior research.