Consider a clinician hearing that someone is considerate towards colleagues but repeatedly humiliates family members. Or a manager hearing that a respected director frightens their partner at home. The partner, meanwhile, keeps being told how lucky they are to live with someone so thoughtful.
The question underneath these accounts is often the same: which version is real?
It is an understandable question. If someone listens, remains patient and considers another person’s needs at work, why do they behave differently at home? And when colleagues see only the considerate behaviour, will they believe the partner who describes being frightened?
I want to understand how both accounts could be accurate. Who is present at work and at home? What does each person expect? What happens if someone objects to being mistreated?
How can the same person behave so differently?
Personality research gives us a useful starting point: someone can have a characteristic way of behaving without behaving that way on every occasion. William Fleeson and Mary Kate Law studied participants across situations arranged by the researchers. Participants described their own behaviour, and outside observers rated it too. The researchers found consistent differences between people’s average behaviour, alongside substantial variation in how each person behaved across occasions.1
That finding does not explain private cruelty. It establishes something more basic: variation does not, by itself, mean that one version is a disguise.
Think about what changes between a meeting, a dinner with friends and a difficult conversation with a partner. Different people are present. A disagreement may affect a job, a friendship or a shared home. Earlier arguments may still be unresolved. A person may be practised at listening to objections in a meeting and dismiss the same objection from their partner.
There could be more than one explanation for the difference. Someone may respond out of habit, deliberately try to appear considerate, or restrain themselves because they expect a complaint to have consequences. The contrast alone cannot tell us which explanation applies.
The more precise question is: how does this person respond to disagreement at work, and how do they respond when their partner disagrees?
What changes when someone is watching?
At work, colleagues, managers or clients may witness an interaction. Messages may be recorded, and someone who is mistreated may be able to make a formal complaint. The prospect of losing trust, responsibility or employment can give a person reasons to pause before responding.
One experiment offers a limited example. Players chose how much to contribute to a shared fund that benefited the group at a cost to the contributor. Telling players that others would learn about their choices increased contributions in one subgroup: those whose earlier choices suggested they understood how to maximise their own earnings. The increase did not appear in the other subgroup.2
In that game, expecting others to learn about a decision changed what some players did. The finding cannot tell us whether a particular person’s kindness at work is calculated or sincere.
The kindness at work still happened. The person who received it is describing a real experience. But the conditions under which it happened belong in the account too.
At home, a partner may report being insulted or threatened without anyone else having witnessed it. A child may have little ability to leave or obtain help. Someone may stay despite repeated harm because leaving would mean losing housing, income or daily contact with their children.
A home also has rules and pressures. One person’s preference may determine how money is spent or how an argument ends. It matters whether the other person can disagree without being threatened or punished.
Why might someone treat a partner worse than a colleague?
There is no single answer that can be read from the behaviour alone.
Daily stress is one possible contributor. In a five-day diary study of 43 couples, husbands and wives reported being angrier with their spouse, or withdrawing more from them, on days when they had unpleasant interactions at work. Wives also reported these changes on days with heavier workloads.3 These associations do not establish that a person has used up their self-control, or that work stress explains repeated intimidation at home.
A relationship’s history may also matter. An argument about who cooks dinner may repeat an earlier disagreement about how paid work, housework and care are shared. To understand that history, we would need to ask the people involved. We cannot infer it from one argument.
Dependence also changes what a person can do after being hurt. Someone who relies on a partner for money, housing or care may fear losing that support if they object. If they do not challenge the behaviour, we cannot assume that the harm was minor or acceptable to them.
These possibilities can overlap. A stressed person may also deliberately threaten a partner. A familiar relationship may be unsafe. A proposed explanation of the behaviour cannot establish what the person understood or intended in a particular incident.
We can still describe what happened: what was said, how the person responded to disagreement, whether anyone was prevented from leaving or making a decision, and whether this happened repeatedly.
What if someone says they did not realise they were causing harm?
We would need more evidence to know whether that account is accurate.
A person may fail to notice part of their impact. They may remember an incident differently. They may minimise what happened, avoid looking at it, or deny it deliberately. A calm public manner cannot establish which explanation is true. Neither can the person’s own certainty about their intentions.
This is where the public reputation can become particularly confusing. Respect from colleagues provides evidence about how someone behaves with those colleagues. It cannot disprove what happens in a different relationship.
“Everyone else thinks I am kind” does not answer “You frightened me last night.” The two statements concern different encounters. Treating one as a rebuttal to the other leaves the private experience unexamined.
The person describing harm does not have to prove why the other person acted that way before their account deserves attention. We can examine what happened and its effects without first settling the question of intent.
How would we know whether the behaviour at home had changed?
We would need to look at how the person treats the partner or family members they have hurt.
Can they listen to an account of an incident without threatening or insulting the person describing it? Can they acknowledge having frightened someone, even if they say that was not their intention? If they agree to stop shouting or to let the other person leave an argument, do they keep that agreement during later disagreements?
An apology at work or a thoughtful conversation with someone else may be sincere. To know whether the behaviour at home has changed, we need to know what happens at home over time.
In my work on TEG-Blue, I want to keep asking who is present, what each person can do, and what follows when they disagree. Those questions help describe a pattern. They cannot tell us whether someone was unable to act differently, or identify the biological processes involved in a particular incident.
The consideration shown to colleagues and the harm experienced by a partner can both be real. Explaining why someone behaves differently in those relationships does not remove their responsibility for the harm. What matters next is whether they acknowledge it and change how they treat the person they hurt.
Sources
Footnotes
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Fleeson, W., & Law, M. K. (2015). Trait enactments as density distributions: The role of actors, situations, and observers in explaining stability and variability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1090–1104. DOI. ↩
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Burton-Chellew, M. N., El Mouden, C., & West, S. A. (2017). Evidence for strategic cooperation in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 284, 20170689. DOI. ↩
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Story, L. B., & Repetti, R. (2006). Daily occupational stressors and marital behavior. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(4), 690–700. DOI. ↩