How to Read Your Relationships Assessment Results: What Your 8 Scores Actually Mean

Your CommStyle Relationships Assessment result gives you scores across eight dimensions of relationship-building ability, each capturing a distinct aspect of how you connect with others.

This guide explains what each dimension measures, what higher and lower scores look like in practice, and how to use your results to guide genuine development.

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Before You Read

These scores describe tendencies, not fixed traits. Relationship-building skills develop and change — your scores reflect where you are now, not something permanent.

No single dimension tells the full story: the most useful reading looks at the pattern across all eight dimensions, where your strengths cluster, where the gaps are, and how the dimensions relate to each other.

Higher scores aren't automatically better in all contexts. High consideration can shade into over-accommodation; high self-disclosure can move too fast. The goal is calibrated, situationally appropriate skill, not maximum scores across the board.

Consideration for Others and Assertiveness Skills

Consideration measures your capacity to perceive others' perspectives, needs, and emotional states and adjust your communication accordingly, involving both cognitive empathy (understanding what others think) and affective empathy (being genuinely moved by their experience).

A high score means you notice when someone seems upset or uncomfortable, often before they say so, and naturally adjust how you communicate based on the person and context.

A low score means conversations can feel one-directional, focused on what you want to say rather than what the other person needs to hear.

Empathic accuracy, how precisely you read others' emotional states, is one of the strongest predictors of relationship quality identified in social psychology — people rated highly by their networks on empathy and consideration consistently form more satisfying and more durable relationships.^[1] Building consideration involves deliberate practice at perspective-taking, active listening, and checking your assumptions about what others think and feel.

Assertiveness measures your capacity to express your own needs, preferences, and opinions clearly and respectfully, without suppressing or imposing them.

It sits between passivity and aggression, and is the communication style most consistently associated with relationship health and effective conflict resolution.

A high score means you can say no without excessive guilt and raise concerns directly; a low score means you often agree with others even when you disagree internally, to avoid conflict.

Alberti and Emmons established that assertive communication is a learnable skill, not an innate personality trait — training in assertiveness consistently improves relationship satisfaction and increases self-esteem, while non-assertive communication, though it may feel safer short-term, tends to produce resentment over time.^[2]

Self-Disclosure and Conflict Management

Self-disclosure measures your capacity to share genuine personal information, thoughts, feelings, and experiences, in ways that allow relationships to develop depth and trust.

Without it, relationships remain pleasant but shallow; done gradually and reciprocally, it builds the depth that makes relationships genuinely sustaining.

A high score means you share personal thoughts relatively naturally in conversations that invite it; a low score means conversations tend to stay focused on external topics, and close relationships may lack depth even after years.

Altman and Taylor's Social Penetration Theory documented how reciprocal self-disclosure drives relationship development across relationship types, and research has found that people who disclose more are better liked, with the experience of being disclosed to increasing liking for the discloser as well.^[3][4] Building this capacity typically involves starting small, sharing slightly more than feels entirely comfortable, and noticing that most people respond positively.

Conflict management measures your capacity to engage relationship conflict in ways that address the issue, preserve the relationship, and respect both parties.

A high score means you can raise concerns directly without attacking the person and stay relatively regulated emotionally in conflict; a low score means you tend to avoid conflict entirely, or engage it in ways that escalate through criticism or contempt.

Gottman's research on couples identified contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling as the communication patterns most predictive of relationship failure, finding it's not the presence of conflict but its manner that determines outcomes.^[5] Development typically focuses on raising concerns with "I" statements rather than criticism, and practicing listening to the other person's perspective even when you disagree.

Reliability and Genuine Interest in Others

Reliability measures the degree to which your behavior in relationships is consistent and predictable, how reliably you do what you say and show up when expected.

Trust, the foundation of meaningful relationships, is built primarily through accumulated evidence of consistent behavior — initial warmth opens doors, but reliability keeps them open.

A high score means people in your life can count on you to follow through; a low score means you sometimes commit to things you don't follow through on, and others may have learned not to rely on you.

Research on trust formation consistently identifies reliability as its primary building block, and broken commitments, even small ones, have disproportionate negative effects on trust compared to the positive effects of keeping them.^[6] Building reliability often involves making fewer commitments rather than over-committing, and communicating proactively when circumstances change.

Genuine interest measures the degree to which you bring authentic curiosity to your interactions, noticing what matters to people, remembering it, and asking real questions.

A high score means you find people genuinely interesting and ask questions that invite real answers; a low score means conversations tend to drift toward your own interests and experiences, and people may feel slightly invisible around you.

Research on conversation quality consistently finds that the experience of being genuinely listened to and found interesting is one of the strongest predictors of liking — the "fast friends" procedure in social psychology found that questions inviting genuine personal disclosure produced strong feelings of closeness within 45 minutes.^[7]

Positive Communication and Digital Communication

Positive communication measures the frequency and quality of positive interactions in your relationships: appreciation, warmth, humor, and encouragement.

Relationships aren't sustained by the absence of conflict alone, but by regular positive interaction — Gottman's research found that relationships with a ratio of at least five positive interactions to each negative one tend to be stable, while those below this ratio tend toward decline.

A high score means you express appreciation readily and bring humor and warmth to ordinary interactions; a low score means positive expressions don't come naturally, and you may notice what's wrong more readily than what's right.

Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions has documented that positive interactions expand people's social and cognitive resources over time, creating an upward spiral that strengthens both individuals and relationships.^[8]

Digital communication measures whether your use of digital channels supports rather than undermines genuine connection, including your ability to read tone accurately in text and use social media in ways that maintain relationships.

A high score means digital communication supplements your in-person relationships and you shift to voice or in-person contact when needed; a low score means digital communication sometimes creates misunderstandings, or substitutes for in-person contact in ways that leave you feeling more isolated.

Research finds that digital contact maintains relationships across distance and supplements in-person connection effectively, but replacing in-person contact entirely with digital interaction tends to reduce relationship satisfaction and felt closeness.^[9]

Using Your Profile

Look first at your two or three highest scores — these are your relationship-building strengths. Then look at your two or three lowest — these are the areas where targeted development will have the most impact.

Notice whether your pattern suggests a theme: are you strong on perception of others but weaker on expressing yourself? Strong on warmth but weaker on conflict? These patterns often point to coherent developmental directions.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does a high score mean on the Relationship Building assessment?

A higher score indicates that the capacities measured in that dimension are more developed or more prominently expressed in your current functioning. The specific meaning varies by dimension — read the dimension-specific explanations above for what higher scores suggest in practical terms.

What does a low score mean on the Relationship Building assessment?

A lower score indicates a development area rather than a fixed deficit. All eight dimensions are developable — lower scores identify where deliberate practice would be most impactful.

The dimension-specific explanations above describe what lower scores suggest behaviorally and what development approaches tend to be effective.

How accurate is the Relationship Building assessment?

The assessment is a self-report tool — it captures how you perceive your own functioning across the measured dimensions. Research on self-report psychological assessments consistently finds they're meaningful predictors of relevant outcomes, while also being subject to self-perception biases.

The most accurate use of results combines self-report scores with honest feedback from people who know your behavior well.

This article was developed with oversight from a Certified Public Psychologist (Japan). It's intended for informational purposes and doesn't constitute clinical advice.