Treating personality-relationship transactions with respect: narrow facets, advanced models, and extended time frames

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Previous research on personality-relationship transactions primarily identified personality influences on relationships, neglecting relationship impacts on personality.
• Dynamic transactionism posits bidirectional influences, yet empirical evidence for relationship effects on personality development remains limited.
• Traditional models like cross-lagged panels and growth curve models have limitations in capturing complex transactional processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the bidirectional effects between personality and relationships across adulthood.
• To examine personality-relationship transactions using a more sensitive modeling approach and considering both broad personality traits and specific facets.
• To explore these transactions from young adulthood to midlife.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a 15-year longitudinal study with 654 German adults.
• Employed an extended latent change modeling approach, offering a theoretically more appropriate analysis.
• Analyzed the Big Five personality characteristics (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) and their specific facets.

Main Results:

• Confirmed significant patterns of personality-relationship transaction across various relationship types (partner, friends, kin, others).
• Demonstrated that the development of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, including their facets, is closely intertwined with partner and friend relationships.
• Indicated that relationship experiences play a vital role in personality maturation during adult years.

Conclusions:

• Relationship effects on personality development have been historically underestimated.
• These effects are not confined to specific periods like emerging adulthood but are detectable with appropriate modeling and analysis levels (facets vs. broad dimensions).
• Transactions are most pronounced in self-selected relationships reflecting individual lifestyles and circumstances.