A developmental perspective on personality-relationship transactions: evidence from three nationally representative samples

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

February 15, 2024

Summary:

Objective:

Throughout their lives, people experience different relationship events, such as beginning or dissolving a romantic relationship. Personality traits predict the occurrence of such relationship events (i.e., selection effects), and relationship events predict changes in personality traits (i.e., socialization effects), summarized as personality–relationship transactions. So far, evidence was partly inconsistent as to how personality traits and relationship events are linked with each other. In this article, we argue that unnoticed age differences might have led to these inconsistencies. To systematically test for age differences in transactions, we conceptualize relationship events in terms of gains and losses and apply a developmental perspective on transactions.
Methods:

Using longitudinal data from three nationally representative samples (SOEP, HILDA, Understanding Society), we computed event-focused latent growth models and summarized the results meta-analytically.
Results:

The findings indicated some transactions. Of these, selection effects were stronger than socialization effects, and effects of gain-based events were stronger than effects of loss-based events. We observed few interactions with age.
Conclusion:

Selection effects and, particularly, socialization effects, tend to be rare and fairly independent of age. We discuss a series of broader and narrower factors that may have an impact on the strength of transactions across adulthood.

Published in

Journal of Personality

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 92 , p.202 -221

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12757

ISSN

223506

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Personality published by Wiley Periodicals LLC

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

#547361

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest