Franz J Neyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 107549 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Franz J Neyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Franz J |
| FAMILY NAME | Neyer |
| SIGNATURE | NEYER F J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Friedrich Schiller University Jena |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8123-2011 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 364 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Evolving together: Dynamic transactions of antagonistic and self-centered traits with couple relationships.
The reciprocal influence between personality and relationship experiences has been of considerable interest, but there is little research on the extent to which changes in relationship quality are shaped by changes in antagonistic or self-centered personality traits or, conversely, how changes in relationship quality impact these traits. In the present study, we examined how Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism are linked to key aspects …
Today’s Adolescents Are More Satisfied With Being Single: Findings From a German Cohort-Sequential Study Among 14- to 40-Year-Olds
In Western societies, singlehood has become increasingly normative over historical time. But whether singles are more satisfied nowadays remains unclear. In this preregistered cohort-sequential study, we analyzed data from 2,936 German participants ( M = 21.01 years, SD = 7.60 years) from different birth cohorts. Singlehood satisfaction and life satisfaction were reported annually at two different time periods (2008-2011 and 2018-2021). This desi…
Transgenerational Transmission: An Investigation of Parents’ Achievement Motives, Achievement Imagery in Children’s Books and Children’s Academic Performance
The study highlights transgenerational transmission of parental achievement motives on their children. • Parents’ implicit and explicit achievement motives are linked to children’s academic performance. • Parental educational expectations correlate with parents’ implicit achievement motives. • Achievement imagery in children’s books did not mediate parent–child achievement links. • Number of books at home partially mediates the effect of explicit…
Livin’ La Vida Sola: Network Diversity and Well‐Being in Middle‐Aged Adults Living Alone
BACKGROUND: For individuals living alone, having a diverse personal network is considered crucial for mitigating the risk of social isolation and enhancing well-being. Although a reciprocal dynamic between network diversity and well-being is likely, longitudinal evidence supporting reciprocal effects is limited. This study investigates dynamic transactions between network diversity and well-being (life satisfaction, loneliness, and depressiveness…
A new data infrastructure for family research and demographic analysis: The German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA)
This data brief introduces the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA; https://www.freda-panel.de/), a longitudinal, multi-actor database for family research. Major substantive fields addressed in the questionnaire include fertility-related attitudes and behaviours, reproductive health, work-family conflict, couples' division of labour, gender roles, intimate relationships, separation and divorce, parenting and intergenerational relations, a…
Does living alone mean being alone? Personal networks of solo-living adults in midlife
People living alone are often depicted as prone to social isolation and poor well-being. Since previous research largely focused on comparisons between the living arrangements of older adults, evidence on differences within middle-aged adults living alone remains sparse. The present study used a person-centered approach to allow for a comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneity of living alone in midlife. Middle-aged adults ( N = 389; aged 3…
A developmental perspective on personality–relationship transactions: Evidence from three nationally representative samples
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 tra…
Closeness Discrepancies in Couple Relationships: A Dyadic Response Surface Analysis
Individuals can differ in the degree of closeness they desire in their romantic relationships: Some people may perceive their current level of closeness as just right, whereas others may feel not close enough or too close to their partners (referred to as negative and positive closeness discrepancy, respectively). This study ( N = 1,177 individuals from 748 couples) examined the implications of closeness discrepancies for subjective relationship …
The social side of personality: Do affiliation and intimacy motives moderate associations of personal relationships with well‐being
BACKGROUND: The quantity of social relationships and social interactions is positively related to well-being, but the underlying role of personality dispositions in these associations is unclear. The present study investigated whether social motives for affiliation and intimacy moderate associations of personal networks with well-being. METHOD: We analyzed data from N = 389 individuals living alone (aged 35-60 years) who provided self-reports of …
Disparities in Subjective Well-being by Sexual Orientation: Comparing Cohorts from pairfam's (2008-09) and FReDA's (2021) Baseline Waves
Significant expansion of legal rights and recognition of sexual minority populations triggered expectations that structural stigma, sexual minority stress and, consequently, previously well-documented disadvantages in health and well-being may decline over time. The empirical evidence on this issue is, however, still sparse and inconclusive. We contribute to this research by comparing baseline data from the German Family Panel (pairfam; 2008-09) …
Within-Couple Associations Between Communication and Relationship Satisfaction Over Time
Relationship science contends that the quality of couples’ communication predicts relationship satisfaction over time. Most studies testing these links have examined between-person associations, yet couple dynamics are also theorized at the within-person level: For a given couple, worsened communication is presumed to predict deteriorations in future relationship satisfaction. We examined within-couple associations between satisfaction and commun…
Patterns of Romantic Relationship Experiences and Psychosocial Adjustment From Adolescence to Young Adulthood
Engaging in a romantic relationship is a key developmental task of adolescence and adolescents differ greatly in both the age at which they start dating and in how romantically active they are. These differences in romantic relationship experiences could be relevant for adolescents’ short- and long-term psychosocial adjustment. The present study describes the diversity of relationship experiences during adolescence and examines their connection t…
Family Research and Demographic Analysis (FReDA): Evolution, Framework, Objectives, and Design of 'The German Family-Demographic Panel Study
This article introduces the evolution, framework, objectives, and design of the new data infrastructure 'FReDA - The German Family-Demographic Panel Study', which has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2020. FReDA is rooted in the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS) and the German Family Panel (pairfam). FReDA was initiated to facilitate research on family and demography by providing a comprehensive p…
The Stability and Change of Loneliness Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies
Individuals experience loneliness when they perceive a deficiency in the quality or quantity of their social relationships. In the present meta-analysis, we compiled data from 75 longitudinal studies conducted in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America ( N = 83, 679) to examine the rank-order and mean-level development of loneliness across the life span. Data were analyzed using two- and three-level meta-analyses and generalized additive mixed…
Happily (n)ever after? Codevelopment of romantic partners in continuing and dissolving unions
Do patterns of intimate relationship development foreshadow whether couples' unions stay together or end in separation? Integrating tenets from the enduring dynamics and emergent distress models of relationship development, we propose an accumulating distress model suggesting that the trajectories of those in dissolving partnerships (i.e., unions that ultimately end) are characterized by higher base levels of distress that increase more rapidly o…
Owner of a lonely heart: The stability of loneliness across the life span
Individuals feel lonely when they perceive a discrepancy between their aspired and their actually experienced amount of closeness and intimacy in social relationships. In the present study, we disentangled developmental constancy factors, time-varying factors such as person-environment transactions, and stochastic mechanisms as sources of interindividual differences in loneliness by applying STARTS models in nationally representative samples from…
Me and you in a mobile world: The development of regional identity and personal relationships in young adulthood
Residential mobility-the change of residence within a country-is a pervasive phenomenon in 21st century societies, with the peak clearly being in young adulthood. Placing the self in geographical space has now become a major challenge for young adults, making region a key identity domain. Little is known, however, about the correlates of regional identity development. In line with the dynamic-transactional paradigm, we expected longitudinal assoc…
Finding Myself Abroad: Adolescent Identity Processes and Sociocultural Adaptation During Intercultural Transitions
The present study examined identity development and sociocultural adaptation (SCA) in the context of international mobility experiences. Specifically, we investigated changes and dynamic interactions of SCA and the Host and Home identity dimensions of commitment and reconsideration for adolescent sojourners. Therefore, we used data from 457 German high school exchange students (72.00% female; M age = 15.49 years, SD = 0.70 years) to study the lon…
Development of Immigrant Couple Relations in Germany
Objective: This study investigates whether relationship satisfaction, conflict frequency, and self-disclosure follow distinct developmental trajectories for immigrant couples when compared with native-born couples and explores the factors that explain developmental diversity for immigrant couples.Background: Despite nearly a quarter of a billion people worldwide living in a country other than their birth country, no longitudinal research has exam…
The Development of Willingness to Sacrifice and Unmitigated Communion in Intimate Partnerships
Objective: This study examined developmental trajectories of willingness to sacrifice and unmitigated communion, or putting a partner's needs above one's own to the exclusion of the self.Background: Willingness to sacrifice and unmitigated communion have proven important for personal and relationship well-being, but no prior research has sought to understand their developmental trajectories or the factors that motivate growth in each. We draw fro…
Oh, the places you’ll go! How international mobility challenges identity development in adolescence
This study investigated the effects of international mobility on adolescent identity development and explored the mediating role of changes in social relationships. We implemented a prospective comparative study design including 457 sojourners (German high school exchange students) and 284 non-sojourners (German adolescents who remained in Germany; 73.3% female; M age = 15.63, SD = 0.78), and measured students' identity commitment and reconsidera…
Retracted: The Development of Willingness to Sacrifice and Unmitigated Communion in Intimate Partnerships
The above article, published online on December 27, 2017 in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ) has been retracted by agreement between the author, journal Editor in Chief Kristi Williams and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed due to discovery of a coding error by the author. The labeling for the willingness to sacrifice and unmitigated communion items was mistakenly reversed during the construction of the longitud…
Pathways between self-esteem and depression in couples
Guided by concepts from a relational developmental perspective, this study examined intra- and interpersonal associations between self-esteem and depressive symptoms in a sample of 1,407 couples surveyed annually across 6 years in the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relations and Family Dynamics (pairfam) study. Autoregressive cross-lagged model results demonstrated that self-esteem predicted future depressive symptoms for male partners at all times, …
The Winding Paths of the Lonesome Cowboy: Evidence for Mutual Influences Between Personality, Subjective Health, and Loneliness
Prior research demonstrated influences of personality traits and their development on later status of subjective health and loneliness. In the present study, we intended to extend these findings by examining mutual influences between health‐related characteristics and personality traits and their development over time. German adults were assessed at two time points across 15 years (N T1 = 654, N T2 = 271; M age at Time 1 = 24.39, SD = 3.69). Data…
Sailing Uncharted Waters: Adolescent Personality Development and Social Relationship Experiences During a Year Abroad
Social network changes and life events across the life span: A meta-analysis
For researchers and practitioners interested in social relationships, the question remains as to how large social networks typically are, and how their size and composition change across adulthood. On the basis of predictions of socioemotional selectivity theory and social convoy theory, we conducted a meta-analysis on age-related social network changes and the effects of life events on social networks using 277 studies with 177,635 participants …
Personality–relationship transaction in young adulthood
Personality and social relationships were assessed twice across a 4-year period in a general population sample of 489 German young adults. Two kinds of personality-relationship transaction were observed. First, mean-level change in personality toward maturity (e.g., increase in Conscientiousness and decrease in Neuroticism) was moderated by the transition to partnership but was independent of other developmental transitions. Second, individual di…
Do we become a different person when hitting the road? Personality development of sojourners
International mobility is a prevalent life event that particularly affects university students. The aim of this longitudinal study was twofold: First, we examined the impact of international mobility on personality (Big Five) change, separating self-selection effects from socialization processes. Second, we extended prior analyses on the association between life events and personality development by investigating the mechanisms that account for s…
Family Research and Demographic Analysis (FReDA): Evolution, Framework, Objectives, and Design of 'The German Family-Demographic Panel Study
This article introduces the evolution, framework, objectives, and design of the new data infrastructure 'FReDA - The German Family-Demographic Panel Study', which has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2020. FReDA is rooted in the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS) and the German Family Panel (pairfam). FReDA was initiated to facilitate research on family and demography by providing a comprehensive p…
Twin Relationships in Old Age: A Developmental Perspective
The relationship development of 133 monozygotic (MZ) and 60 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) older twin pairs was studied retrospectively and contrasted with their other sibling relation-ships. Results indicate: (i) Since adolescence, MZ twins lived closer to one another and had more frequent contact, social support, and emotional closeness. For both MZ and DZ pairs, contact and emotional closeness decreased since early adulthood, but increased again in o…
Treating personality-relationship transactions with respect: Narrow facets, advanced models, and extended time frames
Contrary to premises of dynamic transactionism, most studies investigating personality-relationship transaction only found personality effects on relationships but failed to find effects of relationship experiences on personality development. The current study reconsiders this issue in 3 ways. First, alongside the broad Big Five characteristics (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness), specific personality facet…
The Dyadic Interdependence of Attachment Security and Dependency: A Conceptual Replication Across Older Twin Pairs and Younger Couples
The dyadic interdependence of attachment security and dependency was conceptually replicated across 80 monozygotic and 47 dizygotic older twin pairs, and 214 younger heterosexual couples. Dyad members of each relationship type were similar in security and dependency. A substantial genetic contribution to dyadic attachment was indicated by higher similarity in MZ compared with DZ twins. Security and dependency were moderately correlated within ind…
Using egocentered networks in survey research. A methodological preview on an application of social network analysis in the area of family research
Oh, the places you’ll go! How international mobility challenges identity development in adolescence
This study investigated the effects of international mobility on adolescent identity development and explored the mediating role of changes in social relationships. We implemented a prospective comparative study design including 457 sojourners (German high school exchange students) and 284 non-sojourners (German adolescents who remained in Germany; 73.3% female; M age = 15.63, SD = 0.78), and measured students' identity commitment and reconsidera…
The Role of Projection and Empathic Accuracy in Dyadic Perception between Older Twins
Dyadic perception between 108 older identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs was examined using three different tasks: (i) an emotional sensitivity task, (ii) a Q-Sort rating of emotion-eliciting situations, and (iii) an assessment of each other's personality traits. Idiographic analyses related judgements of self and co-twin within and between twins. Projection approached the reliability of the judgements and was significantly higher than bot…
Blood is thicker than water: Kinship orientation across adulthood
The importance of kin relationships was investigated across adulthood with 5 samples (total N = 1,365). Within the personal networks, the genetic relatedness with relationship partners predicted subjective closeness (mean r = .50) and social support (mean r = .13). Effects were robust in 2 samples when controlling for residential proximity and contact frequency. These intraindividual correlations showed considerable variability and were interpret…
Pathways between self-esteem and depression in couples
Guided by concepts from a relational developmental perspective, this study examined intra- and interpersonal associations between self-esteem and depressive symptoms in a sample of 1,407 couples surveyed annually across 6 years in the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relations and Family Dynamics (pairfam) study. Autoregressive cross-lagged model results demonstrated that self-esteem predicted future depressive symptoms for male partners at all times, …
Patterns and sources of personality development in old age
Despite abundant evidence that personality development continues in adulthood, little is known about the patterns and sources of personality development in old age. We thus investigated mean-level trends and individual differences in change as well as the genetic and environmental sources of rank-order continuity and change in several personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, perceived control, and…
A new data infrastructure for family research and demographic analysis: The German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA)
This data brief introduces the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA; https://www.freda-panel.de/), a longitudinal, multi-actor database for family research. Major substantive fields addressed in the questionnaire include fertility-related attitudes and behaviours, reproductive health, work-family conflict, couples' division of labour, gender roles, intimate relationships, separation and divorce, parenting and intergenerational relations, a…
When “together” means “too close: Agency motives and relationship functioning in coresident and living-apart-together couples
The present research addresses the interplay between agency motives and objective dyadic closeness with regard to the functioning of intimate couple relationships. Applying a Person × Situation approach, we hypothesized (a) that partners' implicit and explicit agency motives predict their selection of dyadic living arrangements characterized by high or low objective closeness (coresidence or living-apart-together), (b) that agency motives have mo…
Sailing Uncharted Waters: Adolescent Personality Development and Social Relationship Experiences During a Year Abroad
Kooperationsnetzwerke und Karrieren an deutschen Hochschulen: Der Weg zur Professur am Beispiel des Faches Psychologie
Free Recall or Recognition in Collecting Egocentered Networks: The Role of Survey Techniques
The egocentered networks of 479 young adults were studied twice over a 1.5-year period using two different techniques of collecting egocentered network data. In the first study conducted in 1988 - a free recall technique was employed, whereas the second study, starting from 1990, used a recognition technique in generating egocentered networks. It was shown that both techniques lead to different networks not only with respect to morphological feat…
Owner of a lonely heart: The stability of loneliness across the life span
Individuals feel lonely when they perceive a discrepancy between their aspired and their actually experienced amount of closeness and intimacy in social relationships. In the present study, we disentangled developmental constancy factors, time-varying factors such as person-environment transactions, and stochastic mechanisms as sources of interindividual differences in loneliness by applying STARTS models in nationally representative samples from…
Patterns of Romantic Relationship Experiences and Psychosocial Adjustment From Adolescence to Young Adulthood
Engaging in a romantic relationship is a key developmental task of adolescence and adolescents differ greatly in both the age at which they start dating and in how romantically active they are. These differences in romantic relationship experiences could be relevant for adolescents’ short- and long-term psychosocial adjustment. The present study describes the diversity of relationship experiences during adolescence and examines their connection t…
Happily (n)ever after? Codevelopment of romantic partners in continuing and dissolving unions
Do patterns of intimate relationship development foreshadow whether couples' unions stay together or end in separation? Integrating tenets from the enduring dynamics and emergent distress models of relationship development, we propose an accumulating distress model suggesting that the trajectories of those in dissolving partnerships (i.e., unions that ultimately end) are characterized by higher base levels of distress that increase more rapidly o…
Finding Myself Abroad: Adolescent Identity Processes and Sociocultural Adaptation During Intercultural Transitions
The present study examined identity development and sociocultural adaptation (SCA) in the context of international mobility experiences. Specifically, we investigated changes and dynamic interactions of SCA and the Host and Home identity dimensions of commitment and reconsideration for adolescent sojourners. Therefore, we used data from 457 German high school exchange students (72.00% female; M age = 15.49 years, SD = 0.70 years) to study the lon…
Disparities in Subjective Well-being by Sexual Orientation: Comparing Cohorts from pairfam's (2008-09) and FReDA's (2021) Baseline Waves
Significant expansion of legal rights and recognition of sexual minority populations triggered expectations that structural stigma, sexual minority stress and, consequently, previously well-documented disadvantages in health and well-being may decline over time. The empirical evidence on this issue is, however, still sparse and inconclusive. We contribute to this research by comparing baseline data from the German Family Panel (pairfam; 2008-09) …
Social Network Characteristics of Early Midlife Voluntarily and Involuntarily Childless Couples
Whether couples have children or remain childless has largely been associated with individual and couple characteristics. We propose that the broader social network additionally differentiates between parents and childless couples, particularly between involuntarily and voluntarily childless couples. In light of this, we studied social network differences and their interplay with dyadic and individual characteristics in three types of couples wit…
Me and you in a mobile world: The development of regional identity and personal relationships in young adulthood
Residential mobility-the change of residence within a country-is a pervasive phenomenon in 21st century societies, with the peak clearly being in young adulthood. Placing the self in geographical space has now become a major challenge for young adults, making region a key identity domain. Little is known, however, about the correlates of regional identity development. In line with the dynamic-transactional paradigm, we expected longitudinal assoc…
Zur Psychoanalyse des Mannes
Using egocentered networks in survey research. A methodological preview on an application of social network analysis in the area of family research
Free Recall or Recognition in Collecting Egocentered Networks: The Role of Survey Techniques
The egocentered networks of 479 young adults were studied twice over a 1.5-year period using two different techniques of collecting egocentered network data. In the first study conducted in 1988 - a free recall technique was employed, whereas the second study, starting from 1990, used a recognition technique in generating egocentered networks. It was shown that both techniques lead to different networks not only with respect to morphological feat…
The Role of Projection and Empathic Accuracy in Dyadic Perception between Older Twins
Dyadic perception between 108 older identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs was examined using three different tasks: (i) an emotional sensitivity task, (ii) a Q-Sort rating of emotion-eliciting situations, and (iii) an assessment of each other's personality traits. Idiographic analyses related judgements of self and co-twin within and between twins. Projection approached the reliability of the judgements and was significantly higher than bot…
Personality-relationship transaction in young adulthood
Personality–relationship transaction in young adulthood
Personality and social relationships were assessed twice across a 4-year period in a general population sample of 489 German young adults. Two kinds of personality-relationship transaction were observed. First, mean-level change in personality toward maturity (e.g., increase in Conscientiousness and decrease in Neuroticism) was moderated by the transition to partnership but was independent of other developmental transitions. Second, individual di…
Exploring Twins: Towards a Social Analysis of Twinship
List of Tables Preface PART ONE Myths About Twins The Comparative Constitution of Twinship: Anthropological and Ethnographical Perspectives Twins in Literature, Films, Television and the Press Heredity and Environment: The Classic Twin Method Measuring Twinship: Psychologist on Twins The Divided Self: The Psychoanalytic Approach PART TWO The Social Construction of Twinship: Family, Parents and Siblings The Social Construction of Twinship: We Two …
Twin Relationships in Old Age: A Developmental Perspective
The relationship development of 133 monozygotic (MZ) and 60 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) older twin pairs was studied retrospectively and contrasted with their other sibling relation-ships. Results indicate: (i) Since adolescence, MZ twins lived closer to one another and had more frequent contact, social support, and emotional closeness. For both MZ and DZ pairs, contact and emotional closeness decreased since early adulthood, but increased again in o…
The Dyadic Interdependence of Attachment Security and Dependency: A Conceptual Replication Across Older Twin Pairs and Younger Couples
The dyadic interdependence of attachment security and dependency was conceptually replicated across 80 monozygotic and 47 dizygotic older twin pairs, and 214 younger heterosexual couples. Dyad members of each relationship type were similar in security and dependency. A substantial genetic contribution to dyadic attachment was indicated by higher similarity in MZ compared with DZ twins. Security and dependency were moderately correlated within ind…
Blood is thicker than water: Kinship orientation across adulthood
The importance of kin relationships was investigated across adulthood with 5 samples (total N = 1,365). Within the personal networks, the genetic relatedness with relationship partners predicted subjective closeness (mean r = .50) and social support (mean r = .13). Effects were robust in 2 samples when controlling for residential proximity and contact frequency. These intraindividual correlations showed considerable variability and were interpret…
Kooperationsnetzwerke und Karrieren an deutschen Hochschulen: Der Weg zur Professur am Beispiel des Faches Psychologie
Psychologie der Persönlichkeit
Relationships Matter in Personality Development: Evidence From an 8‐Year Longitudinal Study Across Young Adulthood
Personality‐relationship transactions were investigated in a general population sample of young German adults with three assessments over 8 years. Four general findings were obtained. First, personality development was characterized by substantive individual differences in change. Second, bivariate latent growth models indicated that individual differences in personality change were substantially associated with change in peer and family relation…
Long-Term Effects of Social Investment: The Case of Partnering in Young Adulthood
On the basis of the assumptions of the dynamic transactional paradigm, the current study investigates the effects of success and failure of social investment on personality development across young adulthood. Using longitudinal data from the Michigan Study of Adolescent and Adult Life Transitions (MSALT), the authors demonstrate that entering into the first long-term romantic relationship was accompanied by decreases in facets of neuroticism, the…
Dyadic personality effects on family functioning in parents of newly hospitalized children
This study prospectively examined dyadic influences of parental personality on levels and change of family functioning in parents of a newly hospitalized child. A total of 183 couples whose child sought treatment for Type 1 diabetes, cancer, or an unintentional injury were assessed at 1 and 6 months posthospitalization with tests measuring personality, and family functioning. Analyses used structural equation modeling based on the actor–partner i…
The interdependence of horizontal family relationships and friendships relates to higher well‐being
Assuming individual differences in the satisfaction of affiliative needs, the authors hypothesize that people maintain friendships differently depending on the number and the quality of their horizontal family relationships, and this relates to differences in subjective well‐being. These predictions were tested in 2 studies involving German adults aged 30 to 86 years. Contrary to previous studies, the authors studied the importance of friends in …
(In)Congruence of Implicit and Explicit Communal Motives Predicts the Quality and Stability of Couple Relationships
OBJECTIVE: Previous research has shown that motive congruence, as observed in convergingly high or low scores on implicit and explicit motive measures, promotes well-being and health. Extending this individual perspective to the realm of couple relationships, the present investigation examined intra- and interpersonal effects of communal motive (in)congruence on relationship satisfaction and stability. METHOD: The implicit partner-related need fo…
Do we become a different person when hitting the road? Personality development of sojourners
International mobility is a prevalent life event that particularly affects university students. The aim of this longitudinal study was twofold: First, we examined the impact of international mobility on personality (Big Five) change, separating self-selection effects from socialization processes. Second, we extended prior analyses on the association between life events and personality development by investigating the mechanisms that account for s…
Social network changes and life events across the life span: A meta-analysis
For researchers and practitioners interested in social relationships, the question remains as to how large social networks typically are, and how their size and composition change across adulthood. On the basis of predictions of socioemotional selectivity theory and social convoy theory, we conducted a meta-analysis on age-related social network changes and the effects of life events on social networks using 277 studies with 177,635 participants …
A Gentle Introduction to Bayesian Analysis: Applications to Developmental Research
Bayesian statistical methods are becoming ever more popular in applied and fundamental research. In this study a gentle introduction to Bayesian analysis is provided. It is shown under what circumstances it is attractive to use Bayesian estimation, and how to interpret properly the results. First, the ingredients underlying Bayesian methods are introduced using a simplified example. Thereafter, the advantages and pitfalls of the specification of …
Personality‐Relationship Transactions Revisited
The transactional paradigm states that people create, maintain, and change their environments according to their personalities. At the same time, the environment reacts back on personality. As social relationships are part of an individual's environment, this likewise implies that there are reciprocal transactions between personality and relationships. However, earlier studies have concluded that adult personality traits are so stable that they h…
Treating personality-relationship transactions with respect: Narrow facets, advanced models, and extended time frames
Contrary to premises of dynamic transactionism, most studies investigating personality-relationship transaction only found personality effects on relationships but failed to find effects of relationship experiences on personality development. The current study reconsiders this issue in 3 ways. First, alongside the broad Big Five characteristics (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness), specific personality facet…
Narcissistic Tendencies Among Actors: Craving for Admiration, But Not at the Cost of Others
Building on a two-dimensional reconceptualization of grandiose narcissism, we investigated how narcissistic admiration (the tendency toward agentic self-promotion) and rivalry (the tendency toward other derogation) are related to acting. Study 1 ( N = 583) showed that acting students scored higher on narcissistic admiration than students with other majors, but at the same time, the acting students scored lower on rivalry. In Study 2 ( N = 283), w…
Recent Decreases in Specific Interpretation Biases Predict Decreases in Neuroticism: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study With Young Adult Couples
Engaging in a romantic relationship represents one important life experience in young adulthood that has been shown to catalyze age‐related decrease in neuroticism ( N eyer & L ehnart, 2007). The current research builds directly on this finding by investigating one process that underlies the partnership effect. We focused on the relationship‐specific interpretation bias ( RIB ; F inn, M itte, & N eyer, 2013), which is the tendency to interpret am…
Patterns and sources of personality development in old age
Despite abundant evidence that personality development continues in adulthood, little is known about the patterns and sources of personality development in old age. We thus investigated mean-level trends and individual differences in change as well as the genetic and environmental sources of rank-order continuity and change in several personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, perceived control, and…
Psychology (48 works) · Social Psychology (39 works) · Developmental psychology (36 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (26 works) · Personality (22 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Big Five personality traits (14 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · German (13 works)