Adolescent Personality in Social Contexts: Pals, Partners, and Problems

Abstract

The aim of the current dissertation was to show how adolescent personality was linked to youths’ developmental outcomes. Our findings suggest that adolescent personality has concurrent and predictive relations to a variety of important developmental outcomes. Specifically, adolescent personality was associated with internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors at an individual level. Also, adolescent personality was related to conflict frequency and conflict resolution strategies as well as the quality of relationship with best friends and romantic partners at an interpersonal level. In addition, our findings indicated that the magnitude of associations between personality and youths’ adaptation were stable across developmental stages. These findings extend the existing literature by illustrating the enduring associations between adolescent personality and youths’ diverse and important aspects of development. Both the person and the situation are necessary for explaining individuals’ development. Results from the examinations of the interaction between youths’ personality and their relational environments suggest that personality plays an important role in youths’ differential susceptibility to interpersonal environments. Individuals with less-resilient personality characteristics are particularly more vulnerable to relational features than resilient youths. These findings provide further support for an interactionist perspective, which proposes that individuals’ developmental outcomes depend on the dynamic interplay between innate characteristics and environmental influences.