Romantic partners tend to be more similar in self-reported personality traits than would be expected by chance. This similarity can be due to the choice of a similar partner, partners becoming more similar to each other over time, or dissimilar couples breaking up. To examine whether these processes (choice, convergence, or breakup) explain personality trait similarities in couples, we followed a sample of 1,180 German couples ( = 2,360 individuals; age range = 17-82 years old) from right after moving in together (ranging from 0 to 4 years after) up to 16 years thereafter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Developing realistic expectations of future old age constitutes an adaptational process which facilitates the anticipation of and adjustment to challenges, such as relocation to a nursing home. Developing such expectations might minimize the negative impacts of relocation. This pre-registered study examined (1) to which extent lower levels and declines in health (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe desire to change one's personality traits has been shown to be stronger if people are dissatisfied with associated aspects of their life. While evidence for the effects of interventions on personality trait change is increasing, it is unclear whether these lead to subsequent improvements in the satisfaction with various domains of life. In this study, we examined the effects of a 3-month digital-coaching personality change intervention study on 10 domains of satisfaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeta-analytic evidence has shown that personality is one of the strongest correlates of global and domain-specific satisfaction. The main goal of the present study was to examine whether the associations between personality traits and satisfaction differ across the adult lifespan. We used bivariate latent growth curve models and local structural equation modeling to study correlations between levels and change of Big Five personality traits and satisfaction with life, satisfaction with work, and satisfaction with social contacts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Why personality changes in young adulthood remains a critical theoretical and empirical question. We studied personality change during the education-to-work transition, including mean-level personality change and its specific timing, the degree of individual variability in change, and the link between sense of mastery and personality change.
Methods: We used two intensive longitudinal studies.
The aim of the current study was to compare changes in divorcees' life satisfaction to changes in a control sample of nondivorcees. Prospective longitudinal data came from 33 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study. Divorcees (n = 787) were propensity-score matched to nondivorcees (n = 1,629) in the year of marriage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study aimed to conceptually replicate previous studies on the effects of actor personality, partner personality, and personality similarity on general and relational well-being by using response surface analyses and a longitudinal sample of 4,464 romantic couples. Similar to previous studies using difference scores and profile correlations, results from response surface analyses indicated that personality similarity explained a small amount of variance in well-being as compared with the amount of variance explained by linear actor and partner effects. However, response surface analyses also revealed that second-order terms (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the current study, we used 5 waves of longitudinal data from a large representative sample of Norwegian mothers (N = 84,711) to examine the association between romantic relationship satisfaction and self-esteem before and after childbirth in subgroups of first-, second-, third-, and fourth-time mothers. Maternal self-esteem showed a highly similar change pattern across subgroups. Specifically, self-esteem decreased during pregnancy, increased until the child was 6 months old, and then gradually decreased over the following years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn adolescence, aspects of cognition that are required to deal with complex cooperation situations, such as mentalising and social value orientation, are still in development. In the Trust Game, cooperation may lead to better outcomes for both players, but can also lead to exploitation by the trustee. In the present study, we explore how mindreading, a crucial aspect of mentalising, and social value orientation (whether someone is prosocial or proself) are related to trust.
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