Explaining the longitudinal interplay of personality and social relationships in the laboratory and in the field: The PILS and the CONNECT study

PLoS One. 2019 Jan 30;14(1):e0210424. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210424. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Our personalities (who we are) influence our social relationships (how we relate to people around us), and our social relationships influence our personalities. However, little is known about the specific processes underlying the complex interplay of personality and social relationships. According to the PERSOC framework, the identification of underlying social interaction processes promotes the understanding of how personality and social relationships are expressed, develop, and influence each other over time. The aim of the present paper is twofold: First, we outline and discuss four methodological challenges that arise when trying to empirically realize a process approach to the personality-relationship interplay. Second, we describe two data sets that are designed to meet these challenges and that are open for collaborative investigations: a laboratory-based process approach (Personality Interaction Laboratory Study; PILS) and a field-based process approach (CONNECT). We provide detailed information on the samples (two student samples; PILS: N = 311; CONNECT: N = 131), procedures (longitudinal and multimethodological), and measures (personality and social relationships, appearance and behavior, interpersonal perceptions), for which we present descriptive information, reliabilities, and intercorrelations. We summarize how these studies' designs targeted the introduced methodological challenges, discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory- and field-based process approaches, and call for their combination. We close by outlining an open research policy, aimed at accelerated collaborative efforts to further open the process black box, ultimately leading to a better understanding of the expression, development, and complex interplay of personality and social relationships.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Laboratories
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Peer Group
  • Personality*
  • Social Behavior
  • Students / psychology
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This research was supported by Grant BA 3731/6-1 from the German Research Foundation (DFG; www.dfg.de) to Mitja D. Back, Steffen Nestler, and Boris Egloff, and the Open Access Publication Fund of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (DE). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.