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 socialization processes. In particular, we assessed whether individual differences in the fluctuation of support relationships serve as an explanatory link. We used a prospective control group design with 3 measurement occasions. A sample of university students, containing both short-term (i.e., 1 semester) and long-term (i.e., 1 academic year) sojourners (N = 527) along with control students (N = 607), was tracked over the course of an academic year. Multivariate latent models revealed 3 main findings: First, initial (pre-departure) levels of Extraversion and Conscientiousness predicted short-term sojourning, and Extraversion and Openness predicted long-term sojourning. Second, both forms of sojourning were associated with increases in Openness and Agreeableness and a decrease in Neuroticism above and beyond the observed self-selection. Third, the acquisition of new international support relationships largely accounted for the sojourn effects on personality change. These findings help to fill the missing link between life events and personality development by establishing social relationship fluctuation as an important mediating mechanism.

Increasing numbers of empirical studies provide compelling evidence that personality traits change across the entire lifespan. What initiates this continuing personality development and how does this development proceed? In this paper, we compare six theoretical perspectives that offer testable predictions about why personality develops the way it does and identify limitations and potentials of these perspectives by reviewing how they hold up against the empirical evidence. While all of these perspectives have received some empirical support, there is only little direct evidence for propositions put forward by the five‐factor theory of personality and the theory of genotype → environment effects. In contrast, the neo‐socioanalytic theory appears to offer a comprehensive framework that fits the empirical findings and allows the integration of other, more specialized, perspectives that focus on specific aspects of personality development like the role of time, systematic differences between categories of social roles or the active partake of the person himself or herself. We draw conclusions on the likely driving factors for adult personality development and identify avenues for future research. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology

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 have a stronger effect on later relationships, but that relationship effects on personality are negligible. In this article, we contend that personality-relationship transactions should be revisited. We submit that the relative powers of personality versus relationship effects depend on the type of life transition during which the effects take place: Relationship effects on personality development are more likely to emerge in the context of rather normative and highly scripted life transitions, whereas personality effects on relationship development are more likely to occur in the context of rather non-normative life transitions that are less regulated by social expectations. We illustrate these assumptions with examples from our own work and other findings reported in the literature. Furthermore, we theorize that effects of personality-relationship transactions on health also vary with the normativeness of the eliciting life transition.

Individual differences in personality are often described on the basis of a small set of dimensional core characteristics that are commonly defined as largely consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions across time and situations. Some theoretical approaches even consider them to provide the biologically founded basis for individual differences in so‐called surface characteristics such as self‐related evaluations, social attitudes, values, goals or interests, which are commonly hypothesized to be less stable or more environmentally malleable than core characteristics. We examine these hypotheses by reviewing findings about potential core and surface characteristics on the basis of four criteria: (i) level of stability in individual differences; (ii) level of heritability; (iii) direction of causation; and (iv) shared genetic variance. The results from our review call into serious question the labelling of some sets of constructs as either core or surface characteristics of personality. Although certain dimensions—often labelled as basic traits (e.g. extraversion)—are systematically linked to more specific characteristics (e.g. social attitudes and interests), the so‐called basic traits do not appear to provide an essential basis (i.e. the more stable and genetically anchored source) for these characteristics. We argue for more integrative models of personality in adulthood. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology