Relations between Agreeableness and perceived support in family relationships: Why nice people are not always supportive

Abstract

Do more agreeable individuals perceive more support, and are they perceived as more supportive, across all family relationships or only within specific relationships? In a study of 256 Dutch twoparent families with two adolescents, we examine whether links between Agreeableness and support are generalised across relationships or occur within specific relationships. Social Relations Model analyses showed that individuals who perceive their family members as more agreeable perceive more support from family members across relationships. Also, individuals who are perceived as more agreeable are perceived as more supportive across relationships, except for mothers. In addition, individuals who perceive specific family members as more agreeable perceive these specific members as more supportive. However, individuals who are perceived as more agreeable perceive more support only within specific relationships. Thus, agreeable family members are supportive across relationships, but agreeable family members perceive support only within specific relationships.

A Social Relations Model of Everyday Talk and Relational Satisfaction in Stepfamilies

“…A single social relations model analysis was then conducted to partition the variance in everyday talk and satisfaction into actor, partner, and relationship effects for each latent construct, respectively (see Figure 1). Although previous researchers using SRM typically allow for correlations among measurement errors for each indicator per rating family member (i.e., Branje et al, 2005;Finkenauer et al, 2004), doing so in the present study would generate a greater number of parameter estimates than those afforded by the sample size, thus producing potentially unreliable parameter estimates. Therefore, the initial model was estimated without any correlations among measurement errors and then modification indices were examined to determine if correlation estimates among measurement errors were needed.…”

“…This decision produced 12 observed scores (or frequencies) of everyday talk and 12 of satisfaction (6 relationships × 2 scales; cf. Branje, van Lieshout, & van Aken, 2005;Finkenauer et al, 2004). A single social relations model analysis was then conducted to partition the variance in everyday talk and satisfaction into actor, partner, and relationship effects for each latent construct, respectively (see Figure 1).…”

It takes two to tango: How parents’ and adolescents’ personalities link to the quality of their mutual relationship.

“…Branje et al (2004Branje et al ( , 2005 studied bivariate associations between support and personality and did not assess the unique predictive power of individual FFM factors. Furthermore, these authors only focused on PCR ratings by single individuals, which did not allow for a straightforward comparison of parents' and children's ability to predict dyadic PCR quality.…”

Long-Term Correlated Change Between Personality Traits and Perceived Social Support in Middle Adulthood

“…Indeed, empirical research repeatedly found that agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism seem to be most strongly related to various forms of social support (e.g., Asendorpf & van Aken, 2003;Branje, van Lieshout, & van Aken, 2005;Swickert, Hittner, & Foster, 2010;von Dras & Siegler, 1997). Briefly, agreeableness refers to social traits that reflect individual differences in the propensity to be altruistic, trusting, modest, and warm (John & Srivastava, 1999).…”