Running Head: MANIFESTATIONS of PERSONALITY in RELATIONSHIPS

Contextualized Personality and Relationships 1

Running head: CONTEXTUALIZED PERSONALITY AND RELATIONSHIPS

It's Not Just Who You Are, It's How You Act:

Influences of Global and Contextualized Personality Traits on Relationship Satisfaction

Richard B. Slatcher and Simine Vazire

The University of Texas at Austin

Address correspondence to:

Richard B. Slatcher

Department of Psychology #A8000

108 E. Dean Keaton Street

University of Texas

Austin, TX 78712

Telephone: (512) 471-6852; FAX (512) 471-5935

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Abstract

How does personality exert its influence on relationship satisfaction? Previous research has shown, for example, that Agreeableness is associated with greater relationship satisfaction, yet little is known about the mechanisms through which personality affects satisfaction. We propose that global personality traits (e.g., being agreeable) exert their influence on relationships through contextualized manifestations of personality (e.g., acting agreeable towards one's partner). In the Study 1 we collected global (being) and contextualized (acting) self reports of personality and relationship satisfaction from a large, diverse sample of adults in committed romantic relationships. In Study 2 we collected global self reports of personality (being) and relationship satisfaction from undergraduate dating couples. We also collected couples’ Instant Messages (IMs) to each other for seven days. Independent observers read the IMs and rated each couple member’s personality in the context of their relationship (acting). The results showed that contextualized personality (acting) predicted relationship satisfaction above and beyond global personality (being), and that acting mediated the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction. Our findings point to the importance of examining both global and contextualized personality traits, and demonstrate how personality influences major life outcomes.

It's Not Just Who You Are, It's How You Act:

Influences of Global and Contextualized Personality Traits on Relationship Satisfaction

Amy and Karen are discussing Amy’s relationship with her boyfriend, David. “I don’t understand why you’re with him,” Karen tells Amy, “he’s such a jerk.” “I know what you mean,” replies Amy, “but he’s so different when we’re alone.” Do people really behave differently in romantic relationships than they do in other contexts? If so, what predicts the quality of their relationship—how they are in general, or how they are with their partner?

Researchers have long been interested in the effects of personality on romantic relationships, with roughly 500 studies dating back to the 1930s published on this topic (Cooper & Sheldon, 2002). The findings from these studies have demonstrated that certain stable personality factors are associated with relationship quality (Eysenck & Wakefield, 1981; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Terman & Buttenwieser, 1935). However, the associations found between personality and relationship quality often have been modest and inconsistent. One potential explanation for the inconsistent findings in these studies is that the measures of personality employed have been too general. Researchers largely have ignored relationship-specific manifestations of personality (i.e., what a person’s personality is like within the context of a particular relationship), which may be important in predicting relationship functioning.

While there is no doubt that enduring, stable personality traits influence how people approach and view their relationships, examining the role of contextualized personality is vitally important as well. Indeed, a number of scholars in our field have called for a more contextualized approach to the study of personality and relationships (e.g., Reis, Capobianco & Tsai, 2002; McAdams, 1995). With this article, we extend previous research on the role of personality dispositions by examining the role of both global and contextualized personality traits in romantic relationships. Is David really a nice guy when he is with Amy, even though he is a jerk to everyone else? And if so, is the quality of their relationship better predicted by his positive behavior towards her or by his global, negative personality attributes?

The vast majority of relationship-personality studies have examined the association between global personality traits and relationship satisfaction, focusing particularly on the traits of the Five Factor Model (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1999)—Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. In the context of relationships, Neuroticism has been the most extensively researched of these traits (Bouchard, Lussier, & Sabourin, 1999; Caughlin, Huston, & Houts, 2000; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Terman & Buttenwieser, 1935). Those who are high in Neuroticism—anxious, irritable, and emotionally unstable—typically report being less satisfied in their romantic relationships than those who are low in Neuroticism. Much less is known about how the other four factors of the FFM relate to romantic relationship quality, but preliminary findings indicate that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience are all positively related to relationship satisfaction (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997; Donnellan, Conger, & Bryant, 2004; Watson, Hubbard, & Wiese, 2000).

Global measures of personality are predictive of satisfaction not only in romantic relationships but in other domains of life as well. For example, the more agreeable people are on average, the more satisfied they will be across relationships—with family, friends, and so on (Branje, van Lieshout, & van Aken, 2004; Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, & Hair, 1996; Jensen-Campbell, Gleason, Adams, & Malcolm, 2003). Conversely, the more neurotic people are, the less satisfied they likely will be with the various relationships in their lives (Berry, Willingham, & Thayer, 2000; Cheng & Furnham, 2002; Eaker & Walters, 2002). But while global measures of personality can tell us a little bit about how a person is in many types of relationships, they fail to tell us a great deal about how a person is any one particular relationship. For example, Asendorpf and Wilpers (1998) showed that general interpersonal traits—including Extraversion, sociability, and shyness—predict general patterns of social behavior but are only weakly associated with the qualities of specific relationships. Further, trust for a particular partner, but not generalized trust, predicts commitment and well-being in that relationship (Wieselquist, Rusbult, Foster, & Agnew, 1999). By supplementing global measures of personality with contextualized ones, we may be able to better disentangle the role of personality in relationships.

The distinction between global and contextualized measures has been widely used in life satisfaction research. For example, Heller, Watson, and Ilies (2004) have shown that global life satisfaction is distinct from (though related to) context-specific satisfaction, such as work or relationship satisfaction. It is widely accepted that satisfaction measures should be obtained at the level of analysis of interest to the researcher. For example, if researchers are interested in predicting relationship outcomes, they should measure relationship-specific satisfaction. The same logic applies to measures of personality. In this article, we examine whether contextualized measures of personality in the domain of romantic relationships can predict relationship functioning better than global measures of personality.

Many studies have demonstrated the benefit of contextualized measures of personality. For example, in one study (Hunthausen, Truxillo, Bauer, & Hammer, 2003), customer service supervisors at a large U.S. airline completed a modified version of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992) in which they were asked what their personalities were like “at work”; additionally they completed the standard global NEO-FFI. Participants’ self-ratings of Extraversion and Openness on the at-work measure predicted job performance, while the global FFM measure did not. In another study (Schmit, Ryan, Stierwalt, & Powell, 1995), college students’ self-ratings of Conscientiousness “at school” predicted students’ GPAs better than global measures of Conscientiousness. Similarly, knowing what people’s personalities are like in the context of their romantic relationship should predict relationship quality better than global measures of personality. For example, knowing how agreeable a person is with his or her romantic partner should provide unique predictive power about the quality of that person’s relationship above and beyond how agreeable that person is in general.

In describing how people are in general and how they are in the context of their romantic relationships, we borrow the terms being and acting from Fleeson’s density distribution model of personality (Fleeson, 2001; Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002). Individual differences in personality are typically thought of as global traits, such as Agreeableness. This generalized Agreeableness may be conceptualized as being agreeable. Fleeson’s model suggests that there are also variations within persons across situations in levels of individual traits. In this model, the extent to which a person’s personality trait is manifested in a particular relationship may be conceptualized as acting (e.g., acting agreeable). For example, Amy’s boyfriend David may be disagreeable at the global level—across time, situations and relationships. Although this is a good predictor of relationship satisfaction (Watson et al., 2000), we would predict that David’s level of Agreeableness in his romantic relationship (i.e., how agreeable he acts with Amy) is an even better predictor of relationship satisfaction.

Naturally, contextualized personality tendencies are not completely independent from global dispositions. Global dispositions are likely to exert an influence on how personality is expressed in any given context. As illustrated in Figure 1, we view personality as a hierarchically organized system with global dispositions at the top influencing contextualized personality tendencies below. In our example, David’s Agreeableness when he is with Amy (moderate) is probably influenced in part by his overall level of Agreeableness (low) as well as contextualized factors (e.g., Amy’s kindness toward him). If this hierarchical organization of personality is true, we would expect contextualized personality to mediate the relationship between global personality and contextualized outcomes (shown at the bottom of Figure 1). This article will examine the dynamic relationship between global and contextualized levels of personality and relationship satisfaction.

Aims of our Research

The primary aim of this article is to examine the role of global and contextualized personality in the association between the FFM personality traits and romantic relationship satisfaction. We explore the extent to which relationship satisfaction is associated with personality traits in the specific context of a romantic relationship (acting) in comparison with global, decontextualized traits (being). We also investigate whether acting may mediate the association between being and relationship satisfaction, as suggested by a hierarchical organization of personality traits from global to context-specific.

As we have described, previous research has focused almost exclusively on the role of global personality traits in romantic relationships. Thus, the major contribution of our work is to examine whether contextualized personality predicts relationship outcomes better than does global personality. However, our research also extends previous research in other important aspects. Research on the role of personality in romantic relationships has traditionally relied on self reports from small samples of dating college students. We improve on this design in numerous ways. First, we examine a large, diverse sample drawn from a non-college-student population (Study 1). Second, we include measures of personality and satisfaction from both partners in each couple (Study 2). Finally, we conduct a controlled study that allows us to obtain an objective, naturalistic measure of what people’s personalities are like in the specific context of their romantic relationships (Study 2).

Question 1: How strongly is acting in relationships associated with relationship satisfaction? A long-standing belief in psychology is that a person’s attitudes and behaviors are a function of both pre-existing attributes and situational context. This process, first described by Lewin (1936) in his characterization of behavior as being a function of the person and the environment, and later articulated by contemporary theorists such as Mischel and Shoda (1995), indicates that personality measures that take into account the context of a person’s behavior (acting) will yield stronger associations with outcome measures than will global measures of personality (being). We thus expected that the established association of personality with self and partner relationship satisfaction (Donnellan et al. 2004; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Watson et al., 2000) would be strengthened by taking into account relationship-specific personality traits (acting).

It is possible that contextualized measures will have greater predictive validity than global measures simply because they are narrower measures of personality, and not because they provide any unique insight into the domain of the relationship. To rule out this possibility, we will examine whether romantic relationship-context measures (acting in romantic relationships) predict romantic relationship satisfaction better than do other contextualized measures (e.g., acting at work, acting with friends, etc.). If acting in romantic relationships uniquely predicts romantic relationship satisfaction, this would suggest that this contextualized measure of personality is tapping into how people behave with their relationship partners, and that this behavior affects the quality of the relationship.

Previous research has found that, among the FFM personality traits (McCrae & Costa, 1999), Agreeableness and Neuroticism are particularly strong predictors of relationship satisfaction (Botwin et al., 1997; Donnellan et al., 2004; McCrae, Stone, Fagan, & Costa, 1998; Watson et al., 2000). Based on these findings, we predicted that acting agreeable would be positively associated with self and partner satisfaction and that acting neurotic would be negatively associated with self and partner satisfaction. We further predicted that acting would be more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction than being for these traits. Due to the lack of conclusive findings in previous research, no specific predictions were made for the other FFM traits.

Question 2: Does acting mediate the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction? One of the advantages of our approach is that it allows for the examination of potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between personality traits and relationship satisfaction. Specifically, we propose that global personality traits will affect relationship satisfaction to the extent that these global traits are manifested in relationship-specific traits. As with other contextual models (e.g., Bradbury and Fincham, 1988), ours incorporates both proximal and distal factors into a common framework. In our model, acting (proximal factor) is a mechanism through which being (distal factor) influences relationship satisfaction. We thus predicted that acting would mediate the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction, specifically for Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Design of the Studies

We examined these two research questions using a multi-method approach in two studies. The purpose of Study 1 was to test our research questions in a large sample of American adults in committed dating relationships. Participants from all over the U.S. were directed to a website where they completed a traditional FFM measure of personality (being), a modified measure of the FFM (acting) in which participants indicated how they act in the context of their romantic relationships, and a measure of satisfaction in their romantic relationships. We also asked participants to report how they act in various other contexts (with coworkers, friends, and family) to rule out the possibility that simply any contextualized measure would predict romantic relationship satisfaction better than a global measure.

The purpose of Study 2 was to provide a more direct test of our research questions in a controlled setting. Drawing on a sample of undergraduate dating couples, we obtained self ratings of being using a global FFM measure, and both self and partner ratings of relationship satisfaction, allowing us to examine the effects of personality on both one’s own and one’s partner’s level of satisfaction. We then obtained objective measures of acting by directly observing how people act with their relationship partners. To do this, we recruited couples who use Instant Messaging (IM) as a daily form of communication. With their consent, we recorded all of their IM conversations over seven days. An important aspect of IM is that it allows researchers to subtly and unobtrusively study close relationships in their natural settings. This new technology complements existing naturalistic methods such as daily diaries (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003; Drigotas, Whitney, & Rusbult, 1995; Reis, 1994) in which couples’ interaction patterns may be studied on a day-to-day basis. IM conversations can serve as windows into real-world dyadic interactions and allow researchers to examine links between behavioral manifestations of personality and relationship functioning.

What is the best way to obtain an objective measure of acting in the context of a romantic relationship? One way is to expose independent observers to couple members’ behaviors exclusively in the context of their relationship, and ask them to rate how the couple members act towards one another. We did this by showing the IM conversations to a team of trained observers who completed an acting measure of the FFM for each couple member. This technique allowed us to extract objective information about how people act towards their romantic partners, independent of their global self-views.

Study 1: Online Questionnaire Study

Method

Participants

Using the online classified webpage Craig’s List, 708 participants (522 females, 186 males) were recruited from 10 major U. S. cities to take part in the study. Participants were recruited on the condition that they were at least 18 years old and were currently involved in a committed heterosexual dating relationship of at least 3 months in duration. Relationship lengths ranged from 3 months to 15 years (M = 1.93 years; SD = 1.77 years). Participants were drawn from a diverse non-university sample (4.7% African American; 9.7% Asian; 72.2% Caucasian; 6.2% Latino; 7.2% other) and ranged in age from 18 to 60 (M = 27.06; SD = 6.56). They were unpaid but were given basic computer-generated feedback about their personality. The feedback told them whether they scored below average, about average, or above average on the five dimensions of the FFM compared to others who had previously completed the same measure.

Measures

Personality. The Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) was used in this study. The standard version of the TIPI constituted our being measure of personality. The TIPI contains two items for each of the FFM dimensions, with each item rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly). The TIPI shows high convergent validity with other widely used FFM scales in self and observer reports. The scale was constructed to emphasize content validity considerations, such that internal consistency estimates (alphas) are inappropriate; however, the scale has demonstrated very good test-retest reliability (mean r = .72 across traits; Gosling et al., 2003).