Predicting adolescents' parent–child relationship quality from parental personality, marital conflict and adolescents' personality

Co-Development of Personality and Friendships Across the Lifespan

Abstract. This article examines changes in the co-development of personality characteristics and friendships across the lifespan. We address how personality traits shape friendship development (i.e., selection effects) and how friendships shape personality traits (i.e., socialization effects). By integrating separate empirical studies, we look at how selection and socialization effects change across the lifespan. A review of longitudinal research supports our hypothesis that selection effects on friendships intensify during adolescence, peak in young adulthood, and diminish throughout middle and late adulthood. Socialization effects through friendships seem to be moderately sized during adolescence, then small to negligible from young adulthood onwards. For future directions, we discuss effects of the transactional development of friendships and personality regarding associated dispositions within individuals, associated individuals within friendship dyads, and individuals associated within wider social networks.

Factors Associated With Perceptions of Family Belonging Among Adolescents

Adolescents' perceptions of family belonging are associated with several well-being indicators, yet we know little about which factors influence these perceptions or how they differ by family structure. The current study uses nationally representative data from Add Health to examine predictors of adolescents' perceptions of family belonging in two-biological-parent families (n = 9686). The results are compared to a recent study using Add Health that examined family belonging in married mother-stepfather families. Findings suggest both similarities and differences across family structure in the factors associated with family belonging.