Running head: MANIFESTATIONS OF PERSONALITY IN …



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

Email: slatcher@mail.utexas.edu

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).

We also measured contextualized personality (acting) in five different contexts: around romantic partners, coworkers, friends, parents, and siblings. For the five acting measures, the TIPI was altered to reflect the different relationship contexts in which participants’ acting would be assessed. At the top of each of the respective acting measures, participants were instructed to indicate how they typically act around particular people (e.g., coworkers, romantic partners). For example, the top of the romantic partner acting measure read, “How You Act Around Your Romantic Partner.” The instructions for each of the acting measures were modified from the standard TIPI instructions. The original TIPI instructions (which were used in our being measure) read, “Below are a number of personality traits that may or may not apply to you. You should rate the extent to which the pair of traits applies to you, even if one characteristic applies more strongly than the other,” whereas the instructions for the acting measure in the romantic relations condition read, “Here are a number of descriptions that may or may not apply to you with regard to how you act around your romantic partner. Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each description below. You should rate the extent to which each pair of words applies to you, even if one characteristic applies more strongly than the other.” The content of the actual items themselves remained exactly the same across the being and acting measures.

Relationship satisfaction. Self reports of romantic relationship satisfaction were measured using the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS; Hendrick, 1988). The RAS is a validated measure of relationship satisfaction that correlates strongly with measures of love, commitment, investment and dyadic adjustment. The RAS consists of 7 items on a 7-point Likert-type scale such as, “In general, how satisfied are you with your relationship?” The alpha reliability for the current sample was .89, which is typical of reliability estimates reported for this measure.

Procedure

Participants were directed from advertisements posted on Craig’s List to a password-protected website at the University of Texas at Austin. Previous research has demonstrated that web-based questionnaires provide valid, reliable data, and are not adversely affected by non-serious responders (Gosling, Vazire, Srivastava, & John, 2004). After completing an online consent form, participants provided demographic information and basic information about their romantic relationship. They then completed the being TIPI measure and the five acting TIPI measures assessing how they typically act around their romantic partners, coworkers, friends, parents, and siblings. The order of presentation of the being and acting measures was counterbalanced to prevent any potential order effects between being and acting and also within acting. In some cases, participants were unable to complete a particular measure. For example, participants without siblings could not complete the siblings acting measure. In such cases, participants were instructed to go on to the next questionnaire. After completing the being and acting measures, participants completed the RAS with respect to their romantic relationship and then were given computer-generated feedback about their personality.

Results and Discussion

Question 1: How strongly is acting in relationships associated with relationship satisfaction?

We predicted that the association between personality factors and romantic relationship satisfaction would be strengthened by taking into account the context of the relationship. As shown in Table 1, being was correlated with romantic relationship satisfaction for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Across traits, the absolute averages of the simple correlations with relationship satisfaction for being, acting around partners, acting around coworkers, acting around friends, acting around parents, and acting around siblings were .14, .35, .05, .04, .10, and .08, respectively. Acting around partners was—for every trait—the strongest predictor of romantic relationship satisfaction in comparison with being and acting in other contexts1.

We next sought to determine the uniqueness of the effects of each being and partner-context acting trait on romantic relationship satisfaction as well as the overall predictive power of being vs. acting on satisfaction. To test this, we first entered all five being traits together into a stepwise multiple regression analysis, with relationship satisfaction as the dependent variable. Only Neuroticism and Conscientiousness significantly predicted satisfaction, with standardized beta weights of -.16 and .14, respectively. Together, these two being traits accounted for 6% of the variance in satisfaction. As a comparison, we entered the five partner-context acting traits together into a stepwise multiple regression analysis. All five traits independently predicted satisfaction, with beta weights of .24, .21, -.19, .13 and .08, respectively, for Agreeableness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, and Conscientiousness (all p’s < .05). Overall, partner-context acting explained more than 31% of the variance in relationship satisfaction. Further, acting in other relationship contexts was not a significant predictor of romantic relationship satisfaction when controlling for partner-context acting.

Question 2: Does acting mediate the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction?

We next tested the possibility that the effects of being on relationship satisfaction were mediated by acting. A variable is considered a mediator to the extent that it carries the influence of a given independent variable to a given dependent variable. Based on the guidelines of Barron and Kenny (1986), mediation is inferred when: (1) the IV (being) significantly affects the mediator (acting); (2) the IV (being) significantly affects the DV (relationship satisfaction) in the absence of the mediator; (3) the mediator (acting) has a significant unique effect on the DV (relationship satisfaction); and (4) the effect of the IV (being) on the DV (relationship satisfaction) shrinks or is reduced to zero upon the addition of the mediator (acting) to the model. If these four steps are met, a formal test of mediation can be conducted using a Sobel z-test (MacKinnon, Warsi, & Dwyer, 1995; Preacher & Leonardelli, 2001; Sobel, 1982).

Our mediation analyses were limited to the four traits for which both being and acting were significantly correlated with relationship satisfaction: Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. Results of these analyses are presented below.

Agreeableness. As shown in Panel A of Figure 2, acting agreeable fully mediated the effect of being agreeable on relationship satisfaction (z = 9.77, p < .001); being agreeable predicted relationship satisfaction only to the extent that it was related to acting agreeable in the context of one’s relationship.

Conscientiousness. As shown in Panel B of Figure 2, acting conscientious fully mediated the effect of being conscientious on relationship satisfaction (z = 5.20, p < .001); being conscientious predicted relationship satisfaction only to the extent that it was related to acting conscientious in the context of one’s relationship.

Neuroticism. As illustrated in Panel C of Figure 2, acting neurotic fully mediated the effect of being neurotic on relationship satisfaction (z = 9.37, p < .001); being neurotic predicted relationship satisfaction only to the extent that it was related to acting neurotic in the context of one’s relationship.

Openness. As shown in Panel D of Figure 2, acting open fully mediated the effect of being open on relationship satisfaction (z = 7.71, p < .001); being open predicted relationship satisfaction only to the extent that it was related to acting open in the context of one’s relationship.

Summary of Study 1 Findings

In Study 1, we set out to answer two central questions. Question 1 asked how strongly acting in relationships is associated with romantic relationship satisfaction. We found that relationship-specific personality (acting) was strongly associated with relationship satisfaction across the FFM traits for romantic relationships, while acting in the domains of other relationships was not associated with romantic relationship satisfaction when controlling for acting in romantic relationships. Further, all five relationship-specific personality traits uniquely predicted satisfaction when controlling for the effects of the other acting traits, accounting for over 30% of the variance in relationship satisfaction. Question 2 asked whether acting mediates the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction. We found that acting fully mediated the relationship between being and satisfaction for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. In other words, global personality traits predicted relationship satisfaction only to the extent that they were manifested specifically in the context of one’s relationship.

Study 2: Acting in Couples’ Everyday Interactions

The results of Study 1 were promising but were limited to self-report measures. Although self-reported acting was strongly associated with relationship satisfaction across traits, one could argue that our measure of acting was biased by people’s self perceptions and reflected not how people act around their partners but rather how they think they act. Would we get the same effects if we measured actual behavior in the context of relationships? Additionally, Study 1 focused solely on how acting and being were related to participants’ own levels of relationship satisfaction; partners’ satisfaction levels were not considered. To what extent might acting and being be related to partners’ satisfaction?

Thus, in Study 2 our goals were: 1) to take a more naturalistic approach and directly examine how people actually act in their everyday interactions with their romantic partners; and 2) to explore how being and acting might be related to partners’ satisfaction levels.

Method

Study 2 involved two phases of data collection. In the first phase, both members of dating couples completed self-report measures of personality and relationship satisfaction and submitted 7 days of IMs. In the second phase, we obtained objective ratings of personality in the context of participants’ relationships (acting) from observers’ ratings of the couples’ IMs.

Participants

Undergraduate couples at the University of Texas at Austin were recruited through an online computer sign-up system on the basis that they: 1) were in a committed heterosexual romantic relationship, and 2) IMed with each other every day. Sixty-eight couples (136 participants: 68 women, 68 men; mean age 19.04, SD = 1.39) participated in the study in exchange for course credit. Couples had been dating an average of 1.44 years (SD = 1.25).

Measures

Personality. Our being measure of personality was again a self report on the standard version of the TIPI (Gosling et al., 2003). As mentioned previously, the TIPI 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).

Because Study 1 found only weak associations between acting and relationship satisfaction in non-romantic relationship contexts, we included only a measure of romantic relationship-context acting in Study 2. To create an objective measure of acting in Study 2, 12 independent observers used the TIPI to rate participants’ personalities based on examination of participants’ IMs with their romantic partners.

Relationship satisfaction. Relationship satisfaction was measured using the RAS (Hendrick, 1988). In the present sample, the alpha reliability was .79.

Procedure

Phase I. During an introductory session with the experimenter, couples were instructed to forward IMs to a secure email address during two monitoring periods—three days of IMs during the 1st monitoring period and 4 days during the 2nd. The monitoring periods were separated by three days in between2. Considerable effort was taken by the experimenter during the introductory session to ensure that participants and their partners felt at ease about forwarding their IMs and to encourage them to contact the experimenter if they had any concerns. Upon receipt by the experimenter, all IMs were saved as text files in a secure location accessible only to the experimenter and all personally identifiable information was removed. The mean length of couples’ IM conversations over the seven days was 4,813 words (SD = 4,854; Mdn = 3,355; Min = 272; Max = 23,221).

Online self-report questionnaires were completed by couples after the introductory session with the experimenter on day 1 of the study. Participants completed the being measure of personality (TIPI) and the measure of relationship satisfaction. The importance of completing these questionnaires privately and confidentially was emphasized by the experimenter during the introductory session.

Phase II. Twelve independent observers rated the participants’ acting based on examination of participants’ IMs with their romantic partners. The observers were undergraduate students working on the project as research assistants. They were unacquainted with the participants and were instructed not to discuss their ratings with one another or with others outside of the project. The order in which the observers rated the IMs was randomly generated for each observer. Observers completed TIPI ratings of each couple member after reading the complete transcripts of IMs for each couple. Alpha reliabilities for the composites of the ratings were .85, .70, .90, .93, and .91 for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience, respectively.

Results and Discussion

Question 1: How strongly is acting in relationships associated with relationship satisfaction?

We predicted that observers’ ratings of acting would be strongly associated with self and partner ratings of relationship satisfaction. Separate correlational analyses were conducted to assess: 1) the association between being and self reports of satisfaction; 2) the association between acting and self reports of satisfaction; 3) the association between being and partner reports of satisfaction; and 4) the association between acting and partner reports of satisfaction. The results of these analyses are presented in Table 2.

Correlations with self-reported satisfaction. Consistent with the findings in the literature (Botwin et al., 1997; McCrae et al., 1998), being agreeable was positively correlated with satisfaction and being neurotic was negatively correlated with satisfaction. In addition, acting agreeable was positively correlated with satisfaction and acting neurotic was negatively correlated with satisfaction. Separate multiple regression analyses indicated that being agreeable and being neurotic together accounted for 15% of the variance in self-reported satisfaction, whereas acting agreeable and acting neurotic together accounted for 19% of the variance.

Correlations with partner-reported satisfaction. We next tested how strongly being and acting were associated with partners’ relationship satisfaction. Being was correlated with partners’ relationship satisfaction only for Agreeableness. Acting agreeable, acting conscientious, and acting neurotic all were associated with partners’ satisfaction. Being accounted for 3% of the variance in partners’ relationship satisfaction, whereas acting accounted for 9%.

Question 2: Does acting mediate the relationship between being and relationship satisfaction?

As with Study 1, we followed the guidelines of Barron and Kenny (1986) for assessing mediation effects. Sobel z-tests were used as formal tests of mediation (MacKinnon, Warsi, & Dwyer, 1995; Preacher & Leonardelli, 2001; Sobel, 1982). Our analyses were limited only to the traits for which both being and acting were associated with satisfaction: Agreeableness and Neuroticism for self-reported satisfaction and Agreeableness for partner-reported satisfaction.

Agreeableness and self-reported satisfaction. As shown in Panel A of Figure 3, acting agreeable partially mediated the association between being agreeable and self-reported relationship satisfaction (z = 3.16, p < .002). These results suggest that part of the explanation for the relationship between being agreeable and relationship satisfaction is that agreeable people tend to act more agreeable in their relationships, which is in turn likely to result in greater relationship satisfaction.

Neuroticism and self-reported satisfaction. As illustrated in Panel B of Figure 3, there was a trend of acting neurotic partially mediating the effect of being neurotic on self-reported satisfaction (z = 1.77, p < .08). These results are consistent with the idea that part of the explanation for the relationship between being neurotic and relationship satisfaction is that neurotic people tend to act more neurotic in their relationships, which in turn is likely to result in lower relationship satisfaction.

Agreeableness and partner-reported satisfaction. Finally, we tested whether the effect of being agreeable on partners’ satisfaction was mediated by acting agreeable. As shown in Panel C of Figure 3, acting agreeable fully mediated the effect of being agreeable on partner’s levels of relationship satisfaction (z = 2.68, p < .007). These results suggest that being agreeable predicts partners’ relationship satisfaction only to the extent that it is related to acting agreeable in the specific context of one’s relationship.

Summary of Study 2 Findings

In Study 2, we set out to determine whether the effects of acting and being on relationship satisfaction found in Study 1 would replicate in a more naturalistic setting (couples’ daily IMs), and whether the effects of acting and being would extend to partners’ relationship satisfaction. We found that acting was strongly associated with self reports of satisfaction for Agreeableness and Neuroticism and with partner reports of satisfaction for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. Acting partially mediated the relationship between being and self reports of satisfaction for Agreeableness and there was a trend of mediation of being neurotic and self-reported satisfaction by acting neurotic. The association between being agreeable and partners’ satisfaction was fully mediated by acting agreeable.

General Discussion

We have presented a contextualized approach to examining the effects of personality on relationship satisfaction. The purpose of this research was to clarify the links between (a) global measures of personality traits, which we defined as being, (b) relationship-specific expressions of personality traits, which we defined as acting, and (c) relationship satisfaction. We hypothesized that how people act in relationships (acting) would be more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction than how they are in general (being) and that acting would mediate the association between being and satisfaction. The results from the two studies presented in this article supported these hypotheses.

Acting and Relationship Satisfaction

Acting in the context of one’s romantic relationship—as measured by self reports (Study 1) and actual behavior (Study 2)—was strongly correlated with self-reported relationship satisfaction. Across both studies, correlations between acting and satisfaction were strongest for Agreeableness (average r = .42) and Neuroticism (average r = -.32). Overall, acting accounted for 31% of the variance in satisfaction in Study 1 and 19% of the variance in satisfaction in Study 2. In contrast, the variance in self-reported satisfaction explained by being was 6% in Study 1 and 15% in Study 2. The strength of the associations between acting and satisfaction across traits in Study 1 was somewhat unexpected, in particular for Extraversion and Openness. Previous studies generally have found only modest associations between global measures of these two traits and satisfaction in dating relationships (Watson et al., 2000; White et al., 2004). Our findings indicate that Extraversion and Openness may play a more important role in relationship functioning than previously thought.

Importantly, only romantic relationship-specific measures of acting correlated more strongly with romantic relationship satisfaction than did global measures of personality (being). Other contextualized acting measures (e.g., how one acts around coworkers) did not correlate strongly with romantic relationship satisfaction, and the small correlations that did exist disappeared when controlling for acting in the romantic relationship context. This indicates that the predictive validity of our acting measures was not due simply to the fact that they were narrower than the being measures.

Acting also correlated with partner-reported relationship satisfaction. In Study 2, acting accounted for 9% of the variance in partner reports of satisfaction, while being accounted for 3%. Similar to the patterns found in self-reported satisfaction, partner-reported satisfaction was positively correlated with acting agreeable and acting conscientious and negatively correlated with acting neurotic. Thus, people who act friendly, responsibly, and emotionally stable in their relationships are likely be happy with their partners and to have partners who are happy with them. The meaning of the lack of association between acting open and acting extraverted and partner satisfaction is less clear. This may in part be a function of the methodology used in Study 2; it is possible that observers did not have enough information from couples’ IMs to accurately assess how extraverted or open participants acted around their partners. Indeed, inter-observer consensus was low for both of these traits. Future studies should address this issue using additional observational methods.

Mechanisms Underlying the Association between Personality and Relationship Satisfaction

Recall that our approach treats acting and being as different levels of a single personality system, with being as the more global level at the top of the hierarchy and acting as the more specific level below. This approach predicts that being influences acting and that acting, in turn, influences relationship satisfaction—thus mediating the association between being and satisfaction. The results from Studies 1 and 2 are consistent with this prediction.

In Study 1, acting fully mediated the relationship between being and self-reported satisfaction for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. So, for example, if a person is neurotic in general, this Neuroticism will manifest itself in her behavior with her partner, which will lead to lower relationship satisfaction on her part. In Study 2, acting agreeable partially mediated the effect of being agreeable on relationship satisfaction; there was a marginally significant effect of acting neurotic mediating the effect of being neurotic on relationship satisfaction.

In Study 2 we also were able to explore the links between being, acting and partner satisfaction. Results suggested that the link between being agreeable and partner satisfaction is fully mediated by acting agreeable. Thus, the relationship between being agreeable and partner satisfaction, which has been widely documented (Donnellan et al., 2004; Watson et al., 2000; White, Hendrick, & Hendrick, 2004), can be fully accounted for by the fact that agreeable people behave more kindly and warmly toward their partners.

Potential Limitations

There are a number of potential limitations of the research reported here. First, because of the correlational nature of our data, it is difficult to determine whether acting is an antecedent of relationship outcomes or vice versa. Evidence from previous studies has been somewhat inconclusive. For example, in an 18-month longitudinal study in which personality predicted relationship outcomes, no evidence was found for relationships changing personalities (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998). In another study (Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2000), participants completed relationship outcome measures three years after completing a measure of personality. Personality traits were found to influence relationship functioning, and because only 15% of the 720 participants had been in their relationship with their partner at Time 1, it is very unlikely that the causal direction went from relationship functioning to personality. Nevertheless, other studies have found evidence for relationship effects on personality, both over time and across different types of relationships (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001; Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2002). Longitudinal studies that incorporate measures of acting will be needed to clarify this issue.

A second potential limitation is that our sample, particularly in Study 2, was made up of mostly young heterosexual dating couples. It is possible that our results do not generalize to all types of romantic relationships. Indeed, cross-sectional studies have found that associations between personality traits and relationship quality may differ across different types of samples, in particular with dating couples compared to married couples (Watson et. al, 2000). The links between acting, being, and relationship processes may change developmentally as a person ages and may be a function of the type of relationship in which a person is involved.

Third, our measures of acting may not have encompassed the full range of acting in relationships, in particular our behavioral measures of acting in Study 2. It may be difficult, for example, to judge from an IM how extraverted a person acts in his relationship. While a person may come across as extraverted in his IMs—for example by writing a lot—he may be quite shy and inhibited in face-to-face conversations. Additionally, the IMs collected in our study captured only how couples acted with each other when they were in isolation of others. It is likely that the way people act around their partners when others are present (e.g., friends, family) may differ from the way people act with their partners when others are not present.

Future Directions

The research presented in this article lays a foundation for examining the links between being, acting, and relationship functioning. While our findings illustrate the importance of taking into account context in studies of personality and relationships, they are but a first step. Researchers can now directly examine the specific mechanisms and processes that account for these phenomena. By using multiple methods, longitudinal designs and examining different types of relationships, future studies may be able to shed more light on the role of context-specificity in personality and relationship research.

These findings also have important implications for the methods used in personality research. Our results suggest that researchers interested in the role of personality in specific domains of life (e.g., relationships, work, school) should include both global and contextualized measures of personality and compare their predictive validity. Not only do contextualized measures hold great promise for predicting contextualized outcomes, but the dynamics between global and specific levels of personality can illuminate the mechanisms underlying the influence of personality on life outcomes.

Personality and Relationships Revisited

Returning to our example of Amy and David, we now know that David may indeed be more agreeable when he is with Amy than he is in general. Furthermore, both David and Amy’s satisfaction in their relationship will be better predicted by how David acts in the relationship than by how David is in general. Of course, David’s global personality probably still plays an important role in his and Amy’s relationship satisfaction, but much of this effect can be explained by overt manifestations of David’s personality in his behavior towards Amy.

Some might argue that the contextualized approach we have taken is counter to decades of personality research examining the effects of people’s stable underlying predispositions. However, our conceptualization of global and contextualized personality traits as part of a single hierarchy is consistent with both traditional trait approaches and recent dynamic systems models. Only by first describing and understanding how a person is in general can one then describe how a person is in different situations and across different relationships. Furthermore, global dispositions have a strong influence on contextualized traits and behaviors. The domain of romantic relationships is an excellent example of how global and contextualized personality traits interact to influence real-world outcomes.

Footnotes

1Analyses were also conducted separately for men and women. No significant gender differences were found. Thus, all analyses are collapsed across gender.

2For the purposes of another study, one member from each couple wrote about either their relationship or a neutral control topic during the days between monitoring sessions in order to identify subtle social mediators of the effects of emotional writing. Experimental condition was unrelated to any of the results presented here. Results with respect to the writing assignments will be published elsewhere.

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Author Note

We would like to thank Samuel Gosling, Katie Larsen McClarty, Pranjal Mehta, and James Pennebaker for their comments on an earlier draft of this article and to Crystal Bailey, Jessica Blackshear, Tom Goheen, Brittany Graves, Tiffany Graves, Melissa Morris, Marianna Ravitsky, Roxy Rodriguez, Amy Tao, Jenny Wang, and Jason Yeh for their assistance with data collection.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard B. Slatcher, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, email: slatcher@mail.utexas.edu.

Table 1

Correlations between Romantic Relationship Satisfaction

and FFM Dimensions for Being and Acting in Different Relationship Contexts - Study 1

|Context |Five-Factor Model Dimension |

| |Extra. |Agree. |Cons. |Neur. |Open. ||Mean| |

|Being | .05 | .14*** | .19*** | -.21*** | .09* | .14*** |

|Acting – around partner | .34*** | .42*** | .27*** | -.40*** | .31*** | .35*** |

|Acting – around coworkers |-.02 |.03 | .13*** |-.08* |.01 |.05 |

|Acting – around friends | .02 |.01 | .08* |-.08* |.00 |.04 |

|Acting – around parents | .13*** |.03 | .15*** | -.15*** |.03 | .10** |

|Acting – around siblings | .05 |.07 | .14*** | -.10** |.03 | .08* |

Note. Overall N = 703. Exra. = Extraversion; Agree. = Agreeableness;

Cons. = Conscientiousness; Neur. = Neuroticism; Open = Openness.

* p < .05, two-tailed ** p < .01 *** p < .001, two-tailed

Table 2

Correlations between Self and Partner Romantic Relationship Satisfaction

and FFM Dimensions for Being and Partner-Context Acting – Study 2

|Context |Five-Factor Model Dimension |

| |Extra. |Agree. |Cons. |Neur. |Open. ||Mean| |

|Self-Reported Satisfaction | | | | | | |

| Being |.13 | .35*** |.15 | -.30*** | .10 |.21 |

| Acting – around partner |.07 | .41*** |.14 | -.24** | .07 |.19 |

| | | | | | | |

|Partner-Reported Satisfaction | | | | | | |

| Being |.06 | .18* |.07 |-.15 |.09 |.11 |

| Acting – around partner |.06 | .31*** | .26** | -.21** |.02 |.17 |

Note. Overall N = 703. Exra. = Extraversion; Agree. = Agreeableness;

Cons. = Conscientiousness; Neur. = Neuroticism; Open = Openness.

* p < .05, two-tailed ** p < .01 *** p < .001, two-tailed

Figure Captions

Figure 1. Hierarchical model of being (global personality traits) and acting (contextualized personality traits) and their influence on life outcomes.

Figure 2. Mediation analyses – Study 1. Panel A: Mediation of being agreeable and relationship satisfaction by acting agreeable. Panel B: Mediation of being conscientious and relationship satisfaction by acting conscientious. Panel C: Mediation of being neurotic and relationship satisfaction by acting neurotic. Panel D: Mediation of being open and relationship satisfaction by acting open. Values are standardized beta weights from three separate regression analyses.

* p < .05, two-tailed ** p < .01, two-tailed *** p < .001, two-tailed

Figure 3. Mediation analyses – Study 2. Panel A: Mediation of being agreeable and relationship satisfaction by acting agreeable. Panel B: Mediation of being neurotic and relationship satisfaction by acting neurotic. Panel C: Mediation of being agreeable and partner’s relationship satisfaction by acting agreeable. Values are standardized beta weights from three separate regression analyses. * p < .05, two-tailed ** p < .01, two-tailed *** p < .001, two-tailed

[pic]

Figure 1.

[pic][pic]

[pic][pic]

Figure 2.

[pic][pic]

[pic]

Figure 3.

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ACTING

Outcome

(e.g., gets good

grades)

Outcome

(e.g., does not get

promoted)

Outcome

(e.g., relationship

satisfaction)

At school

Contextualized Personality

(e.g., cooperate with

classmates)

At work

Contextualized Personality

(e.g., argumentative

with co-workers)

BEING

Romantic relationship

Contextualized Personality

(e.g., warm towards

partner)

Global Trait

(e.g., Agreeableness)

C

B

A

C

D

A

B

................
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