Susanne WilpersThe Development of social Relationships after the Transition to University: Desire and Reality

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The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the role of personality in social relationship formation. More specifically, the main focus of interest is not only how personality relates to actual social relationships but also how it relates do desired social relationships. According to dynamic interactionism, which has been the main paradigm for the study of personality development, it is assumed that individuals develop in a dynamic, continuous and reciprocal process of interaction, or transaction, with their environment. Thus this study applies the dynamic-interactionistic framework to the co-development of personality with real and desired social relationships in young adulthood, during the transition to university.

How are real and desired relationships related to each other? Do large discrepancies between what individuals perceive and desire in their social relationships during an important period such as the transition into the new social world of university influence later personality? Or is personality already so much crystallized at the end of adolescence that it is immune to experiences in social relationships, desired or real? If students’ social relationships are destabilized during such a life transition, is the reorganization of their real and desired relationships influenced by their personality? And are relationship discrepancies influenced by personality?

This study is the first empirical attempt to study social relationships and the desires about these relationships from a longitudinal perspective. It can thus answer the above questions of whether real social relationships change according to the related desires or whether relationship desires change with actual relationships.