A study published in Collabra: Psychology concluded that the preference to interact with a given person has a differential function influenced by the personality traits of the individuals involved.
There is mixed evidence as to whether similar or complementary personalities lead to positive outcomes in relationships. For example, social interactions have been rated of better quality when with similarly extraverted partners, but of lower quality with similarly disagreeable ones. Partners with similar levels of extraversion and conscientiousness have been found to experience lower marital satisfaction.
Given most research on this subject has been conducted in controlled laboratory settings, focusing on close relationships such as friendships or romantic partnerships, it is unknown whether these findings extend to everyday settings with a variety of interaction partners.
In this work, Martin Weiß and colleagues used ecological momentary assessment to examine whether the way other people’s personalities are perceived affect preferences for social interaction partners in the day to day, and whether one’s own personality traits shape these preferences.
A total of 130 participants who were fluent in the German language were recruited for this study. Participants provided sociodemographic information and completed trait questionnaires, including the IPIP-NEO-120 personality questionnaire which measures Big Five personality (conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion), the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-8) for depressive symptoms.
The Ecological Momentary Assessment lasted for seven days with six prompts per day, for a maximum of 42 prompts per participant. In each survey, participants reported on their most recent social interaction. If the interaction took place more than 30 minutes ago, they completed an alternative activity questionnaire in place of the social interaction questionnaire. For social interactions that took place in a group setting, participants were instructed to focus on the main interaction partner of the group.
Participants provided details about the start and duration of their interaction, whether it was online or face-to-face, number of interaction partners, the main interaction partner’s gender, and their relationship to the interaction partner. They responded to questions assessing preferences for interaction partners and perceived personality of these partners via ten unipolar ratings of Big Five personality (with two items per factor),and gave ratings of physical attractiveness and familiarity of partner to account for attractiveness or familiarity biases.
Weiß and colleagues contribute several findings to this literature. Higher agreeableness and extraversion in interaction partners were found to be beneficial, enhancing the preference to interact, while higher partner neuroticism was detrimental to social interaction preferences. Extraverted participants had a preference for other extraverts.
However, agreeable individuals surprisingly preferred neurotic interaction partners. The researchers suggest this could possibly be due to agreeableness being associated with helping behavior and neurotic individuals benefiting from positive interactions. Those high in neuroticism showed a reduced preference to interact with others. In line with prior studies, greater familiarity and perceived physical attractiveness increased preferences to interact.
A limitation to this study is the largely female sample (107 of 130 individuals), and younger demographic (average age 25.43); thus, these results may not be generalizable to both genders and across adulthood.
The study, “Who Is Interacting With Whom? Assessing the Relationship Between Personality Traits and Preferences for Interaction Partners in Real Life”, was authored by Martin Weiß, Marthe Gründahl, Annalena Jachnik, and Grit Hein.