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Personality and Friendships
Marta Doroszuk
1
, Marta Kupis
2
and
Anna Z. Czarna
3
1
Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology,
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2
Faculty of International and Political Studies,
Institute of Intercultural Studies, Jagiellonian
University, Krakow, Poland
3
Faculty of Management and Social
Communication, Institute of Applied Psychology,
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Synonyms
Personality and interpersonal closeness;Personal-
ity traits and interpersonal attraction;Personality
traits and relationships with friends
Definition
Described as one of basic human needs, friend-
ship is one of the most important relations in
people’s lives and a common personal experience
(Baumeister and Leary 1995). Personality plays a
significant role in initiation, formation, quality,
and maintenance, as well as dissolution of rela-
tionships between friends. It can also be deeply
affected and possibly transformed by these rela-
tionships. In this entry, we will present the most
fundamental findings about the links between
personality and friendship, focusing on the impact
exerted by personality (Big Five and Dark Triad
traits models) on relationships with friends.
Introduction
At every stage of life, people try to build relation-
ships with others. Social connections are related to
support that people receive and give to each other.
They have positive influence on one’s health,
mood, and sense of belonging. Provided and
received support makes relationships stronger
and last longer. Definitions of friendship distin-
guish it from other relations, as it is voluntary,
informal, pleasant, and based on reciprocity. As
such, this kind of relationship is quite different
from official contacts at work or bonds with fam-
ily members, where there is no freedom of choice.
Friendship can be described from various per-
spectives, one of which emphasizes the role of
positive affect in a state of being friends.
A friend is someone a person chooses to play a
significant role in her or his life, to share time
with, and to engage in various activities together.
How do people select their friends and which
aspects play a significant role in the feeling of
comfort and pleasure experienced in another per-
son’s company? One of the most important factors
is personalities of the people searching for this
type of connection (Harris and Vazire 2016). In
this entry we present several traits of personality
which play a vital role in choosing friends and
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
V. Zeigler-Hill, T. K. Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_712-1
being chosen to be ones by others. We briefly
report their role in initiation, maintenance, and
dissolution of friendships, where evidence is
available. We do not explicitly differentiate
between actor, partner, and dyadic effects (for a
systematic overview of those differences, see Har-
ris and Vazire 2016). While many personality
conceptualizations could be considered, we
focus on the Big Five (Costa and McCrae 1988)
and Dark Triad traits (Paulhus and Williams
2002). We chose the former as the one stemming
from the most basic and established model of
personality and the latter due to their pronounced
negative impact on relationships.
Sufficiently stable and long-term relationships
can also exert influences on personality traits
(Asendorpf and Wilpers 1998; Mund et al.
2018). Emotional closeness and frequency of con-
flicts impact several personality traits, such as
neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness, making the relationship between
personality and friendship reciprocal, dynamic, and
complex. Close friendships provide distinctive
opportunities for reinforcing dispositional tenden-
cies and for fostering personality (or at least
behavioral) accommodation or change. Prelimi-
nary evidence suggests that matched friends
(e.g., two high extraverts) mutually reinforce
each other’s similar dispositional tendencies,
while friends with contrasting personalities (e.g.,
an introvert and an extravert) show patterns of
personality accommodation (e.g., extraverts meet-
ing introverts close to home in line with intro-
verts’preferences) as well as complementary
reinforcement (e.g., extraverts talking more and
introverts listening more when together; Nelson
et al. 2011). These complex processes warrant
further investigation. In this entry, however, we
will focus on the influence that personalities have
on friendships rather than on the one that friend-
ships have on personalities.
The Big Five Personality Traits
Extraversion
Extraversion is related to having a high number of
friends (Harris and Vazire 2016). This might stem
from the most prominent difference between
extraverts and introverts, namely, extraverts’
stronger affiliative tendencies expressed in their
desire for company in pleasant and enjoyable
situations and in the overall desire to associate
with strangers. Extraverted individuals make
new friends faster in novel settings, often in
untypical ways (Anderson et al. 2001). They
attract other people with their style, confident
behaviors, and friendly expressions, such as
smile signifying acceptance. They initiate interac-
tions easily, look at their interaction partners
more, are less self-conscious, and make impres-
sions of more talkative and relaxed individuals
(Back et al. 2011; Cuperman and Ickes 2009).
These behavioral manifestations of positive atti-
tudes lead to more positive perceptions of them at
early stages of acquaintance and result in a higher
number of people who would like to spend time
with them (Back et al. 2011; Cemalcilar et al.
2018), as opposed to introverts with a pessimistic
approach.
However, highly extraverted people do not
select their friends haphazardly: there is no asso-
ciation between extraversion and the number of
friends selected by individuals (Back et al. 2011).
Similarity in levels of extraversion facilitates sat-
isfaction from interactions, even in cases of two
introverts (Cuperman and Ickes 2009). High
extraversion is connected with reciprocal support
(Asendorpf and Wilpers 1998). As the only one of
the Big Five traits, it is associated with a higher
frequency of meetings with friends and spending
more time interacting with them (Wilson et al.
2015). Thus, friendships of extraverted people
seem to be of high quality, and they involve
less insecurity, more emotional closeness, more
self-disclosures, deeper conversations (Wilson
et al. 2015), and better conflict management.
More nonkin relations are found among highly
extraverted people (Wagner et al. 2014), as gen-
erally their contacts with others are more positive
and their friend networks are wider.
Better interpersonal skills of extraverts might
help them create more enjoyable experiences and
relationships that are more satisfying to themselves
(Wilson et al. 2015). Interestingly, the higher qual-
ity of their friendships is only self-reported and
2 Personality and Friendships
not confirmed by their friends, which suggests
that some other, less adaptive conduct character-
istic of extraverts might cancel out the benefits of
their positive behaviors towards friends (Harris
and Vazire 2016). In particular, the less
communal –that is, dominant and assertive –
actions might be the ones driving their friends
away (Harris and Vazire 2016; Wortman and
Wood 2011).
Agreeableness
Agreeableness has been associated with an over-
whelmingly positive impact on interpersonal rela-
tionships via friendliness, warmth, and sociability
it entails (Harris and Vazire 2016; Wortman and
Wood 2011). Agreeable people are focused on
others and liked more (Selfhout et al. 2010),
though not all studies confirm this association
(e.g., Back et al. 2011). Though agreeableness
does not predict initiating more friendships
(Harris and Vazire 2016), prosocial and altruistic
behaviors, high empathy, and focus on coopera-
tion, observed among agreeable people, exert pos-
itive influence on selecting them as friends
(Selfhout et al. 2010). However, where the
encounters are too brief (such as at zero acquain-
tance), superficial or indirect for the advantages of
agreeableness to emerge, the association is not
detectable. Agreeableness turns out to be a boon
for being liked in face-to-face interactions but not
necessarily in social media contexts (Cemalcilar
et al. 2018). Where direct interactions are not
required, agreeableness appears less conducive
to interpersonal attraction: online profiles of
agreeable people may not provide sufficient enter-
tainment for passive viewers. The real value of
agreeableness emerges in direct contact, where
some interpersonal accommodation is necessary.
Agreeable people look at their interaction part-
ners, smile, laugh, and nod more during their
interactions, providing more active acknowledg-
ment to them (Cuperman and Ickes 2009). They
are more communal: kind, polite, humble, and
grateful, as well as less irritable, short-tempered,
offensive, devious, suspicious, manipulative, and
conceited –and thus more likeable (Wortman and
Wood 2011). Similarity in high levels of agree-
ableness in both partners may facilitate
commencement of a friendship (Selfhout et al.
2010). However, two highly disagreeable persons
are particularly unlikely to form a friendly bond.
In this case similarity is a disadvantage, perhaps
due to the fact that neither partner would or could
compensate for the other one’s disagreeableness
(Cuperman and Ickes 2009). Friendships with
highly agreeable people are of high quality, with
deeper conversations and more disclosures, as
well as more satisfying (Wilson et al. 2015).
Since agreeable people are eager to forgive and
use effective problem-solving strategies, conflicts
do not endanger their friendships’continuation.
Altogether, agreeableness is related to better rela-
tionship maintenance behaviors and higher relation-
ship satisfaction and stability. Low agreeableness is
probably an important factor in friendship ending
(Harris and Vazire 2016).
Asendorpf and Wilpers (1998) described “kin
attraction”among people with high agreeable-
ness, as they tend to stay in constant contact with
their relatives. Friendships formed by them are
more traditional, with high levels of stability and
geographical proximity between the partners.
Openness to Experience
In spite of the fact that openness has not been
identified as a substantial predictor of relationship
initiation in existing literature, there are some
contexts that appear to facilitate the emergence
of such an association. In particular, higher open-
ness is associated with higher interpersonal attrac-
tion at zero acquaintance in new environments
(such as among incoming freshmen in the first
semester at the university) or in social media
(Cemalcilar et al. 2018). In the latter context
cues related to openness may be more discernable
than in face-to-face interactions, as potential
friends can have access to more self-expressive
statements in zero-acquaintance situations (Back
et al. 2011; Cemalcilar et al. 2018).
Constant contact is not necessary to maintain
friendships of individuals open to experience, and
even short periods of time are sufficient to build a
relationship. This is why their friendships are
described as less typical and more varying than
usual, as they are eager to become friends with
people who live far away or are known to them
Personality and Friendships 3
only via Internet. This is likely due to frequent
migrations of highly open individuals. Openness
may be associated with more liberal attitudes and
lead to higher diversity among people chosen to
be one’s friends (e.g., from different ethnicities).
Homophily in terms of gender or cultural back-
ground is not vital in their relationships, only
similarity of age may play a role here (Laakasuo
et al. 2017). Openness is associated with having a
larger network of friends, but not with one’s level
of closeness with network members. Also, high
openness to experience is unrelated to friendship
satisfaction (Wilson et al. 2015) and may lead to
low stability of relationships (Selfhout et al. 2010).
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is one of the traits exerting
small but positive impact on friendship formation
and satisfaction (e.g., Selfhout et al. 2010). It
might be more important for romantic relationship
satisfaction than for friendships, as the processes
(cognitive, affective, and behavioral) that lead to
satisfying friendships are likely overlapping but
distinct from the processes that result in romantic
relationship satisfaction (Wilson et al. 2015).
Conscientiousness can, however, influence main-
tenance of a relationship (Selfhout et al. 2010), as
the emotional support and productive conflict
management techniques, characteristic of highly
conscientious individuals, have a positive impact
on continuation of a relation. Their high self-
control results in appropriate social behaviors,
which lead to better relationships. Similarly, hon-
esty, social responsibility, and rule orientation,
associated with high conscientiousness, may pos-
itively influence the number of a person’s friends,
as well as quality and stability of their relation-
ships (Jensen-Campbell and Malcolm 2007).
High conscientiousness is related to less insecu-
rity, higher social competence, and more positive
social behaviors (Jensen-Campbell et al. 2007).
Perceived similarity at higher (but not lower)
levels of conscientiousness is conducive to inter-
personal attraction (Cemalcilar et al. 2018). More-
over, high conscientiousness is associated with
willingness to spend time with relatives, who
may be chosen for close friends (Asendorpf and
Wilpers 1998).
Neuroticism
Neurotic people do not initiate a lot of interac-
tions, which might be due to their belief that they
are not liked by others (Back et al. 2011). They
struggle both with starting and maintaining rela-
tionships, because of their low self-esteem and
negative affect. Possibly due to their high self-
absorption and apparently low communion, neu-
rotic people are perceived as less likeable
(Wortman and Wood 2011). Even in the context
of social media, higher neuroticism translates into
lower interpersonal attraction among profile
viewers (Cemalcilar et al. 2018). Neurotic indi-
viduals are also likely to engage in unstable and
unsatisfying relationships. This effect might be
exacerbated by the fact that in face-to-face inter-
actions, highly neurotic individuals are attracted
to each other (Cemalcilar et al. 2018). Highly
neurotic persons experience less emotional close-
ness and higher insecurity, as well as excessive
reassurance-seeking than emotionally stable peo-
ple, which may lead to lower relationship quality
and friendship satisfaction, as well as a higher
number of conflicts (e.g., Wagner et al. 2014;
Wilson et al. 2015). Neurotic people are impul-
sive, get upset easily, have poor conflict manage-
ment skills, hold grudges, and often fail to provide
their friends with sufficient emotional support
(Mund et al. 2018). These features may easily
lead to friendship dissolution, as low investment
in a relationship is connected with its low quality.
As a result, high neuroticism is associated with
having a smaller friendship network (Harris and
Vazire 2016).
Dark Triad
The “Dark Triad,”i.e., Machiavellianism, narcis-
sism, and psychopathy, also shows links with
friendship formation and maintenance (e.g.,
Jonason and Schmitt 2012). Relatively little
research has been done in this area, and the liter-
ature on this topic is far from exhausting.
Machiavellianism
Those with high levels of Machiavellianism
attach little value to establishing close, intimate
4 Personality and Friendships
friendships (Lyons and Aitken 2010), and their
superficial friend selection criteria reflect this
low importance: Machiavellians (especially
Machiavellian women) seek physically attractive
friends (Jonason and Schmitt 2012). Such friends
might be used instrumentally to increase their
chances of meeting attractive men through
“advertisement”afforded by their physical attrac-
tiveness. Machiavellians also seek out friends
among kind persons, likely because they are
easy to manipulate and exploit. Machiavellianism
has high negative impact on relationships, as it
involves marked tendencies to distrust and manip-
ulate others, and may lead to exploitation of
another person for one’s selfish goals. It is related
to low empathy, cynicism, and self-serving social
motivations (e.g., financial success) which
increase competitiveness, as well as decrease
cooperativeness and reciprocity, tendencies that
are undesirable among friends (Abell et al.
2016). The actions of Machiavellians are rarely
connected to sincere interest in the other person,
their self-disclosures are less honest and accurate,
and, thus, their friendships suffer from low affec-
tive quality (Brewer et al. 2014). Machiavellian
women rarely show emotional support to their
friends; frequently report their friendships to be
lower in companionship, help, intimacy, and
emotional security; and often employ subtle
manipulative tactics, such as making them feel
shame or guilt. However, since Machiavellianism
is associated with hostile views, but not hostile
actions, they try to conform to friendship norms
and avoid detection of distrust and manipulations
from same-sex friends, so as to ensure their sup-
port. They may, through strategically seeking
closeness in others coupled with a lack of overt
hostile behavior, find acceptance among their
peers. Ironically, they believe that it is actually
their friends who are manipulating them, which
further lowers trust and intimacy in their relation-
ships. Machiavellians are unwilling to commit
emotionally to other people, which prevents for-
mation of strong bonds with them.
Narcissism
Highly narcissistic individuals make good first
impressions (Back et al. 2011). Those people are
charming, have fashionable appearances, display
confident behaviors, and have many stories to tell.
Their dominant-expressive behaviors, social
boldness, and being perceived as assertive help
them make friends easily (Leckelt et al. 2015);
however over time narcissists become less popu-
lar or are even actively disliked in their social
circles (Czarna et al. 2014; Czarna et al. 2016).
Even though they might use strategies to keep a
friendship going, provide some support to their
friends, spend time with them in exciting ways,
and even self-disclose (to self-promote), their
antagonistic behaviors are likely to lead the
friendship to end. Bragging, arrogance and
aggression, lack of empathy, hostility, blaming
others for one’s own failures, and perceived
untrustworthiness are difficult to accept by friends
(possibly unless one is narcissistic themselves,
Hart and Adams 2014; Maaß et al. 2016). These
characteristics have an increasingly negative
effect on narcissists’popularity over time, leading
to friends’disappointment and relationship disso-
lution (Czarna et al. 2016; Leckelt et al. 2015).
Nonetheless, narcissists are equally likely to leave
their friends –as they often report experiencing
negative interactions, perceive more transgres-
sions, and tend to distance themselves from friends
who outperform them (Nicholls and Stukas 2011).
They are likely to quickly enter new short-lasting
friendships. Thus, narcissism is linked to short-
term relations and difficulties in prolonging
friendships.
Psychopathy
Little research has been devoted to friendships of
psychopathic individuals. Common sense would
suggest that individuals who are manipulative,
dishonest, and callously insensitive to others
would not be perceived as high-quality friends.
Highly psychopathic persons tend to see them-
selves as faultless. They perceive any problems
in their relationship as the responsibility of their
partner, which may lead to the perception of poor
relationship quality. Indeed, high impulsivity, lack
of remorse for their misdeeds, and low empathy
towards other people produce complications in
relationships they form. Adult psychopaths view
relationships as unimportant and have mostly
Personality and Friendships 5
short-lived relationships in which they essentially
use people for their own purposes. There is some
evidence supporting homophily in friendships
among psychopathic individuals: they tend to
choose “volatile others,”that is, people who are
similarly unkind or untrustworthy and those with
similar values, presumably so that they can serve
as “wingmen,”making the negative consequences
of their fast life strategies less problematic
(Jonason and Schmitt 2012; Muñoz et al. 2008).
The priority in commencing such friendships
appears to be facilitation of their lifestyles and
excitement they find in the company of less agree-
able people. Research shows that among young
people, peers selected youths who were high on
psychopathic traits to be their friends nearly as
often as youths who were low on these traits,
albeit this occurred mostly for boys. Psychopathic
girls were less popular among peers and experi-
enced less reciprocation in their choices (Muñoz
et al. 2008). However, the moderate popularity of
psychopaths among those low on psychopathy
might be true exclusively among teenagers,
because adolescence is a developmental stage at
which experimentation with antisociality and
delinquent acts is more normative than at other
stages, and thus highly psychopathic peers can fit
in their social environment more easily (Muñoz
et al. 2008).
Some research suggests that aggressiveness
and rule breaking observed among young people
with disruptive behavior disorders do not exert
negative influence on quality of friendship.
Thus, those youths are still capable of building
and maintaining intimate relationships. Their
friendships are fairly stable and perceived as par-
ticularly conflicted only by the psychopathic indi-
viduals and not by their friends. The latter seem to
be willing to endure a higher level of conflict than
others would before reporting it as problematic
(Muñoz et al. 2008). Youths who show high levels
of instrumental aggression form friendships that
they report as being satisfactory, at least in the
early stages of its formation (Poulin and Boivin
2000). In contrast, those who show a more reac-
tive type of aggression, which involves impulsive
responses to perceived provocations or threats,
report low satisfaction and more conflict in their
friendships than instrumentally aggressive youths
(Poulin and Boivin 2000). The detrimental influ-
ence that high levels of psychopathy have on
friendships seems to result from lack of empathy,
rather than potentially dangerous behaviors. Indi-
viduals with psychopathic traits, lacking in empa-
thy, are likely to fail to consider the wishes of
others in their actions. They may believe that
friends are there only to please them and may
perceive others as being unsupportive when they
do not submit to their wishes.
Conclusion
Personality is an important factor that has an
impact on building friendships and is related to
differences in friendship characteristics (Laakasuo
et al. 2017). Even though it presumably explains
only a relatively small fraction of the total vari-
ance in liking ratings and has a modest predictive
power when it comes to friendship formation and
maintenance, this impact is nontrivial (Wortman
and Wood 2011). The importance of friends’per-
sonalities might in fact seem obvious to most
people. However, not all personality traits have a
substantial influence on the nature of those rela-
tionships, and a given feature may have different
impact on separate parts of friendships’dynamic.
Extraversion or agreeableness, as opposed to, e.g.,
conscientiousness, emerges as more vital in
friendship formation. Emotional stability may be
seen as an important factor helpful to maintain a
relationship. While the Big Five traits’relation-
ship to this particular social bond is relatively well
researched, more study appears to be required in
regard to the Dark Triad traits.
Are There General Rules to the Selection of
Friends?
Research consistently finds that similarity in per-
sonality is a strong predictor of friendship forma-
tion (Selfhout et al. 2010). Since personalities
have an impact on people’s everyday decisions,
the more similar two people are, the higher the
chance that they choose similar leisure activities
or work tasks. Actual location, work, or type of
education influence who people are likely to meet
6 Personality and Friendships
and with whom they can commence a friendship.
Similar day schedule and choice of leisure and
work activities lead to opportunities for meeting
people who are similar in some ways. Moreover,
perceived similarity of personalities seems to be at
least equally (if not more) important for interper-
sonal attraction as actual similarity (Cemalcilar
et al. 2018). Though similarities in more fine-
grained and specific dimensions, such as attitudes,
preferences, economic statuses, and political ori-
entation, seem to play an even more proximate
role in determining whether initial liking trans-
forms into enduring friendship or not, it can be
argued that many of those specific dimensions are
manifestations of one’s personality (Mund et al.
2018). Interestingly, similarity in the levels of
personality traits seems to play a more important
role in interpersonal attraction in face-to-face and
other interactions where reciprocity (of communi-
cation and exchange) is expected (Cemalcilar
et al. 2018). It is not nearly as important in
computer-mediated communications, including
social media and networks (such as Facebook,
Twitter, or Instagram), where users are more in
control of whether or not to further their interac-
tion or continue being an observer only.
While similarity remains one of the most com-
mon principles of friend selection, it does not by
any means explain all variance in this domain, and
there is certainly more complexity to how we
choose friends. Recently, a new exciting line of
research, one requiring refined study designs and
advanced statistical tools, started to examine how
certain combinations of personality traits of each
member of a dyad are important and how they
interactively contribute to person perception and
interpersonal attraction (Cemalcilar et al. 2018).
Are Friends’Personalities Related to the
Functions of Friendship?
Dissimilarity, when modest, does not necessitate
dislike. In the realm of interpersonal attraction, it
has been found that perceivers seek those who are
slightly but “not too much better versions”of
themselves (Cemalcilar et al. 2018). Affiliating
with such individuals who complement them-
selves but not threaten their self-evaluation pro-
vides a good balance in their strivings towards two
potentially conflicting goals (i.e., self-affirmation
and self-enhancement). While individuals gener-
ally seek to enhance their self-esteem by engaging
in upward comparison with people who are simi-
lar to themselves, there is a comfort zone for
associating with people who we perceive as better
than ourselves: perceiving others as being too
superior may be ego-deflating.
Finding a nonthreatening but advantageous
object of social comparison might be an important
but not the only or main objective of initiating
friendships. Having friends provides a multitude
of benefits, mostly via prolonged social accep-
tance, as well as emotional and physical support.
In fact, the quality of social relationships has been
found to have a tremendous impact on mental and
physical health and mortality (Wortman and
Wood 2011). Those multiple benefits of having
friends point to the functional or adaptive expla-
nations of the origins of interpersonal liking
(Wojciszke et al. 2009). Research findings linking
personality traits with liking and other aspects of
friendships are consistent with these explanations:
personality traits that are more likely to aid or
facilitate the interests of others are more strongly
associated with being liked by others and per-
ceived as attractive to potential friends. The rela-
tionships between traits and liking can therefore
be largely explained by communion (Wortman
and Wood 2011). How much a trait is liked by
others could consistently be explained by how
other-oriented that trait item is, as suggested by
Wojciszke et al. (2009).
Do Personalities of Our Friends Influence Our
Personalities?
Friendships can naturally have both positive and
negative consequences, and those frequently stem
from the personalities of people with whom one
interacts often and closely. As mentioned in the
introduction, personality traits continue to change
in the adulthood, and those changes may have
important influence on health and mortality. Expe-
riences gained in relationships and social roles can
have an enduring impact on trait development.
Personalities of our friends influence our own
personalities and behaviors. Depending on how
similar our personalities are to those of our
Personality and Friendships 7
friends, our traits can be reinforced or their
expression suppressed (Nelson et al. 2011). Such
influence can be particularly alarming in case of
friendships between individuals with less desir-
able traits, such as psychopaths. Preliminary evi-
dence suggests that, indeed, young people with
psychopathic traits might engage in antisocial acts
together, reinforcing their delinquency. On the
positive side, the same can be true to more socially
valuable traits, such as agreeableness.
How Do Personalities Influence Friendships?
Simply documenting that links exist between per-
sonality traits and experience of friendship does
not clarify the mechanisms through which person-
ality exerts its effects. More research is needed to
uncover processes through which personality
traits shape relationships with friends. The way
in which personality influences friendship forma-
tion, maintenance, and satisfaction is likely
mostly indirect (or synergistic) –via perceptions
that drive motivations, social actions, behaviors
and choices, the way people treat others, and
through activities which give them opportunities
to meet individuals interested in similar things.
More research is required to clarify these mecha-
nisms. For instance, quantity of time spent with
friends and quality of friend interactions (depth of
conversation, self-disclosure, and lack of emotion
suppression), although associated with friendship
satisfaction, failed to explain the associations
between personality traits and friendship satisfac-
tion (Wilson et al. 2015). Future research should
examine other potential interpersonal processes
that explain how personalities impact each stage
and aspect of relationships with friends, including
why some people are more satisfied with their
friendships than others.
Can We Help People Form Better Friendships?
By studying the mechanisms and processes that
account for individual differences in friendship,
we can improve our ability to help people under-
stand what may promote or impede the develop-
ment of quality friendships (Wilson et al. 2015).
As we gain better understanding of how person-
ality exerts its effects on friendship formation,
maintenance, and dissolution, we can achieve
new insights into the most relevant processes
that need to be targeted in prevention of negative
interpersonal phenomena and (therapeutic) inter-
vention to change one’s own maladaptive behav-
iors. Importantly, it may be possible to improve
individuals’lives by targeting those processes
without directly changing the personality traits
driving those processes (Wilson et al. 2015).
Cross-References
▶Big Five Model
▶Interpersonal Self
▶Loneliness
▶Manipulativeness
▶Machiavellianism
▶Narcissism
▶Need to Belong
▶Psychopathy
▶Social Connection Seeking
▶Shyness
▶Social Interaction
Acknowledgments The present work was supported by
grant no. 2016/23/G/HS6/01397 from the National Science
Center, Poland, awarded to the last author.
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