Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what made you become interested in personality psychology?
Over the past decade, I have been conducting research on well-being and personality, and how these characteristics change, be it over time or by deliberate practice. How people differ from each other, how these differences co-occur, and how they might develop have always been of particular interest to me, and I consider these aspects crucial to our general understanding of psychology. In my PhD, I aimed at studying how well-being can be fostered through simple online interventions and which factors could increase the effectiveness of these interventions. Currently, I am working at the University of Basel and we are studying whether relationship transitions (i.e., entering or leaving a partnership) go along with personality transitions, and whether personality predicts such transitions.
When I learned that interventions aimed at fostering well-being were more effective in people with heightened beliefs in the malleability of well-being, this triggered my interest in the individual differences of beliefs, which was first presented in; (https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12338).
Q: Can you give us a brief summary of the paper recently published in EJP “The Role of Relationship Beliefs in Predicting Levels and Changes of Relationship Satisfaction” and what made you study this?
In the study I mentioned earlier, beliefs in the degree that something like well-being is unchangeable or malleable can be developed to some extent. I think this is particularly intriguing, partly because beliefs seem to predict longitudinal trajectories but, at the same time, are more or less independent from traditional personality dimensions such as the Five-Factor Model of personality (i.e., the “big five”). Further, it has been suggested that such beliefs themselves could be addressed and fostered in interventions, making them important candidates for practical applications in many fields.
Since beliefs of malleability are also considered in romantic relationships, this seemed like a very interesting area to study the longitudinal effects of these beliefs. Specifically, in romantic relationships we considered whether participants consider relationships to be meant to be or not (“destiny beliefs”) or whether they think that relationships can be cultivated (“growth beliefs”). The two beliefs (destiny and growth) are separate dimensions and only show weak negative correlations, suggesting that people who report high growth beliefs do not necessarily report low destiny beliefs – it’s not an “either-or” question. On average, relationship satisfaction tends to decrease over time (https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000342) and relationship beliefs are interesting candidates for factors that might prevent this trend (https://10.1073/pnas.1917036117).
In the paper, we studied over 900 couples in a romantic relationship over the course of two years. Couples were asked about their satisfaction with their relationship and about their relationship beliefs. Our results suggested that those with higher destiny beliefs were more satisfied with their relationship at the beginning of the study. Over time, relationship satisfaction decreased on average. However, this decline was weaker for those with stronger growth beliefs.
The same effect also occurred the other way around: Those who were happier at the beginning of the study with their relationship also tended to report increases in growth beliefs over time, suggesting that relationship satisfaction and relationship beliefs are interconnected. Further, growth beliefs also went along with a more positive outlook on the future development of the relationship: People who believed that relationships can be cultivated to a greater extent more often expected future increases in their relationship satisfaction.
Q: How would you describe this if you were explaining it to a friend at a pub?
In romantic relationships, relationship satisfaction generally tends to decrease over time. However, how we think about love can shape our satisfaction. People who believe that “love is meant to be” are more satisfied with their relationship than those who do not, but this belief does not protect them from becoming less satisfied with their relationship over time. However, for those who consider “love to grow with effort”, relationship satisfaction goes down less strongly over time and they have better future expectations for their relationship.
Q: What impact does work like this have on the personality psychology field?
Our work provides further evidence that individual differences in specific beliefs can be relevant, contemporaneously and longitudinally, and argues for further examinations of different beliefs about the world. For example, Clifton et al. (2019; https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000639) identified 26 different generalized beliefs about the world (e.g., believing that the world is harmless vs. dangerous, or that the world is improvable vs. hard to improve). So far, the longitudinal effects of such beliefs have rarely been examined, but it is possible that they play a role in how we approach challenges and develop.
Q: Where would you like to see research on this area go next?
Intervention studies that try to alter (growth) beliefs in romantic couples would be highly interesting. Convincing people that relationships can be cultivated and teaching them some ideas on how to do so could, if effective, provide evidence for a causal association between beliefs and relationship satisfaction. It could also lay the ground for practical applications in couples therapy.
Q: What helped you when you started out as a researcher, that you think may help other early career researchers?
It’s difficult to say, but it was probably important for me to have enough time, resources, and freedom to play around and try different things (including stupid and pointless things), and being able to share and develop ideas with other interested people – as these are all things that have strongly fostered my curiosity and joy.