Social interaction during pubertyPositive Communication Experiences Increase Self-EsteemDoing the Research series

21 December 2023, by Anna Priebe

Photo: pexels/Olia Danilevich

They all think I’m an idiot— don’t they? The project SNAP—Social Interaction and Adolescent Personality headed by Prof. Dr. Jenny Wagner and Eva Bleckmann from the Institute of Psychology are looking at how adolescents perceive interactions and the role personality plays. They are observing participants in their daily lives.

Dealing with adolescents going through puberty is considered tricky, but it is exactly at this stage of their lives that they are interested in social interactions. What are you looking at?

Wagner: Research shows that this phase is generally not so conflict-laden and difficult. Most adolescents handle this period with relative ease. At the same time, we should mention that from the perspective of developmental psychology, this phase is very exciting because there are a lot of changes: cognitively, individually, and with regard to identity-formation and social relationships. Adolescents increasingly turn away from their parents while their peers become more and more important. So it is clearly important to better understand how these relationships can be formed and this is where our research starts.

Bleckmann: We are primarily interested in how certain personality traits reveal themselves in such social interactions, meaning for example how extroverted or easy-going someone is. Why is it easier for some people to socially interact and make friends and why does it cause more stress for others? We are looking very concretely and in detail at what happens in an interaction and asking the participants to observe themselves and others.

What age group are we talking about?

Bleckmann: A total of 300 adolescents between 14 and 18 took part in the SNAP study. In this phase, self-assessments of personality traits are already pretty stable and reliable so that we can see effects in interactions. At the same time, however, cognitive development has advanced enough that perceptions of the self and others is more complex than in younger age groups.  

Wagner: We know from previous studies that for kids of 10, 11, or 12 self-reflection can still be very hard. Personality at this age is less stable. This is why we decided on a group as of 14— 14 to 18 is a relatively short period, but adolescents at this stage are still very different in their development. There can be substantial differences in perception between a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year old girl. And we are consciously taking that into account.

How is the research structured?

Bleckmann: In the study, young people took part in a structured interaction. We had actually planned to invite the test subjects to our interaction lab. They would have come together in small groups, introduced each other, and then solve a task together. This didn’t work thanks to corona, so we created the interaction via Zoom. Between the individual tasks, we asked the participants several times how they were doing and how they perceived themselves and others. In total, there were about 80 groups of 3 to 5 adolescents.

What did you find out about the effects of social interactions on personality and vice-versa?

Bleckmann: Many different things. For example, we didn’t just ask in the social interactions how the kids evaluated themselves and each other but rather about the “meta-perception:” what do you think the others think about you and how does that affect you? In our analyses, we look at, among other things, how these meta-perceptions and actual perceptions on the part of the interaction partners fit together—do the adolescents think, for example, that they aren’t liked even though that’s not true? For us, it’s interesting whether these differences go together with personality traits. I looked at this intensively in my dissertation.

Wagner: We can already see that the adolescents’ personalities and their perception of the interaction significantly impact one another. Talkative adolescents who like to meet people have positive expectations for conversations. Adolescents with higher degrees neuroticism, that is, who are more afraid, engage in interactions with less positive expectations.

Regardless of these basic attitudes, all participants generally showed a positive tendency over the course of the exchange: happy experiences in the situation, meaning a smile or nodding agreement, also inspire positive developments in the meta-perception if someone is generally more afraid.

What can we use the results for?

Wagner: We generally do primarily basic research and want to better understand perceptions and interaction dynamics. Our knowledge is also potentially helpful, however, for dealing with adolescents—at school or at home. Our studies often look at self-esteem, which has proven important throughout the entire life cycle in different contexts, such as physical health or professional success. We are now showing in our research how individual social interactions go together with self-esteem and how it develops.

For example, we can show adolescents more clearly that the meta-perception—meaning what I think others think about me—does not have to be accurate, which long-term can have a positive effect on self-esteem. We also consider and show how personality influences this perception. We can also engage the adolescents in a conversation about this.

This is true beyond the lab: you also observed the adolescents’ daily lives. How did that work?

Bleckmann: After the meeting via Zoom, we sent the participants a link to a short questionnaire every day for 2 weeks that they then completed. We asked, for example: How were today’s social interactions? Who did you talk to? How did you feel about it? We want to compare these data with the findings from the lab and see if there are fluctuations for individuals over time. The differences between the participants also became clear.

With adolescents, we do not use cell phones as comprehensively as in other areas of psychology research

Does technological development, for example the smart phone, create more scientific possibilities?

Wagner: Everyday research has already been conducted for years. Previously, test subjects received proper diaries in questionnaire format that they had to fill out and send back in to researchers. Naturally, it was very time-consuming.

So we can say 100 percent that cell phones have radically changed and simplified these procedures because today, everyone carries their cell phones with them. And of course this also changes how we think about everything we can ask or investigate. Because we are working with adolescents, we do not use cell phones as much as we do in other areas of psychological research.

So far, we’ve been sending several text messages a day or use an app for filling out a form, but of course the devices could do a lot more. For example, you can record a sound every 30 seconds to document who is talking to whom. Movements in terms of GPS coordinates can also be recorded, like the other cell phones in the area. There are a lot of possibilities that we do not yet use extensively at the moment to protect the adolescent participants.

What can the young people take away from all this?

Bleckmann: We did not give feedback to every individual participant or whether the others liked them or not or whether their perceptions were accurate. Our test subjects are, of course, at a very sensitive age and peer feedback is especially important. It simply wouldn’t be ethically acceptable to say, “you’re right, the others think you’re an idiot.”

However, we did get the feedback that even self-reflection helped the adolescents, that is, thinking about their own perceptions. Additionally, we offered an opportunity for voluntary self-reflection focusing on which personality traits you might like to change in everyday social situations— for example, arguing less or becoming more assertive or more self-confident. Together with the adolescent test subjects, we developed a plan for tackling these issues and then sent them reminders throughout 2 weeks so that they could implement their plans in their everyday lives.

Thus far, the question about whether someone wants to change their personality has been asked more often in research with adults. This is the first time we have explored this with adolescents and we see that they also reflect to the extent that they can say how they would like to change their personality and/or the behavior that results.

What next?

Bleckmann: It should be said that studies on social interactions—especially in lab settings—have previously been primarily conducted with students. With adolescents, there have been only few studies and many aspects have barely been studied. For example, we asked what difference it makes for adolescents if they have social interactions with an individual stranger or in a group.

The question about digital vs. analog is also interesting. We know from the research to date that there are differences between virtual and personal face-to-face interactions. Many effects reveal themselves in both settings, however, for example the increase in self-esteem following a positive interaction. Because online interactions, however, are becoming more and more significant, it is naturally all the more important to understand how these settings differ precisely.

Wagner: These findings could show where digital settings might be able to help people practice social interactions. Here we could raise awareness with further research that in this context, skills can be learned that are also valuable outside the digital world or even prepare people for later professional careers in an increasingly digitalized world. We are focusing on the research topic of digital interactions in a newly established research group led by informatics.