Mission Statement
The team in the Educational Psychology and Personality Development division deals with the development of personality and social relationships from adolescence to late adulthood.
People differ in their experience, feeling and behavior, i.e. in their personality. In our research, we deal with the question of possible causes and consequences of personality and personality development over the life span. There is a particular interest in the role of social contexts with very different levels of resolution. Social interactions are a big part of our everyday life, whether at the bakery, in the family or at school. The resulting social relationships represent a significant development context over the entire lifespan. Therefore, our research pays particular attention to the role of social factors, with a distinction between three focus areas that differ in the specificity of social interactions and relationships: Examine in the first focus we individual social interactions in the laboratory and in everyday life. We pursue the goal of making quantitative statements about the characteristics of interactions and their interaction with personal characteristics in different interaction settings with video and software support. In the second focus, we deal with individual existing social relationships with parents, friends, teachers or partners and their interaction with changes in personality and self-esteem. The third focus of our research is the consideration of broad social development contexts such as school, university or professional life. In longitudinal studies, we examine the effects of these contexts on individual development processes in terms of personality, performance, well-being and motivation, as well as on their differential interaction over time.