In plain language
Do teenage boys and girls respond differently to the personalities of their peers? For example, do girls notice which boys are dependable and kind — and does that affect how much they like them? This study followed 770 Australian students (381 boys, 389 girls) from Grade 7 through Grade 10. Students completed personality measures across the four years, and in Grades 9 and 10 they rated how well-adjusted and likeable their same-gender and opposite-gender classmates were.
Clear gender differences emerged. Girls rated boys who were conscientious, agreeable, and low in psychoticism (i.e., not callous or antisocial) as better adjusted — they clearly knew who the trouble-prone boys were. Boys, by contrast, were largely uninfluenced by these same traits when rating girls. Intriguingly, although girls could identify the less prosocial boys, this knowledge had no reliable effect on how much they actually liked them. Both boys and girls rated same-gender peers as better adjusted when they were conscientious and low in psychoticism, and both genders liked extraverts of the opposite gender more than extraverts of their own gender.
The authors discuss possible explanations, including parental investment theory (females may be attuned to detecting prosocial traits in males as potential long-term partners) and the idea that social dominance associated with extraversion may be an asset in opposite-gender relationships but a liability in same-gender ones. The findings show that adolescent peer judgments are systematically shaped by both the rater's and the target's gender.
Key findings
- Girls rated highly conscientious boys as more adjusted, whereas boys' ratings of girls were essentially unrelated to girls' conscientiousness (significant effects ranged from r = .27 to .41; the corresponding effects for boys rating girls were near zero).
- Girls rated high-psychoticism boys as less adjusted; boys showed no such pattern when rating girls.
- Girls consistently rated agreeable boys as more adjusted (four of four correlations significant), while boys largely did not (one of four).
- Although girls could identify the low-conscientiousness, high-psychoticism "bad boys," this knowledge did not reliably influence how much they liked those boys.
- Both boys and girls rated same-gender peers as more adjusted if they were high in conscientiousness or low in psychoticism.
- Both genders preferred opposite-gender extraverts over same-gender extraverts and rated only opposite-gender extraverts as more adjusted.
How to cite
APA
Ciarrochi, J., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2009). A longitudinal study into the link between adolescent personality and peer-rated likeability and adjustment: Evidence of gender differences. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 978-986. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.08.006
BibTeX
@article{ciarrochi2009longitudinal,
author = {Ciarrochi, Joseph and Heaven, Patrick C. L.},
title = {A Longitudinal Study into the Link between Adolescent Personality and Peer-Rated Likeability and Adjustment: Evidence of Gender Differences},
journal = {Journal of Research in Personality},
year = {2009},
volume = {43},
pages = {978--986},
doi = {10.1016/j.jrp.2009.08.006}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.