Individual development: the role of personality, social relationships, and (narrative) identity

In this presentation a model will be shown of individual life course development in which a person’s temperament or personality is assumed to interact with environmental factors, such as a person’s relationships with their parents or peers. The results of this interaction shapes the individual life course into an adaptive or maladaptive direction, sometimes leading to pathology. Data will be presented of several longitudinal studies illustrating these person-environment transactional mechanisms. Some preliminary results on the role of narrative identity in this process, and on the operationalization and measurement of narrative identity, will be presented.

Speaker:
Marcel A.G. van Aken studied developmental psychology and in 1991 defended his PhD thesis at the University of Nijmegen, on a longitudinal study on the development of competence. After a post-doc position at the Max-Planck-Institute for psychological research in Munich, Germany, and positions as assistant and associate professor at the University of Nijmegen, he moved to Utrecht University in 2001, as full professor at the Department of Developmental Psychology. His research focuses on personality development in children, adolescents, and young adults, more particular the way that transactional relations between personality characteristics and elements of the social relationships with parents and peers may result in either competence, maladaptation or personality pathology. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, and in 2018 received the ISSBD Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Research and Theory in Behavioural Development. He was editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Development (2008-2014), and president of the European Association for Developmental Psychology (2019-2021). At Utrecht University, he was Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences from 2017-2023.