Rated importance of personal qualities across four relationships.
Are there stable personal qualities that people value in others across a range of personal and professional relationships? For 4 relationship types that varied across social and professional associations (those of "close friend," "romantic partner," "an employee of yours," and "your boss"), participants rated each of 34 personal qualities on the basis of how important it would be in selecting someone for the relationship. The author factor-analyzed the ratings of importance and created composite scores to represent the 4 factors identified (intimacy, dependability, achievement, and kindness). The author found no difference that was due to relationship type for the factor of kindness. The relationship of romantic partners received the highest ratings on the factor of intimacy. Participants rated the relationship of close friends lower than the other 3 relationships for both of the factors of dependability and achievement. The results indicated that people value some qualities the same regardless of the relationship involved, with other qualities varying in importance across these relationships. Of special interest was the tendency of participants to see stable qualities as generally less important for choosing close friends than for choosing the others in the other three relationships.
Cann
Arnie
A
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA. acann@email.uncc.edu
D000328:Adult; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012928:Social Desirability; D014481:United States