INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

The nature of a personal relationship depends in part on the character istics of the participating individuals. Yet the relations between ind ividual characteristics and relationships are complex because (i) ther e are difficulties in specifying the dimensions along which individual s differ; (ii) the characteristics that an individual displays vary wi th the situation; (iii) relationships have properties that result from interaction between the participants; and (iv) the mechanisms whereby individual characteristics affect relationships are diverse. In this paper the first three of these issues are discussed briefly and a numb er of examples of the fourth are provided.