Why, How, and When? Factors Predicting Romantic Involvement in Emerging Adulthood: An International Perspective

Chair: Inge Seiffge-Krenke, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz
Discussant: Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Clark University

Abstract
The developmental pathways to adulthood are changing in many Western industrialized countries. Traditional markers like leaving home, marrying, and starting a career no longer follow a standard sequence, are becoming less absolute, or are occurring at later ages. Nevertheless, young people are expected to engage successfully in intimate, affectionate, and deep relationships of longer duration. However, not all emerging adults show a growing commitment to long-term partnerships. This symposium analyzes the psychological processes that might affect variations in romantic development by linking it to a rich theoretical framework and by referring to different cultural backgrounds. More specifically, it explores how former experiences in close relationships within the family, with friends and romantic partners set the stage and serve as models for later romantic outcome. Notwithstanding the centrality of former relational experiences, the research presented demonstrates that individuals' identity and personality during the adolescent years are important for consolidating the nature and quality of emerging adults' romantic relationships. Further, the importance assigned to partnership and family-related goals are predictive for later romantic involvement and quality. The findings of these longitudinal studies, based on data sets from Finland, Israel and Germany and covering a time-span of 5 to 15 years, converge in demonstrating that no single, general trend captures the romantic development of all young people and that successful development entails the ability to negotiate and balance self-definition with interpersonal relatedness.

Presentation 1
Romantic Development During Emerging and Young Adulthood: The Impact of Interpersonal Goals

Authors: Katariina Salmela-Aro, Kaisa Aunola, Jari-Erik Nurmi, University of Jyvaskyla

Abstract
Life-span theories on motivation assume that personal goals play an important role in the ways in which people direct their own development. A longitudinal study on 297 Finnish participants examined how emerging adults’ goals related to friendship, partnership, family and child-related change as they progress from emerging to young adulthood, whether such goals predict their subsequent role transitions and life-events. Results show that over time, young people disengaged from goals related to friendship and engaged in goals related to steady partnerships, having a family and raising children. The more family-related goals they had, the earlier they married, started to cohabitate and had children.

Presentation 2
Personality, Relational experiences and Subsequent Romantic Relationships Among Emerging Adults

Authors: Shmuel Shulman, Yaara Livne, Tamuz Barr, Bar Ilan University; Golan Shahar, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Abstract
Emerging from an action-theory perspective, we demonstrate that personality plays a role in the consolidation of emerging adults' romantic relationships above that of former relationship experiences. A four wave longitudinal design assessed the personality make-up and quality of close relationships of 175 Israeli emerging adults. Self-criticism in contrast to balanced self-definition and interpersonal relatedness (Blatt, 2004) predicted less involvement in (or pseudo) intimate romantic relationships, more negative romantic events, and less elaborated representations of their partner. As such, the interplay between personality and relational systems during emerging adulthood and their respective role in subsequent romantic relationships will be discussed.

Presentation 3
Does Identity Precede Intimacy? An Eriksonian Approach to Romantic Development in Emerging Adulthood

Authors: Wim C. J. Beyers, Ghent University; Inge Seiffge-Krenke, Joahnnes Gutenberg- University Mainz

Abstract
A famous theory, based on Eriksonian roots, states that healthy identity development is a precursor of intimacy in romantic relationships. Using data from a longitudinal study on 93 German adolescents, we tested whether ego-development in early adolescence predicts intimacy in emerging adulthood. Second, in line with current theorizing, we examined whether secure attachment in late adolescence mediates this link. Results revealed that early ego-development (age 14) is carried over in later ego-development and identity (age 24), through secure attachment representations (age 19), and to intimacy in close relationships at age 25. However, this model is different for males and females.