European Journal of Personality, Eur. J. Pers.

29: 125137 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.1989

Why Not Everyone Gets Their Fair Share of Stress: Adolescents Perceived
Relationship Affection Mediates Associations Between Temperament and
Subsequent Stressful Social Events
O. M. LACEULLE1,2*, B. F. JERONIMUS2, M. A. G. VAN AKEN1 and J. ORMEL2
1

University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Utrecht University, Developmental Psychology, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Abstract: Temperamental differences are associated with subsequent stressful life events, a phenomenon that has in
part been attributed to evocation. However, we remain ignorant about the mechanisms that mediate this process. In
the current paper, we test whether differences in perceived relationship affection accounted for part of the prospective association between temperament and stressful social event evocation in three social domains, viz. parents, peers
and romantic partners. Data were derived from the Tracking Adolescents Individual Lives Survey, a large population
cohort of Dutch adolescents (n = 1158). Parent-reported adolescent temperament and adolescents perceived affection were assessed at age 11 years. Stressful social events that occurred between age 11 and 16 years were captured
using the event history calendar. Results indicate that adolescents evoke subsequent stressful social events based on
their temperament, and that this association is partially mediated by perceived affection. Importantly, we found evidence for both generic and domain-specic associations, which indicates that social domains are related yet distinct.
Taken together, the ndings suggest that a search for mediating variables may be a promising way to increase our
understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the social stress selection principle, and that perceived relationship
affection is one of the candidates. Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology
Key words: temperament; perceived affection; stressful events; adolescents; prospective study

Individuals may evoke life events based on individual characteristics and are therefore active agents of their own development (Caspi & Shiner, 2011; Neyer, Mund, Zimmermann
& Wrzus, 2013). These social selection and evocation processes have strong empirical support (Kendler & Baker,
2007; Vinkhuyzen, Sluis, Geus, Boomsma & Posthuma,
2010), but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Part of the prospective association between temperament and stressful life events may be mediated by third
variables, but hitherto, it remains unknown what kind of factors we are looking for, how they manifest themselves, how
they are constituted or where they are to be found. In this
study, we test whether individual differences in perceived relationship affection mediate the prospective association between temperament and the evocation of stressful social
events in adolescents. A demonstration of mediation by perceived relationship affection could propel the exploration
and understanding of the mechanisms that drive the social selection principle.

Temperament and stressful social events

Individual differences are thought to be particularly salient
during adolescence, because this period is characterised by
*Correspondence to: Odilia M. Laceulle, ICPE, University Medical Center
Groningen, University of Groningen, 9713 GZ Groningen, The Netherlands.
E-mail: o.m.laceulle@umcg.nl

Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

environmental changes and shift of focus and attachment

from parents to peers (Caspi & Moftt, 1993; Cyranowski,
Frank, Young, & Shear, 2000). Hallmark of adolescence is
social change, including the selection of a rapidly expanding
peer network, which, in contrast to family and early childhood (dyadic) peer relations, is not shaped by parental
socialisation (Back et al., 2011; Neyer et al., 2013; Selfhout
et al., 2010; Wrzus, Hnel, Wagner, & Neyer, 2013). Additionally, romantic relationships emerge. These romances
can be rather intense and function as a socialising agent that
can affect subsequent development and identity formation,
for example, via consensual validation or reality conrmation via comparison of perceptions (Collins, Welsh, &
Furman, 2009; Simon, Aikins, & Prinstein, 2008). Adolescents start to perform social roles at multiple stages, in interaction with either parents, peers or romantic partners. Each of
these stages can enable stressful social events, for example,
conicts, ghts and relationship termination (Furman &
Buhrmester, 1992; Furman & Shomaker, 2008; Lempers &
Clark, 1992).
Not all adolescents seem equally prone to evoke such
stressful social events. These differences are partly accounted
for by individual differences in temperament or personality
(Harris, 2009; Kandler, Bleidorn, Riemann, Angleitner, &
Spinath, 2012; Kendler & Baker, 2007; Vinkhuyzen et al.,
2010; Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Prospective twin studies
showed that emotionally instable (versus stable) individuals
are more often exposed to subsequent stressful events and,
Received 31 July 2014
Revised 2 February 2015, Accepted 9 February 2015

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O. M. Laceulle et al.

additionally, are also more sensitive to the inuence of

stressful events (Middeldorp, Cath, Beem, Willemsen, &
Boomsma, 2008; Riese et al., 2014). These processes are often referred to as the corresponsive principle (Jeronimus,
Riese, Sanderman, & Ormel, 2014; Roberts, Caspi, &
Moftt, 2003). Other studies showed that high (versus low)
extraversion and conscientiousness were related to fewer
stressful social events (Ldtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy,
2011) and high neuroticism to smaller declines in family
conict (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001), low family support
(Windle, 1992) and more romantic relationship conict
(Caspi, Bem, & Elder, 1989; Jeronimus, Ormel, Aleman,
Penninx, & Riese, 2013; Robins, Caspi, & Moftt, 2002).
In our Tracking Adolescents Individual Lives Survey
(TRAILS) sample high (versus low) frustration, low effortful
control and high intensity pleasure and afliation and low
levels of shyness were related to more stressful life events
over adolescenceboth social and other events such as
house moves and illnesses (Jeronimus, Riese, Oldehinkel,
& Ormel, 2015, Laceulle, van Aken, Ormel, & Nederhof
2014). Evidence thus suggests that emotional instability
and to some extent also conscientiousness and extraversion
predisposes individuals for more stressful social events.
Mechanisms underlying temperamental effects on
subsequent social stressful events
Although support for evocation of stressful social events increases gradually, the mechanisms that underlie this process
remain largely speculative. Possibly, temperament shapes
the way adults interact with children and the activities in
which children choose to participate (Harris, 2009; Shanahan
& Flaherty, 2001). This, in turn, may affect stressful social
events children experience, such as peer rejection (Hay,
Payne, & Chadwick, 2004). Negative affective temperaments
also predict increases in problems and exacerbate the effects
of other risk factors (Moran, Lengua, & Zalewski, 2013;
Rothbart & Bates, 2007). When children navigate into adolescence, their ability to inuence their environments increases. Consequently, it seems plausible that temperament
becomes more predictive of stressful social events in various
domains, for example, in interaction with parents, peers and
romantic partners.
Temperament has been suggested to modulate cognitive
and affective-emotional processes (Chan, Goodwin, &
Harmer, 2007; Furman & Buhrmester, 1992) that colour
how adolescents perceive their world, a process called environmental construal (Caspi & Shiner, 2011; Rothbart,
2011). Additionally, the way we look at ourselves and the
world around us is believed to develop from early childhood
onwards based upon our interpersonal interactions and mental imaginations of how we believe others perceive us (i.e. the
looking glass self; Cooley, 1902; Fraley, 2002; Harris,
1995, 2009). These belief systems, in turn, affect how adolescents perceive and experience their relationships with
others and navigate in their social worlds (Caspi & Shiner,
2011; Hartup & Laursen, 1999; Rothbart, 2011; Soto, John,
Gosling, & Potter, 2008). It is possible that an individuals
perception of his or her relationships becomes a self-fullling
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

prophecy when perceptions become internalised and inuence subsequent transactions with the social environment in
which the individual lives and grows (Beam & Turkheimer,
2013) and thus leads them to construct relationship realities.
Differences in temperament may therefore explain both the
active process of self-construction (a process of
internalisation of perceptions) as well as how adolescents
create trajectories for themselves as a response, which may
shape how they are seen by others (an externalisation
process).
Indeed, previous research provided some support for the
idea that temperament modulates adolescents perceptions
of their affective relationships with others (Branje, Van
Lieshout, & Gerris, 2007; Hagemeyer, Neyer, Neberich, &
Asendorpf, 2013; Rothbart, 2011). In addition, evidence
has been found that peoples perceptions of their relationships with others can inuence the course and functioning
of their relationships (see for a review Bradbury & Fincham,
1990). For example, Sroufe (1990) suggested that individuals
who expected to be rejected also behaved in ways that made
rejection from others more likely. Also, anxious expected rejection predicted social anxiety and withdrawal, while angry
expected rejectionan established predictor of aggression
antedated decreased social anxiety (London, Downey,
Bonica, & Paltin, 2007). Both anxious and angry expectations predicted increased loneliness (London et al., 2007),
and individuals who expected to be rejected, those who
scored high (versus low) on rejection sensitivity, seemed
more likely to break up (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, &
Khouri, 1998). Perhaps, subjective expectations and perceptions form a process chain that underlies part of the prospective association between temperament and stressful life
events. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, however,
and to our knowledge, environmental construal (or internal
working models more general) as a mechanism underlying
the association between temperament and subsequent stressful social events have not been tested by means of sophisticated
mediation
models.
We hypothesise that
temperamental differences lead to differences in perceived
affect, which in turn result in the evocation of stressful social
events. Specically, in the current study, we tested whether
perceived relationship affectionthat is, adolescents subjective experience of care, protection, comfort and approval provided by signicant others (i.e. parents, peers)mediates the
prospective association between temperament and stressful
social events. For example, we tested whether individuals
high (versus low) on temperamental frustration are more
likely to perceive low relationship affection, because high
frustration may be related to more anger, frustration and
withdrawal, resulting in more conicts with signicant
others. We feel such evidence can bolster future aims to disentangle the extant factors that converge into the social selection principle.
Current study
To recapitulate, in the current study, we verify whether adolescents perceived relationship affection mediates the association between adolescent temperament and evocation of
Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Temperament and stressful social events

stressful social events (see Figure 1 for a conceptual model).
Perceived relationship affection is not introduced as a novel
theoretical construct but as a measure for subjective interpretations of social interactions in functional terms (e.g. instrumental and emotional support), alike perceived social
support, perceived rejection and felt (in)security.
We studied temperamental facets that often are considered
to be part of the broader personality domains of neuroticism,
extraversion and conscientiousness, because these traits have
been found to show most consistent associations with psychopathology (Kotov, Gamez, Schmidt, & Watson, 2010). For
emotional instability, we included two traits (fear and frustration), for extraversion three traits (afliation, shyness and
high intensity pleasure) and one trait related to conscientiousness (effortful control). However, because these higher-order
domains are not clearly structured over adolescence, we only
report upon the facet traits and refrain from usage of the
higher-order dimensions themselves.
The major changes in social environments during adolescence render it important to differentiate between the domains
in which stressful social events take place (Furman &
Buhrmester, 1992; Harris, 2009). Moreover, the interpretation
of meaning of affectionate behaviours may be relatively stable
within social groups across social contexts but differ across social groups, which we therefore might compare. In this study,
we distinguish between the parental domain (e.g. conict
with parents, running away and being thrown out of the
parental home), the peer domain (e.g. friendship termination
after a ght or argument, being bullied) and the romantic
relationships domain (e.g. breaking up after a relationship
or being dumped). Subsequently, we examined whether
perceived affection mediates the prospective association
between temperament and stressful social events. To test
for spill-over effects between different social domains, we
examined mediation effects of both perceived parental
affection and perceived peer affection in the associations

127

between temperament and stressful social events in the

parental, peer and romantic partner domain.
In line with previous studies, we hypothesised that adolescents low (versus high) on effortful control (H1a), high
(versus low) on frustration (H1b) and high on afliation or
intensity pleasure and low on shyness (H1c) experience
(evoke) more subsequent stressful social events. Based on recent ndings on the data used in the current study, it is
hypothesise that fear does not predict subsequent stressful
events (Laceulle et al., 2014). Additionally, we hypothesised
that prospective associations between temperament and subsequent stressful social events are partially mediated by perceived relationship affection (H2). More specic, we
hypothesised domain-specic associations, viz. perceived
parental affection as the primary mediator of stressful social
event evocation effects in the parental domain (H3a) and perceived peer affection as the mediator of stressful social event
evocation effects in the peer domain (H3b). Lastly, we tested
whether associations between temperament and subsequent
stressful social events in the romantic partner domain were
mediated by perceived either parental or peer affection.

METHODS
Sample
The TRAILS is a large prospective cohort study of Dutch
adolescents, who are followed biennially or triennially from
11 to at least 25 years of age. The present study involves data
from the rst and third assessment wave. The study was
approved by the Dutch Central Committee on Research
Involving Human Subjects. Written informed consent was
collected from the parents at Wave 1, whereas for Wave 3,
written informed consent was obtained from both parents and
adolescent. At Wave 1, 2230 preadolescents (50.8% girls)

Figure 1. A theoretical model of how the prospective effect of temperament on stressful social events is divided over direct effects and mediation via perceived
parental and peer affection.

Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)

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O. M. Laceulle et al.

enrolled in the study (response rate, 76.0%) of whom, 1816

(response rate 81.4%, 45.3% girls) participated in Wave 3.
At Wave 1, the mean age of the adolescents enrolled in the
study was 11.09 years (SD = 0.56). At Wave 3, the mean
age was 16.13 years (SD = 0.59). Prerequisites to be included
in the current study were that, at Wave 1, parents had lled
out the temperament questionnaire and adolescent the perceived affection list, and that, at Wave 3, the adolescents
were interviewed with regard to stressful social events. This
resulted in a total number of 1158 adolescents participating
in the current study. No differences were found between
responders and nonresponders with respect to teacher ratings
of problem behaviours and in the associations between
socio-demographic variables and mental health indicators.
We examined whether individuals who were interviewed
about exposure to life events differed from those who were
not interviewed on the temperament and afliation scales at
age 11 years. To facilitate comparisons, partial 2 measures
of effects were computed. The effect sizes for being
interviewed were all smaller than 0.01, which can be
interpreted as negligible effects (Cohen, 1992). Although
we observed slightly higher attrition (p < .05) for children
with low scores on effortful control and afliation, effect
sizes were negligible (partial 2 = 0.002 and 0.003), and our
results seem not seriously biassed. A detailed description of
the sample selection, procedures and methods can be found
in De Winter, Oldehinkel, Veenstra, Brunnekreef, Verhulst
and Ormel (2005).
Procedures
At baseline, well-trained interviewers visited one of the parents
or guardians (preferably the mother, 95.6%) at their homes.
Parents were asked to ll out a written questionnaire, including
questions about the childs temperament. Children were
asked to ll out questionnaires on perceived afliation in
school. When adolescents were 16 years old, children were
interviewed at a central facility in the childs home area by
well-trained interviewers to collect life-event data.
Measures
Temperament
Child temperament was assessed at age 11 with the short
form of the parent version of the Early Adolescent Temperament QuestionnaireRevised (EATQ-R; Hartman, 2000;
Putnam, Ellis, & Rothbart, 2001). The following six scales
were distinguished: (i) fear (negative affect related to anticipated pain or distress, ve items, Cronbachs = .63);
(ii) frustration (negative affect related to interruption of ongoing tasks or goal blocking, ve items, = .74); (iii) shyness
(slow or inhibited approach and/or discomfort in social situations, four items, = .84); (iv) effortful control (capacity to
control attention, activation and inhibition, 11 items,
= .86); (v) afliation (desire for and pleasure in warmth and
closeness with others, six items, = .66); and (vi) high intensity pleasure (pleasure or enjoyment related to high stimulus
intensity or novelty, six items, = .77). Answers were rated
on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = almost always untrue to
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

5 = almost always true). Higher values indicated a higher

presence of the temperamental trait concerned. Eight-week
testretest stability of the parent-reported EATQ-R scales
has been found to be moderate to good, ranging from 0.69
for high intensity pleasure to 0.85 for frustration (Muris &
Meesters, 2009).
Stressful social events
Stressful social events were captured at age 16 years using
the event history calendar (EHC), a data collection method
for obtaining retrospective data about life events and activities developed by Caspi et al. (1996) and colleagues. For
the present study we adapted the calendar into an interview
on several life domains that lasted about 45 minutes. Participants were asked about events that occurred since baseline
(i.e. between ages 1116). Detailed and accurate data about the
events could be collected by proceeding serially from one life
domain to another and using a month-by-month horizontal
timeline. For example, with regard to school, adolescents
were asked by the interviewer, respectively, about the dates
of changing school, changing class, repeating class, as well
as about their educational levels for the subsequent years.
Testretest reliability has generally been found to be reasonable to good [respectively, 7287% in a sample of young
adults (Freedman, Arland Thornton, Camburn, Alwin, &
Young-DeMarco, 1988) and >90% in a sample of adolescents (Caspi et al., 1996)]. Construct validity of the EHC
was investigated in a comparative study by Belli and colleagues (2001), showing reasonable correlation coefcients
between a written questionnaire and the EHC (ranging from
0.63 to 0.79).
For the current study, we selected all stressful social
events assessed in the parental, peer and romantic domains.
Stressful social events were dened as time-discrete events
likely to bring about a major change in social or relationship
status (cf. Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Luhmann, Orth, Specht,
Kandler, & Lucas, 2014). Stressful events in the parental
domain included being thrown out of the parental home
(n = 20), having a serious ght (n = 92) and running away
from home (n = 52). Stressful events in the peer domain included losing a good friend because of a ght or argument
(n = 128) and being bullied (n = 256). Stressful events in the
romantic partner domain included being dumped (n = 204)
and breaking up (self) after a relationship (n = 538). Intercorrelations between the various events were rather low, ranging
from r = .001 for the correlation between losing a good friend
because of a ght or argument and being dumped to r = .215
for the correlation between having a ght serious ght with
family members and running away from home. For this
study, three event variables were constructed indicating the
number of events the adolescents experienced in the respective domains. With regard to the conicts with parents, being
exposed to two (n = 20) and three (n = 3) events were merged
and recoded as 2 events.
Perceived affection
Child-rated perceived parental and peer affection were measured at age 11 using two scales based on the Social Production Function (SPF) theory (Nieboer, Lindenberg, Boomsma,
Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)
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Temperament and stressful social events

& Van Bruggen, 2005). The SPF asserts that well-being can
be measured in terms of universal goals, viz. affection, behavioural conrmation, status, comfort and stimulation
(Ormel, Lindenberg, Steverink, & Vonkorff, 1997). Perceived affection from parents (i.e. an aggregated measure
of perceived paternal and maternal affection, each four items,
e.g. he/she likes being with me, = .84 for paternal affection and = .78 for maternal affection) and perceived affection from classmates (four items, e.g. my classmates enjoy
being with me, = .84 ) were measured with ve-point
scales, with answer categories ranging from 1 (never) to 5
(always). No testretest data of the SPF list are available.

Statistical analyses
Variables were transformed into z-scores for both the correlation and mediation analyses. Subsequently, we examined the
direct effects of temperament on subsequent stressful social
events, as well as, the possible mediating role of perceived
parental affection and perceived peer affection in these associations, as outlined in Figure 1. Three mediation analyses
were performed for each of the six temperament traits, one
for each of the stressful social event domains (i.e. parents,
peers and romantic partners). Perceived parental affection
and perceived peer affection were entered simultaneously in
the analyses, resulting in a total of 18 analyses. All mediation
analyses were controlled for gender using the single multiple
mediation method proposed by Preacher and Hayes (2008).
The theoretical model of the prospective association between temperament and stressful social events in Figure 1
shows a direct effect on stressful social events (path c) and the
direct effect when the indirect path is controlled for (path c).
The relationships between temperament and the two mediators are gured through path a1 and path a2. The effects of
the two mediators on stressful social events are gured
through path b1 and b2. The total indirect paths from
temperament to stressful social events are the sum of the
two mediators. Testing a single multiple mediation model
(rather than separate simple mediation models) has the advantage of allowing intercorrelations between the respective
mediation variables (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). Additionally,
a single multiple mediation model enables us to quantify the
extent to which perceived parental affection mediates the
effect of temperament on stressful social events, conditional
on the presence of perceived peer affection (and vice versa).
The linear regression technique is known to remain valid when
the dependent variable violates the normality assumption in a
sample of our size (Li, Wong, Lamoureux, & Wong, 2012).
However, to ensure the robustness of our results, we
bootstrapped all linear regression analyses (k = 1000 with bias
corrected condence intervals) to obtain asymptotic 95%
condence intervals around the indirect effects using the SPSS
(IBM Inc., Armonk, NY, USA) macro developed by Preacher
and Hayes (2008). Condence intervals not including zero
reect signicant indirect effects. To enable comparison with
other literature, we converted some results to Cohens d
(standardised effect sizes), based on formulas derived from
Borenstein (2009) and Peterson (2005). To reduce family-wise
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

129

alpha ination, we only interpreted correlations that were

signicant at p < .01.

RESULTS
Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics for the unstandardized variables are reported in Table 1. Table 2 presents correlations between the
six temperament traits, perceived affection by parents and
peers and stressful social events in the three domains. We refrain from using higher-order dimensions (e.g. neuroticism
composed from fear and frustration) because the higher-order
domains could not be clearly distinguished in adolescents
(Table 2, cf. overlap between frustration and effortful
control).
Direct effects and (partial) mediation
Most temperamental traits showed a direct prospective pathway to stressful social events. Adolescents high on frustration and low on effortful control were more likely to
experience stressful social events in the parental and peer
domain but not with romantic partners. Adolescents high
(versus low) on intensity pleasure, low (versus high) on
shyness and low (versus high) on afliation were more likely
to experience stressful social events in the romantic partner
domain but not with parents or peers. Only fear was unrelated to subsequent stressful events in all three domains.
Lower parental affection was observed for adolescents
high (versus low) on frustration and low (versus high) effortful control and afliation. Lower perceived peer affection
was reported for adolescents high (versus low) on frustration
and shyness or low on effortful control and afliation.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the unstandardized variables
Temperament
Fear
Frustration
Afliation
Shyness
High intensity pleasure
Effortful control
Perceived parental affection
Perceived peer affection
Events parents
0 events
1 event
2 events
Events peers
0 events
1 event
2 events
Events romantic relations
0 events
1 event
2 events
Gender
Female
Male

Min

Max

Mean

SD

1196
1196
1196
1197
1194
1197
1162
1183
1197
1059
115
23
1197
849
312
36
1197
574
504
119
1197
660
537

1.00
1.00
1.50
1.00
1.00
1.09
3.00
2.00
0

4.60
4.80
5.00
5.00
5.00
5.00
10.00
10.00
2

2.41
2.77
3.89
2.51
3.30
3.28
8.64
7.41
0.13

0.71
0.65
0.55
0.86
0.93
0.69
1.27
1.40
0.39

0.32

0.53

0.62

0.66

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O. M. Laceulle et al.

Table 2. Correlations between the study variables

1. Fear
2. Frustration
3. Afliation
4. Shyness
5. High intensity pleasure
6. Effortful control
7. Perceived parental affection
8. Perceived peer affection
9. Events parents
10. Events peers
11. Events romantic partners

.30***
.08**
.14***
.25***
.23***
.04
.03
.05
.07*
.01

2.
.19***
.12***
.06
.37***
.13***
.13***
.12***
.07*
.02

3.

.29***
.15***
.12***
.14***
.16***
.01
.05
.07*

4.

.29***
.01
.00
.06
.02
.02
.11***

5.

.09**
.01
.00
.04
.03
.14***

6.

.12***
.10***
.13***
.07*
.02

7.

8.

.46***
.06
.06
.01

.00
.06*
.08**

9.

.09**
.14***

10.

.00

Note: *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Perceived affection, in turn, predicted stressful social events.

More perceived parental affection predicted less subsequent
stressful events in the parental domain and in the romantic
partner domain and more perceived peer affection predicted
less subsequent stressful events in the peer domain but more
events in the romantic partner domain. Although path coefcients varied slightly across the temperament models (i.e. associations between perceived affection and stressful events
were estimated in each of the univariate temperament
models), they did not differ in any meaningful matter dependent on which temperament trait was included in the model
(Figure 2 shows the path coefcients for events in the romantic partner domain). Furthermore, high levels of perceived affection predicted fewer subsequent social stressful events. In
sum, the observed associations varied across temperament
traits, stressful social event domains and types of perceived
affect (mediators).
Our bootstrapped regression models (Table 3) showed
that several of the associations between temperament and
stressful social events were mediated by perceived relationship affection. Perceived parental affection mediated the associations between frustration, afliation and effortful

control and later stressful social events in the romantic partner domain. That is, higher levels of frustration, lower levels
of afliation and lower levels of effortful control were all related to less perceived parental affection, which in turn predicted more stressful social events in the romantic partner
domain. Also, perceived parental affection mediated the associations between afliation and stressful social events in
the parental domain. So, lower afliation was related to less
perceived parental affection, which, in turn, predicted more
stressful social events in the romantic partner domain.
Perceived peer affection mediated the associations between, respectively, frustration, afliation, shyness and effortful control and stressful social events in both the peer
and romantic partner domain. That is, higher levels of frustration and shyness and lower levels of afliation and effortful control were related to less perceived peer affection,
which, in turn predicted more stressful social events in the
peer domain, but less in the romantic partner domain. No mediation effects were found for the associations between, respectively, fear and high intensity pleasure and any of the
social domains. All signicant mediation effects had a rather
small-effect size (between d = 0.10 and 0.15).

Figure 2. Standardised path coefcients for the direct paths. Path coefcients of the associations between affection and stressful social events varied slightly
across models.

Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)

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Temperament and stressful social events

Table 3. Bootstrap results for indirect relationships (bias-corrected
and accelerated condence intervals (CIs))

Fear Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer affection
Fear Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
Fear Events RoPa
Parental affection
Peer
Frustration Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer
Frustration Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
FrustrationEvents RoPa
Parental affection
Peer
Afliation Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer
Afliation Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
Afliation Events Ropa
Parental affection
Peer
Shyness Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer
Shyness Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
Shyness Events RoPa
Parental affection
Peer
High Int Pl Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer
High Int Pl Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
High Int PlEvents RoPa
Parental affection
Peer
Eff Contr Events Pa
Parental affection
Peer
Eff Contr Events Pe
Parental affection
Peer
Eff ContrEvents RoPa
Parental affection
Peer

Boot

SE

Lower
95% CI

Upper
95% CI

.002
.000

.003
.001

.010
.002

.001
.004

.001
.001

.002
.003

.009
.009

.001
.003

.002
.001

.003
.003

.010
.005

.001
.010

.009
.003

.005
.005

.001
.013

.021
.006

.004
.009

.005
.005

.005
.000

.015
.022

.009
.013

.005
.005

.001
.028

.023
.005

.009
.001

.005
.005

.023
.009

.001
.011

.005
.011

.005
.006

.017
.026

.004
.001

.010
.013

.005
.005

.022
.005

.002
.025

.001
.001

.002
.003

.003
.007

.007
.005

.000
.006

.002
.004

.001
.001

.007
.017

.001
.007

.002
.004

.003
.017

.007
.001

.000
.000

.002
.001

.005
.002

.005
.004

.000
.001

.002
.003

.003
.009

.003
.002

.000
.002

.002
.003

.005
.004

.005
.010

.006
.001

.005
.003

.17
.004

.001
.008

.003
.005

.004
.003

.013
.014

.004
.000

.007
.008

.004
.004

.018
.001

.001
.017

Note: Events Pa, events in the parental domain; Events Pe, events in the peer
domain; Events RoPa, events in the romantic partners domain.
Bold emphases show signicant associations. SE = Standard Error.

Post-hoc analyses
Multiple post-hoc analyses were performed to test the robustness of our results. First, the effects of temperament on
stressful social events in the romantic partner domain were
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

131

repeated in the subgroup of adolescents who reportedly were

involved in at least one romantic relationship between age 11
and 16. Second, we tested all temperamental effects for each
of the individual stressful events. Third, multivariate mediation analyses were performed in which all temperament traits
were entered simultaneously to test for (the mediation of) the
independent effects of each temperamental facet adjusted for
the effect of all other facets. Finally, nonparametrical Spearman partial rho tests were performed as an extra robustness
check (next to our bootstrap procedure) because our dependent variables were non-normally distributed.
Adolescents involved in a romantic relationship
All signicant associations between temperament and stressful events in the romantic partner domain disappeared in the
much smaller sample of adolescents who reported at least
one romantic relationship between age 11 and 16 (n = 703;
Supplementary material Table S1).
Single-event analyses
Analyses for all single events in Supplementary material
Table S2 showed that high (versus low) fear predicted running
away from home (parental domain) and being bullied (peer
domain). High (versus low) frustration predicted ghts with
parents and running away from home (parental domain) and
being bullied (peer domain). Adolescents high (versus low)
on shyness were less likely to have a ght with their parents
(parental domain) and less likely of being dumped or breaking
up a relationship (partner domain). Adolescents high (versus
low) on surgency were more often thrown out of the parental
home and were more often dumped or broke up their
romantic relationship (partner domain). Finally, adolescents
high (versus low) on effortful control reported fewer serious
ghts with parents and running away from home (parental
domain) and were bullied less (peer domain). Most mediation
paths by perceived relationship affection remained signicant
(Supplementary material Table S2).
Multivariate analyses
Multivariate analyses were performed in which all temperament traits were entered simultaneously to examine the effects of temperament traits adjusted for all other traits.
Analyses showed that only part of the associations found in
the univariate analyses remained in the multivariate analyses.
Most importantly, the indirect effects of frustration and afliation on stressful events via perceived affection remained
when adjusting for the other temperament traits. In contrast,
the effects of shyness and effortful control disappeared, suggesting that these were not robust when adjusting for other
traits. Model statistics are reported in Supplementary material Table S3.
Nonparametric tests
Finally, nonparametrical Spearman partial rho tests supported the results of our univariate analyses and showed
both the direct effects of temperament on stressful events
occurrences and mediation of these associations by perceived parental and/or peer affection (Supplementary material Table S4).
Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)
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O. M. Laceulle et al.

DISCUSSION
In this paper, we used data from a large cohort of adolescents
and two waves to test whether adolescents perceived relationship affection mediates part of the prospective association between adolescent temperament and stressful social
event evocation. Our results support the hypothesis that temperamental differences are manifested in differences in
stressful social event evocation, in line with previous research. Our study innovated by the observation that perceived relationship affection mediates a modest part of this
association. In other words, temperaments colour the way adolescents perceive received affection, which, in turn, inuences the probability of subsequent stressful social events.
Our distinction between three social domains (i.e. parents,
peers and romantic partners) yielded support for both generic
and domain-specic effects, which exemplies the challenge
of isolating mechanisms behind the stress selection principle.
After having summarised our main ndings, these will be
discussed in more detail subsequently.
Temperament and subsequent stressful social events
Low levels of effortful control (H1a) and high levels of frustration (H1b) were predictive of more subsequent social
stressful events, in line with our hypotheses. Interestingly,
this held only true for the parental and peer domain; stressful
social events in the romantic partner domain were predicted
by high levels of intensity pleasure and afliation as well
as low levels of shyness (all traits related to the broader personality domain of extraversion). Fear was not predictive of
stress in any of the domains.
The observation that patterns were different for peers and
romantic partners might be somewhat surprising insofar
those relationships between peers and romantic partners are
often seen as more comparable than between parents and romantic partners (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992; Furman &
Shomaker, 2008; Hartup, 1989). However, it might be that
above and beyond the similarities between peer and romantic
partner relations, peer relations have some resemblance with
parental relations in the sense that they have both developed
over years. Romantic relationships, in contrast, can develop
(and nish) rather suddenly during adolescence. Consequently, temperament traits that are undesirable in social interactions (e.g. high frustration) may be more visible for
parents and peers who know the adolescent for years,
whereas adolescents may inhibit frustration-related behaviours in the presence of their new romantic partner. This
may explain why adolescents high on frustration may evoke
stressful social events in the parental and peer domain but not
the romantic partner domain.
Similarly, adolescents high on effortful control may be
more reliable in their friendships with peers and easier to their
parents and may therefore be less likely to evoke stressful social
events in these contexts. In contrast, effortful control may not
be of much importance in the newly developingand often
only short-termromantic relationships adolescents have. This
interpretation aligns with observations by Furman (2002), who
suggested that parentchild relationship characteristics as
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

perceived by the adolescent were related to both (i) childpeer

relationship characteristics as perceived by the adolescent and
(ii) childromantic partner relationship characteristics as perceived by the adolescent, although the latter two were (at least
for some relationship characteristics) unrelated.
Stressful social events in the romantic partner domain were
predicted by low shyness and afliation and high intensity
pleasure, traits that are all related to the broader personality
dimension of extraversion. Adolescents high on extraversion
evoked more stressful events with romantic partners (in line
with hypothesis H1c) but not with parents and peers. Hence,
extraversion (being out-going, sociable etc.) seems more inuential when engaging with romantic partners than in the
more persistent relationships with parents and peers. This is
consistent with evidence that high (versus low) extravert adolescents engage more in romantic relationships (e.g. Ldtke
et al., 2011; Neyer & Lehnart, 2007; Specht, Egloff, &
Schmukle, 2011). It therefore seems plausible that low extravert adolescents evoke less social stressful events in the romantic partner domain simply because they are not so much
involved yet in romantic relationships (a oor effect). Biserial
correlations indeed showed that high afliation and surgency
and low shyness predicted the presence of romantic relationships between age 11 and 16, while fear, frustration and
effortful control were unrelated (Supplementary material
Table S5).
However, it seems unlikely that the more frequent engagement of extraverted adolescents in romantic relationships explains all of the variance, because they probably
interact more with romantic partners and with their peers.
The cardinal features of high extraversion are social attention
and a larger impact on ones social environments in general
(Larsen & Buss, 2013; Nettle, 2007). Previous research indeed showed both quantitative and qualitative differences
in social interactions between high-extraverted adolescents
(Berry & Hansen, 1996). Given that we did not nd an association between traits related to extraversion and subsequent
stressful social events in the peer domain, it seems plausible
that extraverts have not just more but also other (i.e. more intense) interaction with romantic relationships than their less
extravert peers. It seems that adolescents high on extraversion had more frequent and more intense interactions with romantic partners than adolescents whom were more reticent,
resulting in both more positive and negative events. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the association between temperament (shyness, afliation and high intensity pleasure)
and stressful events disappeared in post-hoc analyses in the
subgroup of adolescents who reported at least one romantic
relationship between age 11 and 16. Although this seems to
be (partly) due to power issues, caution is needed when
interpreting the effects of temperament on events in the romantic partner domain.
Perceived affection: an intrapsychic characteristic with
real-world consequences
We proposed that the prospective association between temperament and subsequent stressful social events would be
partially mediated by perceived relationship affection (H2).
Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Temperament and stressful social events

Indeed, perceived relationship affection mediated several of
the associations between temperament and stressful social
events. This nding may propel the exploration of other factors that can account for part of the association between temperament and stressful event evocation, because we showed
that mediation studies have the potential to provide insight
in the mechanisms underlying the stress selection principle.
Such insights may enable clinicians to craft prevention strategies that alleviate stress-related psychopathology. More
specically, our results suggest that perceived relationship
affection mediated part of the studied associations. Moreover, although small, the observed effect sizes of the various
paths are in the range of the average observed in psychology
(Richard, Bond Jr., & Stokes-Zoota, 2003; Roberts, Kuncel,
Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007).
Our results align with the interpretation that individuals
develop internal working models based on their temperamental characteristics, which, in turn, modulates adolescents
perceptions of their affective relationships with others, as
outlined in the introduction. Hence, perceived relationship
affection, a rather complex intrapsychic characteristic, can
have real-world consequences in terms of subsequent stressful social events. This is reminiscent of studies that showed
that preconceptions of a future identity (also an intrapsychic
inuence) can already change temperament (or personality)
in anticipation of future social roles (Wood & Roberts,
2006a, 2006b). Moreover, the ndings conrm and extent
previous research showing that peoples perceptions of their
relationships with others (e.g. expected rejection) can become a self-fullling prophecy when people start behaving
in ways (e.g. withdrawal and aggression) that elicit stressful
social interaction (e.g. conicts, rejection and breakup; see
Bradbury & Fincham, 1990; Downey et al., 1998; London
et al., 2007; Sroufe, 1990).
Domain specicity and spill-over effects
We hypothesised that mediation by perceived relation affection would be largely domain-specic (H3). Indeed, parental
affection was the primary mediator of temperamental stressful
social event evocation in the parental domain (H3a), whereas
perceived peer affection mediated the evocation of stressful
events in the peer domain (H3b). Perceived parental affection
mediated part of the association between afliation and events
in the parental domain, but surprisingly, no effect was found
for the other temperamental traits. Although perceived affect
may be conceptually most akin to afliation, the association
between afliation and perceived parental affection was not
much stronger than it was for frustration or effortful control.
Moreover, afliation was rated by the mother, whereas levels
of perceived affection were based on adolescents self-report,
which may limit the overlap between both concepts.
With regard to perceived peer affection, several mediation effects were found. Adolescents lower on frustration or
shyness and/or higher on afliation or effortful control reported more peer affection, which, in turn, predicted less subsequent stressful social events in the peer domain. This
suggests that, as hypothesised, adolescents perceived affection received from their peers is important in the association
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

133

between temperament traits and events in the peer domain.

Notably, for both frustration and effortful control, no direct
effects were found on stressful social events in the peer domain. This indicates that perceived peer affection mediates
part of the stress-evocation effects of frustration and effortful
control, whereas extraversion-driven evocation effects tend
to be more independent of perceived affection.
Because perceived romantic partner affection was not
measured in our study, we explored spill-over effects of parental and peer affection on stressful event selection in the romantic partner domain. Findings suggested some spill-over
effects. Adolescents lower on frustration and/or higher on
afliation or effortful control reported more affection from
parents and peers, which, in turn, predicted subsequent stressful social events in the romantic partner domain. Whereas more
perceived parental affection predicted fewer events in the romantic partner domain (in line with the negative association
between perceived parental affection and events in the parental domain), more perceived peer affection predicted more
events in the romantic partner domain (a positive association,
diametrical to the negative association between perceived
peer affection and events in the peer domain). Possibly romantic partners and peers compete for the adolescents attention (Furman & Shaffer, 2003; Laursen & Williams, 1997;
Zimmer-Gembeck, 2002), which may explain part of the
negative association between peer affection and events in
the romantic relationship. Moreover, the spill-over effects of
perceived parental affection to the romantic domain may
reect that young adolescents use their perceptions of their
parents to guide their behaviour in interaction with their (rst)
romantic partners (Linder, Crick, & Collins, 2002).
Yet, and as mentioned earlier, we have to interpret the
mentioned spill-over effects with caution. Besides that they
did not hold in the post-hoc analyses where we examined the
associations only for those adolescents who reported at least
one romantic relationship between age 11 and 16, we were
unable to include perceived romantic partner affection, while
part of the observed spill-over effects may reect overlap between the perceived parental, peer and romantic partner affection, which might disappear when a measure of
perceived romantic partner affection was included. Clearly,
additional research is warranted elaborating on perceived parental and peer affection with perceived romantic partner affection and can test our explanations of the alleged spill-over
effects we observed.
Finally, multivariate analyses were performed to test the
robustness of the indirect effects when adjusting for all other
traits. Results showed that the effects of afliation and frustration remained in these more conservative analyses, bolstering the robustness of the ndings. However, this was
not true for the indirect effects of shyness and effortful control disappeared, which suggests that these ndings resulted
from their co-occurrence with the other traits, and these results should therefore be interpreted cautiously.
Strengths and limitations
Among the strengths of our study was our usage of a large
sample of adolescents and data from different informants.
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O. M. Laceulle et al.

Parents rated the adolescents temperament. Perceived affection was measured using adolescents self-report data. The
stressful social events were captured using a semi-structured
and sophisticated interview method, which provided information both on the nature and the timing of the event. Retrospective self-reports of stressful events have inherent
limitations because of response components that may be inuenced by current mental state, such as cognition, appraisal,
interpretation and recall. However, this was addressed in our
study by asking the participant to proceed serially from one
life domain to another using a month-by-month horizontal
timeline and under supervision of the interviewer. This
method is known for providing detailed and accurate data
about the events (Caspi et al., 1996; Freedman et al., 1988).
In addition, we were able to distinguish between three domains of stressful social events: parents, peers and romantic
partners. This allowed us to differentiate between generic
and domain specic with regard to both direct and indirect
effects. Finally, to test the robustness of the ndings, we
tested all temperamental effects for each of the individual
stressful events. The direct, as well as, most mediation paths
by perceived relationship affection remained signicant,
bolstering the robustness of the ndings presented.
Despite these strengths, the study is limited in several
ways. First and most important, we found evidence for mediation of several temperaments to stressful social event associations by perceived relationship affection, but all effects
indicated only partial mediation. Moreover, the effects revealed were all very small. It would be interesting to examine
whether they would hold when including constructs related
to perceived affection, such as social support, attachment
style or rejection sensitivity. Unfortunately, however, we
did not have this data available. Nevertheless, research in
older adolescents showed that felt insecurity mediates the
associations between personality (i.e. attachment style) and
relationships with romantic partners (Sadikaj, Moskowitz,
& Zuroff, 2015). Additionally, Finn and colleagues (2013)
showed that relationship-specic interpretation bias can explain part of the association between personality (i.e. neuroticism) and relationships with romantic partners.
A related issue is that convergent mechanisms may underlie the association between temperament and stressful social events. For some of the paths, we found indirect but no
total effects. As discussed extensively by Preacher and Hayes
(2008), total effects are no statistical prerequisite for the existence of indirect effects. It might be, for example, that other
mediation processes work in the opposite direction thereby
leading to the lack of an overall effect (Kfner, Nestler, &
Back, 2013). These observations thus stress the need for future research, and clearly, other extant variables may account
for additional variance. Although beyond the scope of the
current study, future research may identify other and potentially stronger factors in the domain of information processing
and add other-reported mediators and outcomes. For example, parent-reported parenting styles, cognitive characteristics
reported by the adolescent, parent or teacher might be important mediators to consider. Indeed, elsewhere, in the current
special issue, evidence has been provided bolstering the
importance of cognitive characteristics by showing that oral
Copyright 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

uency partially mediates the associations between extraversion and sociometric popularity (Ilmarinen, Vainikainen,
Verkasalo, & Lnnqvist, 2015). Other mechanisms suggested
to underlie the association between personality and subsequent peer relations are interpersonal motives and behaviours
(Ackerman & Corretti, 2015).
Second, and as mentioned earlier, we included three domains of stressful social events in our study but had only
measures of perceived affection in the parental and peer domain. As discussed previously, this makes interpretation of
the current spill-over effects difcult. Third, it might be that
temperament is not only related to an adolescents perceived
relationship affection but also to the absolute amount of affection he or she receives. Future research including a measure of perceived affection as well as a more objective
measure of actually received affection (maybe even a behavioural measure) may help to disentangle this issue. Fourth,
our study may be limited by the timing of the perceived affection measures. In an optimal mediation design, the mediator is assessed in between the predictor and outcome
variable. In our study, perceived affection was measured simultaneously with temperament. Consequently, we cannot
be conclusive about the direction of the association between
temperament and perceived affection. However, our research
question did not t very well to the classic mediation approach. By measuring perceived affection in-between temperament and stressful life events, we would either include
stressful social events that happened before the measurement
of the mediator, or have to exclude all events that occurred in
this period, leaving us with a black-time-box lled with
events not taken into account.
Related to the direction of the association between temperament and perceived affection is the direction of the relationship between temperament and stressful events. As
proposed by the social selection principle, individuals may
evoke stressful events based on their temperament. However,
the opposite is also true, and exposure to stress has been
found to be related to (non-normative) changes in temperament (Laceulle, Nederhof, Karreman, Ormel, & van Aken,
2012). The corresponsive principle explicitly accounts for
these bidirectional associations between temperament and
stressful events, postulating that change in temperament
results from mutually reinforcing personenvironment transactions, including both social selection and social inuence
(i.e. temperament can affect stress exposure and stress can
affect temperament; Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005;
Jeronimus et al., 2014; Riese et al., 2014). A recent study
on the TRAILS data supported the corresponsive principle,
although the effect varied between the different temperament
traits (Laceulle et al., 2014). Whereas stressful events were
found to predict subsequent fear, stressful events were predicted by but not predictive of shyness and afliation. For effortful control and frustration, a fully reciprocal model was
found. Consequently, future research may explore what
makes frustration and effortful control different, and further
research including multiple waves of temperament, perceived affection and stressful social event data may allow
for more detailed test of mediation and shed more light on
the causal order of the various associations.
Eur. J. Pers. 29: 125137 (2015)
DOI: 10.1002/per

Temperament and stressful social events

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, in this study a model was tested in which we
proposed that adolescent perceived relationship affection mediates the association between adolescent temperament and
evocation of stressful social events in three social domains
(parents, peers and romantic partners). Findings indicate that
individuals may evoke subsequent stressful social events
based on their temperament and that this associations is partially mediated by adolescents perceived relationship affection. The observed effect sizes were small but ranged
around the average in psychology. This suggests that a
search for third variables may be a promising way to learn
to understand the mechanism that underlie the stress selection principle and that perceived relationship affect may be
one of the candidates.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is part of the TRAILS. Participating centres of
TRAILS includes various departments of the University
Medical Center and University of Groningen, the Erasmus
University Medical Center Rotterdam, the University of
Utrecht, the Radboud Medical Center Nijmegen, and the
Parnassia Bavo group, all in the Netherlands. TRAILS has
been nancially supported by various grants from the
Netherlands Organization for Scientic Research (NWO;
Medical Research Council Programme grant GB-MW 94038-011; ZonMW Brainpower grant 100-001-004; ZonMw
Risk Behaviour and Dependence grants 60-60600-98-018
and 60-60600-97-118; ZonMw Culture and Health grant
261-98-710; Social Sciences Council medium-sized investment grants GB-MaGW 480-01-006 and GB-MaGW 48007-001; Social Sciences Council project grants GB-MaGW
457-03-018, GB-MaGW 452-04-314 and GB-MaGW 45206-004; NWO large-sized investment grant 175.010.2003.
005); the Sophia Foundation for Medical Research (projects
301 and 393), the Dutch Ministry of Justice (WODC), the
European Science Foundation (EuroSTRESS project FP006), and the participating universities. We are grateful to
all adolescents, their parents and teachers who participated
in this research and to everyone who worked on this project
and made it possible.
SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found in the
online version of this article at the publishers web-site.

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