Personality, Identity and Relationships Development of Adolescent Sojourners

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Residential mobility (i.e., moves that either are permanent or temporary, deliberate or forced) has become one of the major challenges to individual life management in the 21th century. For example, international student exchanges are highly valued already among adolescents. Using a prospective control group design (with integrated diary study), this projects sets out to study the consequences of staying abroad (for about 1 year) for the development of personality, identity and social relationships in adolescence. It will be investigated, which personality and identity characteristics predispose adolescents for moving abroad (selection effects), which consequences sojourning has on subsequent individual development (socialization effects), and which mediating role social relationships (family vs. peers, home vs. host, offline vs. online, strong vs. weak ties) may play (mediation effects). Furthermore, the dynamic interplay between personality and identity development in the sojourning context will be examined (transaction effects). This project adds to the understanding of general personality development in adolescence and sheds light on a social phenomenon that becomes increasingly relevant at all stages of the human life course.