ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises on the importance of the mutual influences between relationships and the social situation and between relationships and individual characteristics. Developmental psychologists have inevitably had a much greater interest in the dialectic between personality and relationships. In research on the influence of a child’s relationships on the development of his or her personality, the propensities of the individuals concerned are properly assessed in the context of the relationship in question. The social situation affects relationships through norms that influence the conventions and expectations of the participants. The social behaviour of individuals is affected by the relationships in which they participate. Children’s behaviour in school could have been assessed from the frequencies with which they exhibited particular kinds of behaviour with all others. Comparing particular types of behaviour between home and school provided little evidence that the children’s behaviour in school was similar to that at home or similar to that which their mothers showed to them at home.
