The Impact of School Environment on Personality Development in Adolescents: A Research Review

Abstract

It is not well known how a person's sexuality and personality develop in tandem, especially throughout the critical years of adolescence when sexual behaviors in close relationships become increasingly widespread. In this paper, the researcher used a variety of longitudinal studies to examine the relationship between the maturation of a person's sense of self and their sexuality from childhood through young adulthood. Those who scored higher on the extraversion scale were also more likely to engage in traditional sexual behaviors, for instance, going out on dates. However, less conventional sexual behaviors were associated with less pleasant, less conscientious, and more neurotic personalities. In addition, the researcher uncovered evidence of correlative effects, with sexual experiences being associated with increases in extraversion and neuroticism and decreases in agreeableness. There was a genetic link between sexually typical behaviors and extroversion and a genetic link between sexually specific behaviors and affective personality traits. Common environmental influences predominantly accounted for correlations between sexually non-normative behaviors and personality and sexual behaviors and attributes linked to behavioral control. These findings draw attention to two personality processes that contribute to and shape adolescent sexual development: those governed by emotion regulation through genetics and those governed by shared environmental influences on behavioral regulation mechanisms.