Agreeableness refers to a tendency to be compassionate, generous, cooperative, and empathetic in social situations rather than suspicious or antagonistic. Rather than being Machiavellian and overly concerned about one’s own self-interests, people who score highly on agreeableness traits tend to place more trust in others and have a much more positive view of human nature. Given its potential importance to the study of social relationships, agreeableness has received increasing attention. Indeed, it has long been proposed as one of the five basic dimensions of personality, with the others including conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, and neuroticism (see McCrae and Costa 1987, 1997). As with other personality traits, agreeableness is thought to be relatively stable across development, as one of the most enduring personality dimensions (Roberts and DelVecchio 2000), but not with some changes, as agreeableness has shown to increase as people age (see Branje et al. 2007). Given...
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Agreeableness. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_509
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