Wiebke Bleidorn

Tilburg University | UVT · Department of Developmental Psychology

Personality traits predict a broad range of life outcomes, including relationship success, educational attainment, and health. As many people have the desire to change some aspects of their personality, volitional personality change (VPC) – self-directed trait changes in the direction of personal change goals – has recently gained increasing attent...

Life events have been theorized to elicit personality trait changes. However, the empirical evidence for event-related personality development remains inconclusive. Even comprehensive reviews and meta-analyses are limited by the availability of effect sizes, the control for relevant confounders, and the examination of the temporal unfolding of effe...

How does informal care affect caregivers’ well-being? Theories and existing research provide conflicting answers to this question, partly because the temporal processes and conditions under which different aspects of well-being are affected are unknown. Here, we used longitudinal data from Dutch, German, and Australian representative panels (281,88...

Blood donation, posthumous organ donation, and bodily donation to science are key forms of health-related philanthropy that support healthcare in ways that paid or coerced labor cannot fulfill. Theory suggests that personality traits may predict differences in health-related philanthropy, though the available evidence has been mixed. This meta-anal...

Objective Eating is often a social activity that can be influenced by others, particularly in close relationships when dietary preferences reflect underlying value differences. We sought to examine the personality traits of meat‐eating couples who differ in their preferences for meat. Method We recruited Swiss romantic couples in which one partner...

Life events have been theorized to cause personality trait changes. However, people differ in their personality trait trajectories after experiencing important life events. Although several studies have examined the sources of these individual differences, a replicable set of variables explaining individual differences in the reaction to major life...

Life events have been theorized to cause personality trait changes. However, people differ in their personality trait trajectories after experiencing important life events. Although several studies have examined the sources of these individual differences, a replicable set of variables explaining individual differences in the reaction to major life...

Personality traits are well-established predictors of social functioning, but contemporary models of personality distinguish between personality traits and self-understanding, including reflecting on one’s mental states and the degree of coherence in the self-concept. This study examined whether self-understanding serves as a unique predictor of so...

Do people of different socioeconomic status (SES) differ in how they see themselves on the Big Two self-concept dimensions of agency and communion? Existent research relevant to this theoretically and socially important question has generally been indirect: It has relied on distant proxies for agentic and communal self-concepts, narrow operationali...

Daily events like a relationship conflict, a work-related success, or a pleasant meeting with a friend can significantly influence people’s well-being and mental health. To fully understand their psychological effects, different theories stress that people’s subjective perception of daily events must be considered. However, a systematic examination...

Objetivo: A pesar de los beneficios comprobados de la vacunación, las personas difieren en su disposición a vacunarse. Estas diferencias son el resultado de múltiples factores, incluyendo variables sociales, culturales y psicológicas. Este metaanálisis estimó los efectos de los Cinco Grandes rasgos de personalidad de las personas en sus actitudes,...

There is evidence that people with higher self-esteem tend to have more satisfying sexual relationships, but little is known about how changes in people’s self-esteem and sexual experiences are related over time. Several theories predict reciprocal effects between self-esteem and sexual experiences. The present study tested these theories using 12-...

Personality development theories and descriptive evidence highlight young adulthood as a period conducive to personality change. Young adults experience important transitions, such as starting university education, and establish new relationships. However, few empirical tests of the direct influence of university student peer groups on individual c...

Volitional personality change interventions have been shown to help people change their current personality towards their ideal personality. Here, we address three limitations of this literature. First, we contrast the dominant theoretical perspective of self-improvement with self-acceptance as pathways to reduce the discrepancy between current and...

People generally go on vacation to improve their life satisfaction. However, the association between life satisfaction and leisure travel is poorly understood, partly because of methodological limitations in previous research. In the present study, we examined the longitudinal association between life satisfaction and leisure travel using data from...

Stress generation refers to a phenomenon in which individuals contribute to the generation or exacerbation of stressors in their own lives. Several psychological variables have been linked to the experience of stressful events. However, a profound understanding of the process of stress generation is still missing. In this article, we outline how th...

Do people of different socioeconomic status differ in how they see themselves on the Big Two self-concept dimensions of agency and communion? Existent research relevant to this theoretically and socially important question has generally been indirect: it has relied on distant proxies for agentic and communal self-concepts, narrow operationalization...

Personality traits drive people’s financial decisions and hence affect their lives. Yet, we know little about the relationship between personality traits and insurance decisions. Do Risk-Taking, the Big Five and Locus of Control predict a variety of personal insurance decisions? Using a sample of 14,624 German adults with the goal of identifying as...

Personality traits predict a broad range of life outcomes, including relationship success, educational attainment, and health. As many people have the desire to change some aspects of their personality, volitional personality change (VPC) – self-directed trait changes in the direction of personal change goals – has recently gained increasing attent...

Men tend to eat more meat than women, but it is not clear why. We tested three hypotheses in a cross-cultural design (20,802 individuals in 23 countries across four continents): that gender differences are (a) universal, (b) related to gender roles and thus weaker in countries with higher gender equality and human development, or (c) related to opp...

There is evidence that many people want to be less neurotic, that neuroticism can be changed through intervention, and that these changes can have important consequences for individuals’ lives. The potential utility of neuroticism interventions hinges on a thorough theoretical understanding of effective change mechanisms, though. To guide the devel...

Do people become more different or more alike in their personality across the lifespan? Despite the theoretical and practical relevance of this question, relatively little is known about how individual differences in personality traits – typically assessed as their variance – develop across the lifespan. Existing meta-analyses on personality develo...

There is evidence that people with higher self-esteem tend to have more satisfying sexual relationships, but little is known about how changes in people’s self-esteem and sexual experiences are related over time. Several theories predict reciprocal effects between self-esteem and sexual experiences. The present study tested these theories using 12-...

Personality and psychopathology have generally been regarded as distinct aspects of human behavior, largely studied by researchers from different disciplines. However, an established body of research shows a common structure for personality and psychopathology phenotypes. This evidence has led to significant changes in how psychiatric problems are...

Environments shape people, and at the same time, people are attracted to environments that fit their characteristics because fit facilitates the achievement of people’s desired life outcomes, such as relationship satisfaction, work success, and well-being. In this article, we outline how persons and environments can fit, the relevance of fit and mi...

A substantial rise of vote shares of Green parties across European countries suggests an increasing support of environmental issues. A critical question for researchers and policymakers alike is, who endorses Green parties? Here, we examined the Big Five personality predictors of green partisanship, voting behavior, and party switching in a nationa...

Objective: Despite the proven benefits of vaccination, people differ in their willingness to get vaccinated. These differences are the result of multiple factors, including social, cultural, and psychological variables. This meta-analysis estimated the effects of people’s Big Five personality traits on their vaccination attitudes, intentions, and b...

The present study examined the size and possible sources of life satisfaction differences between immigrants and natives in a sample of over 55,000 adults (aged 50+ years) across 16 European countries and Israel. Consistent with theory and prior research, immigrants reported lower life satisfaction than natives on average, while the size of the lif...

Self-esteem and depression are important predictors of a range of societally relevant outcomes and are theorized to influence each other reciprocally over time. However, existing research offers only a limited understanding of how these reciprocal dynamics of self-esteem and depression unfold across different time scales. Using three datasets with...

The last 2 decades have witnessed increased research on the role of life events in personality trait development, but few findings appear to be robust. We propose that a key to resolving this issue is incorporating individuals’ subjective experiences into the study of event-related development. To test this, we developed and administered a survey a...

Men tend to eat more meat than women, but it is not clear why. We tested three hypotheses in cross-cultural design (20,966 individuals in 23 countries across four continents): that gender differences are a) a function of biological differences in dietary needs and are thus universal, b) related to gender roles and thus weaker in countries with high...

People who are real are able to express how they truly think and feel and what they truly want even when there is social pressure not to. Previous research suggests that realness is associated with better social functioning and adaptive personality traits including lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. However,...

There is robust evidence that people with higher incomes tend to have higher self-esteem, but little is known about how changes in income and self-esteem are related within individuals. Some theories predict that increased earnings lead to higher self-esteem, others that increased self-esteem leads to higher earnings, and still others that there sh...

Since the new millennium, research in the field of personality development has focused on the stability and change of basic personality traits. Motivational aspects of personality and their longitudinal association with basic traits have received comparably little attention. In this preregistered study, we applied bivariate latent growth curve mode...

While there is some evidence for changes in personality traits, life satisfaction, and self-esteem as a function of life events, effects have been small and inconsistent across studies. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we summarize the available evidence on personality change in response to life events using data from 44 studies, including 89 s...

Objective: Meat consumption has a host of serious negative consequences for nonhuman animals, underprivileged humans, and the natural environment. Several interventions have been developed to encourage meat reduction but to relatively limited effect. There is also a range of established predictors of meat consumption, but much less is known about...

People responding to personality questionnaires rate themselves by comparing themselves to some reference group, but this reference group is typically not specified. In this study, we examined the differences between Big Five trait scores when people responded to trait questionnaires without a specified reference group, as is typical in personality...

This research tests the unique predictions of three different theoretical perspectives on the self-esteem benefits of religiosity: the religiosity-as-a-personal-relationship-with-a-higher-power perspective, the religiosity-as-a-resource perspective, and the religiosity-as-social-value perspective. To do so, we used random-intercept cross-lagged pan...

Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity....

Objective: This preregistered study provides robust estimates of the links between Big Five personality traits and civic engagement across different samples and life stages. Methods: We recruited two samples from the United States and United Kingdom (total N = 1593) and measured Big Five domains, Big Five aspects, and six civic engagement indica...

Self-concept clarity and self-esteem are powerful determinants of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Yet, even after over 30 years of research, the conceptual and empirical ties between these two self-aspects remain understudied, and little is known about the nature and function of their relationship. The present study aimed at discerning...

Meta-analytic evidence has shown that personality is one of the strongest correlates of global and domain-specific satisfaction. The main goal of the present study was to examine whether the associations between personality traits and satisfaction differ across the adult lifespan. We used bivariate latent growth curve models and local structural eq...

Personality traits can change throughout the entire life span, but people differ in their personality trait changes. To better understand individual differences in personality changes, we examined personal (personality functioning), environmental (environmental changes), and event-related moderators (e.g., perceived event characteristics) of person...

Personality traits can change throughout the entire life span, but people differ in their personality trait changes. To better understand individual differences in personality changes, we examined personal (personality functioning), environmental (environmental changes), and event-related moderators (e.g., perceived event characteristics) of person...

Objective: Climate change is a serious threat. Personality psychologists can help address this threat by understanding what kind of people tend to endorse proenvironmental attitudes and engage in sustainable behavior. Previous research supports reliable associations between proenvironmental attitudes and personality traits. However, this research...

People have a tendency to engage in social comparisons when evaluating and reporting on personality. This tendency and variation in who people compare their personality to is known as the reference group effect and has been largely discussed in cross-cultural research. However, reference group effects have implications beyond cross-cultural researc...

Anxiety and depression are pervasive and pernicious mental health problems for young adults. Developmental trajectories of adolescent temperament (Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, and Positive Emotionality) may help us predict who will experience anxiety/depression during young adulthood. The present study used longitudinal data from a lar...

Young adulthood is a critical developmental life stage and a period of enhanced vulnerability to stress. In 2020, young adults in Northern California were faced with a series of unforeseen, collective stressors: the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme wildfires, social tension associated with the murder of George Floyd, and a contentious election that culmi...

Meta-analytic evidence has shown that personality is one of the strongest correlates of global and domain-specific satisfaction. The main goal of the present study was to examine whether the associations between personality traits and satisfaction differ across the adult lifespan. We used bivariate latent growth curve models and local structural eq...

Anxiety and depression are pervasive and pernicious mental health problems for young adults. Developmental trajectories of adolescent temperament (Effortful Control, Negative Emotionality, Positive Emotionality) may help us predict who will experience anxiety/depression during young adulthood. The present study uses longitudinal data from a large,...

What personality traits characterize a typical parent? The purpose of this pre-registered study was to generate consensus-based Big Five personality prototypes of a typical father and mother through the eyes of 226 expecting parents and 281 nonparents (Total N = 507). We found that a prototypical father’s and mother’s personalities can be described...

Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout the life span. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods using measures that were only...

Internet use is increasingly ubiquitous among older adults and may buffer against declines in cognitive engagement. We examined longitudinal associations between three types of internet use (media, social, and instrumental) and two indicators of cognitive engagement (Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition) in a nationally representative samp...

People vary in their compassion for animals, likely due in part to more variation in more basic personality and interpersonal behavior attributes. Previous research has generally suggested that more communal and agreeable people also tend to be more compassionate to animals. However, this research is limited regarding the range and depth of individ...

The goal of this study was to identify the underlying latent dimensions that account for variation in sustainable behaviors (SBs) among American adults. Our strategy was to assess all of the SBs sampled in existing measures, as well as a number of other variables relevant to individual differences in SBs, in a community sample (N = 1234). Variation...

Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people’s lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from a representative sample of 13,671 Dutch participants to examine the tra...

Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people’s lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from a representative sample of 13,671 Dutch participants to examine the tra...

Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout the lifespan. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods using measures that were only l...

How do people’s religious beliefs and behaviors change over the course of adulthood? Previous research found rapid decreases in religiosity during young adulthood and rebounds in middle and late adulthood. However, secularization trends—if not accounted for—can bias or obscure age-graded changes in religiosity. Using longitudinal data from over 14,...

Introduction: Studying abroad is often considered a life-changing experience. However, research on studying abroad has not always disentangled selection from socialization effects, leading to uncertainty about the actual impact of this experience. In this 4-wave longitudinal study, we examined both selection and socialization effects of a 4-week i...

Both clinical and personality psychologists are interested in assessing personality change, although they have tended to approach the issue in different ways. In this paper we argue that both sub-fields should focus more on basic issues in the assessment of personality change, and that they would make more progress on this issue together than alone...

Across adulthood, people tend to experience psychologically adaptive personality trait change, a robust finding known as the maturity principle of personality development. We identify three open areas of inquiry regarding personality maturation and address them in a pre-registered study, using a sample of US adults ages 30-70 who completed a batter...

Across adulthood, people tend to experience psychologically adaptive personality trait change, a robust finding known as the maturity principle of personality development. We identify three open areas of inquiry regarding personality maturation and address them in a preregistered study, using a sample of U.S. adults ages 30-70 who completed a batte...

Personality and psychopathology have generally been regarded as distinct aspects of human behaviour, largely studied by researchers from different disciplines. However, an established body of research shows a common structure for personality and psychopathology phenotypes. This evidence has led to significant changes in how psychiatric problems are...

Advances in methods for longitudinal data collection and analysis have prompted a surge of research on psychological processes. However, decisions about how to time assessments are often not explicitly tethered to theories about psychological processes but are instead justified on methodological (e.g., power) or practical (e.g., feasibility) ground...

Internet use is increasingly ubiquitous among older adults and may buffer against declines in cognitive engagement. We examined longitudinal associations between three types of internet use (media, social, and instrumental) and two indicators of cognitive engagement (Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition) in a nationally representative samp...

There is growing evidence that psychological characteristics are spatially clustered across geographic regions and that regionally aggregated psychological characteristics are related to important outcomes. However, much of the evidence comes from research that relied on methods that are theoretically ill-suited for working with spatial data. The v...

Significance According to a fundamental assumption in the social sciences, the burden of lower socioeconomic status (SES) is more severe in developing nations. In contrast to this assumption, recent research has shown that the burden of lower SES is less—not more—severe in developing nations. In three large-scale global data sets, we show that nati...

Using data from 58,748 participants from a nationally representative German sample, we tested preregistered hypotheses about factors that impact concerns about the environment over time. We found that environmental concerns increased modestly from 2009 to 2017. Individuals in middle adulthood tended to be more concerned and showed more consistent i...

Significance Childhood lead exposure causes lifelong psychological problems, which may be more extensive than previously thought. In a sample of over 1.5 million people, we found that US and European residents who grew up in areas with higher levels of atmospheric lead had less adaptive personality profiles in adulthood (lower conscientiousness, lo...

Childhood lead exposure has devastating lifelong consequences, as even low-level exposure stunts intelligence and leads to delinquent behavior. But these consequences may be more extensive than previously thought, because childhood lead exposure may adversely affect normal-range personality traits. Personality influences nearly every aspect of huma...

Personality traits continue to change throughout the lifespan. However, we still know little about when, why, and how personality traits change. In this paper, we review the current state of scientific evidence regarding the nature, sources, and processes of personality trait stability and change. We revisit past disputes over the relative importan...

Transitions in and out of work are common experiences with major repercussions for people’s lives. The complex link between work transitions and psychological adjustment is not well understood, however. In this preregistered study, we analyzed 11 waves of longitudinal data from 13,671 participants (representative of the Dutch population) to examine...

Withstanding the climate crisis will depend in part on individuals behaving in a more environmentally sustainable manner. However, relatively little is known about the individual factors that promote sustainable attitudes and behaviors (SABs). Although there are established cross-sectional associations between personality traits and SABs, it is unc...

Are five-factor traits and borderline personality symptoms the same features with different names? The existing literature offers reasons to think they are the same and reasons to think they are different. We examined longitudinal associations between these variables in a sample of patients assessed 12 times over 24 years using latent curve models...

Proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors have been increasing over the past decade. In this study, we use longitudinal panel data from a nationally representative sample of the Swiss population (N=9,106) to replicate the finding that proenvironmental attitudes are linked with proenvironmental consumer behaviors, and present novel evidence that chan...

Advances in methods for longitudinal data collection and analysis have prompted a surge of research on psychological processes. However, decisions about how to time assessments are often not tethered explicitly to theories about psychological processes, but are instead justified on methodological (e.g., power) or practical (e.g., feasibility) groun...

We developed a 19-item measure, the Motivations to Eat Meat Inventory (MEMI), that fit a four-factor model in three samples (total N= 2175), including one with a large number of vegetarians. Using this instrument, we generated psychological profiles associated with each motive, and showed that the structure and correlates of meat-eating motives is...

The transition to parenthood introduces changes in various life domains. In this paper, we examined whether and to what degree the transition to parenthood is related to changes in the importance of major life goals. To do this, we examined the rank-order stability, ipsative stability, and mean-level change in six life goal domains (achievement, po...

We established realness as the relatively stable tendency to act on the outside the way one feels on the inside, without regard for proximal personal or social consequences. In nine studies, we showed that realness is a) a core feature of individual differences in authenticity, b) generally adaptive but largely unrelated to agreeableness, c) highly...