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De-investment in work and non-normative personality trait change in young adulthood
Abstract
The present study investigated the relationship between experiences of de-investment in work and change in personality traits in an 8-year longitudinal study of young adults (N ¼ 907). De-investment was defined as participating in activities that run counter to age- graded norms for acceptable behaviour. De-investment in work was operationalised with a measure of counterproductive work behaviours (CWBs), which included actions such as stealing from the work place, malingering and fighting with co-workers. CWBs were used to predict changes in personality traits from age 18 to age 26. Consistent with hypotheses, greater amounts of CWB was associated with changes in the broad trait domains of negative emotionality and constraint. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Following the research on work experiences and resulting personality changes (Roberts, 1997;Roberts et al., 2003;Roberts et al., 2006), it is likewise possible that the success of achieving a managerial position is associated with an increase in generalized trust. Moreover, Kramer (1999) has noted that concerns about others' trustworthiness may be more frequent not at managerial but at lower hierarchical levels, due to their greater vulnerability. ...
... Although both our trust measures were generally somewhat less stable over time as compared to the Big Five personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1988), for instance, they did not change systematically due to the achievement of a management position. Referring to the studies of Roberts and colleagues (e.g., Roberts et al., 2003;Roberts et al., 2006) who have demonstrated that work experiences can lead to personality changes, our analysis adds the observation that promotions to managerial positions are work experiences that do not alter employees' generalized trust, at least not in the near future. Thereby, our analysis also contributes to the literature on work experience and personality development. ...
Although trust is fundamental to social and organizational functioning, the media often portray managers as distrusting, suggesting that distrust of others is a typical personality variable of successful leaders. This study puts the cliché of the distrustful manager to the test. Both self-report data (N = 32,926) and behavioral data (N = 924) from the German Socio-Economic Panel refute this cliché. Analyses reveal that individuals in managerial positions neither show a lower level of trust before, nor a systematic reduction in trust after attaining such positions. Moreover, analyses demonstrate that managers are generally more trusting than non-managers. This selection effect implies that individuals who trust others are more successful in achieving managerial positions than their less trusting counterparts.
... Leaving school and obtaining one's first job is also associated with increases in conscientiousness (Specht et al., 2011). Similar to the findings in school settings, individuals who invest in their work also tend to increase in conscientiousness (Roberts et al., 2003a; Roberts et al., 2006a ). Again, the opposite is also true; people who de-invest in work, such as committing counterproductive work behaviors, tend to become less conscientious, contrasting the typical developmental trend (Hudson et al., 2012; Roberts et al., 2006a). ...
... Similar to the findings in school settings, individuals who invest in their work also tend to increase in conscientiousness (Roberts et al., 2003a; Roberts et al., 2006a ). Again, the opposite is also true; people who de-invest in work, such as committing counterproductive work behaviors, tend to become less conscientious, contrasting the typical developmental trend (Hudson et al., 2012; Roberts et al., 2006a). In addition to one's level of conscientiousness predicting health and health behaviors, changes in conscientiousness also relate to health and changes in health behaviors. ...
The personality trait of conscientiousness is related to a great number of important life outcomes. To better understand why the influence of conscientiousness is so pervasive, the current article provides a broad overview of the trait. First, the lower-order facet structure of conscientiousness is described, including a description of some of the most common ways to measure both the broad trait as well as the facets. Next, we review the influence of conscientiousness on several life domains and discuss pathways that relate the two. Finally, the development of conscientiousness is explored.
... Changes considered maladaptive, such as decreases in emotional stability or extraversion, often occur together with life events mostly experienced as unpleasant (e.g., work or financial problems, severe health issues, or depression; Chow & Roberts, 2014; Lüdtke et al., 2011). The unpleasant life events likely contain specific triggering situations for negative states (e.g., Roberts et al, 2006a) or prevent positive states from happening (e.g., enjoying pleasant interactions with friends). In addition, the same life transition can lead to different directions of personality development depending on the valence of the transition. ...
... As many of the new social roles during young adulthood result from agegraded life transitions (Havighurst, 1972; Hutteman et al., 2014b), most members of a population display normative patterns of personality development during this period, as described by the maturity principle. At the same time, missing age-graded roles (e.g., spouse, employee) relates to non-normative personality development such as absent increases in emotional stability and conscientiousness (Lehnart et al., 2010; Roberts et al., 2006a). Presumably, trigger situations and expectancies are absent and cannot elicit states, such as being reliable, finishing tasks on time, which would have led to increases in emotional stability and conscientiousness (see Figure 2). ...
The current article presents a theoretical framework of the short- and long-term processes underlying personality development throughout adulthood. The newly developed TESSERA framework posits that long-term personality development occurs due to repeated short-term, situational processes. These short-term processes can be generalized as recursive sequence of T: riggering situations, E: xpectancy, S: tates/ S: tate E: xpressions, and R: e A: ctions (TESSERA). Reflective and associative processes on TESSERA sequences can lead to personality development (i.e., continuity and lasting changes in explicit and implicit personality characteristics and behavioral patterns). We illustrate how the TESSERA framework facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of normative and differential personality development at various ages during the life span. The TESSERA framework extends previous theories by explicitly linking short- and long-term processes of personality development, by addressing different manifestations of personality, and by being applicable to different personality characteristics, for example, behavioral traits, motivational orientations, or life narratives.
... Negative urgency, like many other traits, appears to change over time following repeated engagement in maladaptive behaviors (Riley et al., 2016(Riley et al., , 2018Roberts et al., 2006). Although previous research has not yet investigated changes in negative urgency predicted by fasting, it is possible given empirical evidence that fasting impacts impulsive behavior engagement (Fessler, 2003). ...
... Identity is a clear sense of self based on sameness and continuity; conversely, a fragmented and unclear sense of self is referred to as identity confusion (Erikson, 1968). As young people transition from adolescence to adulthood, they assume new social roles and responsibilities related to work, family, and loved ones (Côté & Levine, 2016;Roberts et al., 2006). In this process, they explore and commit to certain goals (Marcia, 1966). ...
While job identity is significantly related to personality traits and adaptation to the work environment, few studies have focused on job identity profile or on its relationships with the characteristics of young adults. This study aimed to identify the identity profiles of young workers in Japan and examine their associations with these employees’ personality traits, job satisfaction, work engagement, and emotional impairment. The survey participants were 500 working Japanese young adults (46.6% female; Mage = 26.12, SD = 2.34). The results of the latent profile analysis identified four job identity profiles: achievement, closure, moratorium, and diffusion. The results of the Chi-square test indicated that young adults in part-time employment were more likely to be classified under the moratorium profile than full-time workers. The results of the multivariate analysis of variance indicated that young adults with high commitment profiles (i.e., the achievement and closure profiles) had higher job satisfaction and work engagement than those with low commitment profiles (i.e., the moratorium and diffusion profiles). Future research directions and managerial implications were finally discussed.
... Consequently, it is entirely possible that individuals with dark traits may be attracted to cybersecurity jobs but may be no more successful in those roles than others and may potentially represent liabilities to the organizations that they are working for. Yet whether the elevated dark traits seen in cybersecurity professionals are best accounted for by self-selection, or whether these traits develop in response to job roles that are high stress, require high levels of vigilance, and can reinforce hostile and cynical worldviews, remains to be explored (see [185][186][187]; see also [188]). Regardless, it must also be recognized that cybersecurity jobs are incredibly complex and varied, and the personality profiles associated with success in one domain of cybersecurity may not necessarily fit all other cybersecurity jobs [189]. ...
Insider threats are a pernicious threat to modern organizations that involve individuals intentionally or unintentionally engaging in behaviors that undermine or abuse information security. Previous research has established that personality factors are an important determinant of the likelihood that an individual will engage in insider threat behaviors. The present article asserts that dark personality traits, non-clinical personality characteristics that are typically associated with patterns of anti-social and otherwise noxious interpersonal behaviors, may be particularly useful for understanding and predicting insider threat behaviors. Although some relationships between insider threats and dark traits have been documented, most attention has been devoted to a limited subset of dark traits. To address this issue, we critically review contemporary models of dark traits and their potential value for understanding both malicious and non-malicious insider threats, supplemented by discussions of subject matter expert ratings concerning the relevance of dark traits for both insider threat behaviors and cybersecurity personnel job performance. We then review potential assessment issues and provide evidence of possible moderators for the relationships under investigation. Finally, we develop avenues for future research, an agenda for improving the measurement of dark traits, and guidance for how organizations may implement the assessment of dark traits in their organizational processes.
... Specifically, emerging adults may not be able to adapt to the myriad of adult roles that they are traditionally meant to accomplish as swiftly as they could otherwise (e.g., Domene & Arim, 2016;Young et al., 2011). This has long-lasting effects at the individual level, in terms of developing characteristics such as emotional stability, self-confidence, and responsibility, which are often gained during workrelated endeavours (Roberts et al., 2006). It also has consequences on a societal level, with respect to productivity linked to unemployment (Heckhausen, 2002), poverty, and declines in quality of life (Blustein, 2008). ...
In the transition to adulthood, the common developmental task of progressing into the workforce is potentially challenging for many. This study aimed to investigate whether the presence of particular promotive factors would benefit emerging adults who are engaged in this task. Specifically, the authors used longitudinal multi-level modelling to test how purpose in life and perceived social support co-varied with satisfaction when it came to the pursuit of employment. University students in their last semester of undergraduate study (N = 103) were recruited to complete four surveys across a year following graduation. The results indicated that on occasions when participants had greater purpose in life and perceived social support, they experienced greater satisfaction with their employment situation. In addition, greater purpose in life—but not perceived social support—before graduation predicted greater average employment satisfaction across the year. These resilience factors may ease some of the strain related to this often difficult transition, by bolstering young people’s employment appraisal.
... In addition, normative patterns of personality maturation have been documented throughout the lifespan. Specifically, research has shown that conscientiousness and its respective facets increase from young adulthood through midlife (Jackson, et al., 2009;Roberts et al., 2006). Furthermore, the ability to engage in self-control processes tends to increase throughout childhood into adolescence (Eisenberg et al., 2014a(Eisenberg et al., , 2014bVan den Akker et al., 2014). ...
Why does conscientiousness matter for education? How is conscientiousness conceptualized in the field of research on education? How do socio-emotional (SE) skills relate to conscientiousness? In an effort to help answer these questions, we review the current research on conscientiousness in education. Specifically, we examine (1) how conscientiousness is defined, (2) the assessment of conscientiousness, (3) the relation between conscientiousness and educational outcomes, (4) whether too much conscientiousness may be a bad thing, (5) the relation between conscientiousness and conceptually related educational constructs, (6) the changeability of conscientiousness and the importance of that fact to education, and (7) the challenges of assessing conscientiousness across cultures.
... There is some debate about whether individual dark personality traits and their behavioural work outcomes can change (Burke, 2006). Considerable research has indicated the lifespan developmental trends related to the bright side of personality (Roberts et al., 2006), but can the same be said for dark personality traits? It has been proposed that changes in dark personality traits are indeed possible (Hogan et al., 1994). ...
Purpose
This study expands on research related to the dark side of personality traits by examining how individual dark personality affects proactive work behaviours. Specifically, the authors consider paranoia as a dark personality trait and propose that it negatively relates to perceived psychological safety and indirectly affects frontline employees' (FLEs) willingness to report customer complaints as well as their extra-role customer service. The authors also posit that empathetic leadership is a focal, contextual factor that mitigates the impact of paranoia on perceived psychological safety and, consequently, the willingness to report customer complaints and engage in extra-role customer service behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
The model was tested on a sample of 252 FLEs using process macro (Hayes, 2017) and AMOS. Data were collected from FLEs working in different hospitality organisations using a time-lagged design; supervisor-rated employee extra-role customer service was also measured.
Findings
The authors found that FLEs with a paranoid personality trait had a lesser sense of psychological safety at work, which reduced their willingness to engage in proactive work behaviours. However, this negative effect was mitigated by the presence of an empathetic leader.
Originality/value
The results are important because research has yet to determine which actions managers should take to counter the negative effects of dark personalities in the workplace.
... More extraverted individuals are more likely to select into jobs that involve social interaction and extraverted behavior, and employment in such jobs further increases Extraversion. In fact, most evidence for corresponsive Person ϫ Environment transactions stems from investigations of young and middle-aged adults (e.g., Denissen, Luhmann, Chung, & Bleidorn, 2019;Lüdtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy, 2011;Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003;Roberts & Robins, 2004;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006;Zimmermann & Neyer, 2013). However, Gene ϫ Environment transactions cannot account for a decline in genetic differences during the adult years. ...
Decades of research have shown that about half of individual differences in personality traits is heritable. Recent studies have reported that heritability is not fixed, but instead decreases across the life span. However, findings are inconsistent and it is yet unclear whether these trends are because of a waning importance of heritable tendencies, attributable to cumulative experiential influences with age, or because of nonlinear patterns suggesting Gene × Environment interplay. We combined four twin samples (N = 7,026) from Croatia, Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and we examined age trends in genetic and environmental variance in the six HEXACO personality traits: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. The cross-national sample ranges in age from 14 to 90 years, allowing analyses of linear and nonlinear age differences in genetic and environmental components of trait variance, after controlling for gender and national differences. The amount of genetic variance in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness followed a reversed U-shaped pattern across age, showed a declining trend for Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and was stable for Emotionality. For most traits, findings provided evidence for an increasing relative importance of life experiences contributing to personality differences across the life span. The findings are discussed against the background of Gene × Environment transactions and interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Lehnart, Neyer, & Eccles, 2010). In contrast, smoking marijuana or withdrawing from one's career is associated with relative decreases in conscientiousness across time (Bogg & Roberts, 2004;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Thus, environmental influences can both spur change and create stability in traits (Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2014). ...
Theorists have suggested that beliefs about whether personality can change might operate in a self‐fulfilling fashion, leading to growth in personality traits across time. In the present two studies, we collected intensive longitudinal data from a total of 1339 emerging adults (n s = 254 and 1085) and examined the extent to which both global beliefs that personality can change (e.g. ‘You can change even your most basic qualities’) and granular beliefs that the individual Big Five personality domains can change (e.g. ‘You can change how extraverted and enthusiastic you generally are’) predicted trait change across approximately 4 months. Results indicated that traits did change across time, yet beliefs that personality can change were almost completely unrelated to actual change in personality traits. Our findings suggest that personality development during emerging adulthood does not depend to any meaningful degree on whether or not individuals believe that their traits can change. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology
... Specifically, people tend to become more agreeable in later adulthood (ages 50-60) and only more conscientious as they develop in adulthood to middle adulthood. Neuroticism shows the greatest decrease in young adulthood, whereas dominance (a facet of extroversion) increased from adolescence to middle-age, and sociability (another extroversion facet) first increases in adolescence and young adulthood, before decreasing along certain points in adulthood and late adulthood (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Facets of openness increase in adolescence and young adulthood, with a steady decline in adulthood to late adulthood (Caspi & Shiner, 2005;Fraley & Roberts, 2005). ...
... Specifically, people tend to become more agreeable in later adulthood (ages 50-60) and only more conscientious as they develop in adulthood to middle adulthood. Neuroticism shows the greatest decrease in young adulthood, whereas dominance (a facet of extroversion) increased from adolescence to middle-age, and sociability (another extroversion facet) first increases in adolescence and young adulthood, before decreasing along certain points in adulthood and late adulthood (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Facets of openness increase in adolescence and young adulthood, with a steady decline in adulthood to late adulthood (Caspi & Shiner, 2005;Fraley & Roberts, 2005). ...
... Follow-up research on negative behavior in the workplace showed that individuals with higher levels of stress reactance and lower levels of self-constraint were more likely to engage in deviant behaviors in the workplace such as theft or unexcused absences. Individuals who engaged in such behaviors tended to either develop in a negative manner (worsening levels of stress reactance) or not developing positive traits (increasing self-constraint) in the same manner that was seen in their non-deviant peers (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Other workplace studies have shown corresponsive effects such that individuals with proactive personalities are more likely to attain or seek out jobs where they had greater control over their jobs and that individuals who garnered such control over their jobs, in turn, tended to increase in terms of their trait proactivity (Li, Fay, Frese, Harms, & Gao, 2014). ...
... Based on a 16-year longitudinal study of primarily adult participants, Jeronimus, Riese, Sanderman, and Ormel (2014) found that neuroticism and negative life experiences showed bidirectional and persistent reinforcement. But most evidence for corresponsive person × environment transaction stems from investigations of young and middle-aged adults (e.g., Lüdtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy, 2011;Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003;Roberts & Robins, 2004;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006;Zimmermann & Neyer, 2013), whereas there is little evidence for increasing personality differences during adulthood Loehlin & Martin, 2001;Mõttus et al., 2016;Soto et al., 2011). These conflicting results might be resolved by developmental mechanisms that counterbalance person (or genotype) × environment transactions in adult age. ...
In two studies, we examined the genetic and environmental sources of the unfolding of personality trait differences from childhood to emerging adulthood. Using self-reports from over 3,000 representative German twin pairs of three birth cohorts, we could replicate previous findings on the primary role of genetic sources accounting for the unfolding of inter-individual differences in personality traits and stabilizing trait differences during adolescence. More specifically, the genetic variance increased between early (ages 10-12) and late adolescence (age 16-18) and stabilized between late adolescence and young adulthood (ages 21-25). This trend could be confirmed in a second three-wave longitudinal study of adolescents' personality self-reports and parent ratings from about 1,400 Norwegian twin families (average ages between 15 and 20). Moreover, the longitudinal study extended previous research and provided evidence for increasing genetic differences being primarily due to accumulation of novel genetic influences instead of an amplification of initial genetic variation. This is in line with cumulative interaction effects between twins' correlated genetic makeups and environmental circumstances shared by adolescent twins reared together. In other words, nature × nurture interactions rather than transactions can account for increases in genetic variance and thus personality variance during adolescence.
... In a meta-analysis conducted using longitudinal studies, Roberts et al. (2006b) also showed statistically significant mean-level changes in Big Five personality traits in middle (40-60) and old (> 60) age. Personality changes can result from environmental changes in social roles or cultural milieu (Helson et al. 2002a;Scollon and Diener 2006) or from life and work experiences (e.g., Roberts et al. 2003;Roberts et al. 2006a;Mroczek and Spiro 2003;Elkins et al. 2017;Anger et al. 2017;Golsteyn and Schildberg-Hörisch 2017). ...
Using data from the participants of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS) at ages 42 and 50 (N = 326), this study provides empirical evidence of the relation between income and mental well-being and of the possible role of personality traits in modifying this relation. The relationships were analyzed using pooled ordinary least squares (OLS; bi- and multivariate settings) and fixed effects estimations (FE; multivariate settings). Positive bivariate associations were found between gross monthly income and the sum score of mental well-being and its separate dimensions (emotional, psychological, and social well-being and the absence of depression) as well as between experienced household finances and the sum score of mental well-being and its separate dimensions (except for social well-being). The multivariate OLS analyses detected positive relationships between gross monthly income and the absence of depression and between experienced household finances and mental well-being, along with one of its dimensions, i.e., emotional well-being. Further, the marginal utility of income appeared to depend on personality traits (FE): agreeableness and extraversion negatively moderated the gross monthly income–emotional well-being relationship, while openness positively moderated this relationship. In addition to emotional well-being, extraversion negatively moderated the relationship between gross monthly income and general mental well-being, and neuroticism negatively moderated the association between gross monthly income and social well-being.
... In young adulthood, investing in work roles may be a critical ingredient that spurs increases in conscientiousness. People who fail to invest in a work role may not increase in conscientiousness to the extent that their peers do (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). In late adulthood, after a person has built up their conscientiousness through many years of investment in a work role, age-graded role divestment in the form of retirement does not appear to lead to trait decreases. ...
In this study, we examined trajectories of Big Five personality development in the 5 years before and after retirement. Our sample was composed of 690 retirees (ages 51–81) and a propensity-score matched comparison group of 532 nonretirees drawn from a nationally representative longitudinal study of the Netherlands. Participants contributed data across a maximum of 6 measurement waves over a period of 7 years. In the month after retirement, participants experienced sudden increases in openness and agreeableness followed by gradual declines in these traits over the next 5 years. Emotional stability increased before and after retirement. The transition to retirement was not associated with changes in conscientiousness or extraversion. Further, we found significant individual differences in development across the transition to retirement for each personality trait but could not identify any moderators that accounted for these individual differences. These results contribute to our understanding of personality development in older adulthood as well as the temporal dynamics of personality change in response to major life events.
... At the same time as personality has shown to develop throughout lifetime, studies also show that not everybody develops personality to the same extent during the same period of time. For instance, it has been shown that some individuals become more conscientious and emotionally stable over a given time span whereas others become less conscientious and emotionally stable (Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Generally, investment and transitions in social relationships have been proposed to constitute an impetus for change in personality traits (e.g. ...
This exploratory study investigates the development of personality dimensions related to multicultural effectiveness and its relation to amount of target language use and self-perceived progress in speaking during a sojourn abroad in seven European countries. The participants were 59 Swedish and Belgian university students. The Multicultural Personality Questionnaire – Short Form (van der Zee, Van Oudenhoven, Ponterotto & Fietzer, 2013) was administered at the beginning and the end of the semester, and data on self-reported weekly hours of target language use and self-perceived linguistic progress were gathered at Time 2. The main findings are the observed moderate or near moderate correlations between self-perceived progress in speaking and change in Cultural Empathy, and between amount of target language use and change in Cultural Empathy and Openmindedness. This points to the relevance of further studies on the role of target language use and progress in the development of personality characteristics.
... Research on personality trait and cognitive development, however, may inform mean-level changes in interests. Vocational interests, cognitive abilities, and personality traits are similar in that they reflect relatively enduring attributes that can develop and mature over time (Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2017;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006;Rounds & Su, 2014). Key findings from research on the development of these individual differences may also apply to interests, such as the maturity principle Roberts & Mroczek, 2008) and social investment principle (Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007). ...
Vocational interests predict a variety of important outcomes, and are among the most widely applied individual difference constructs in psychology and education. Despite over 90 years of research, little is known about the longitudinal development of interests. In this meta-analysis, we investigate normative changes in interests through adolescence and young adulthood. Effect sizes were aggregated from 49 longitudinal studies reporting mean-level changes in vocational interests, containing 98 total samples and 20,639 participants. Random effects meta-analytic regression models were used to assess age-related changes and gender differences across Holland’s (1959, 1997) RIASEC categories and composite dimensions (People, Things, Data, and Ideas). Results showed that mean-level interest scores generally increase with age, but effect sizes varied across interest categories and developmental periods. Adolescence was defined by two broad patterns of change: interest scores generally decreased during early adolescence, but then increased during late adolescence. During young adulthood, the most striking changes were found across the People and Things orientations. Interests involving People tended to increase (Artistic, Social, and Enterprising), whereas interests involving Things either decreased (Conventional) or remained constant (Realistic and Investigative). Gender differences associated with occupational stereotypes reached a lifetime peak during early adolescence, then tended to decrease in all subsequent age periods. Overall findings suggest there are normative changes in vocational interests from adolescence to adulthood, with important implications for developmental theories and the applied use of interests.
... Those who invest positively in their new adult roles, as reflected in job attainment, work satisfaction, and financial security tend to experience positive increases in conscientiousness and self-control (Roberts, Caspi & Moffitt, 2003). Those who respond negatively to the challenges of emerging adulthood, reflected in behaviors such as fighting with co-workers, stealing from the workplace, or using substances at work, tend to experience increases in negative emotionality and decreases in self-control (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). There is also evidence that those who begin engagement in non-normative or risky behaviors far earlier than their peers tend to experience personality changes in the negative direction (Blonigen et al., 2015). ...
Personality traits in children predict numerous life outcomes. Although traits are generally stable, if there is personality change in youth, it could affect subsequent behavior in important ways. We found that the trait of urgency, the tendency to act impulsively when highly emotional, increases for some youth in early adolescence. This increase can be predicted from the behavior of young children: alcohol consumption and depressive symptom level in elementary school children (fifth grade) predicted increases in urgency 18 months later. Urgency, in turn, predicted increases in a wide range of maladaptive behaviors another 30 months later, at the end of the first year of high school. The mechanism by which early drinking behavior and depressive symptoms predict personality is not yet clear and merits future research; notably, the findings are consistent with mechanisms proposed by personality change theory and urgency theory.
... 440 Robert et al reported that de-investment in work (counterproductive behaviours such as fighting with co-workers or breaking safety rules) was associated with increased levels of Neuroticism in an 8-year longitudinal study of 907 young adults in New Zealand. 441 In particular, empirical studies have found that OC personality was changed by work environments. DeJonge et al tested the stability of ERI constructs over time in a Dutch cohort study (n= 650); they reported that test-retest reliability for OC scale was 0.53 over 1-year interval and 0.45 over 2-year interval. ...
AIMS: Health behaviours – alcohol drinking, smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity – are influenced by various psychosocial factors. Despite evidence linking work stress and personality constructs independently to health behaviours, only limited literature is available on the relationship between work stress, personality and health behaviours. The aims of the thesis are: (1) to examine the potential role of overcommitment (OC) personality in the relationship between work stress defined by the Effort–Reward Imbalance (ERI) model and health behaviours; (2) to investigate the potential role of perceived control (PC) in the relationship between ERI, OC and health behaviours. METHODS: This project used data from the HAPIEE (Health, Alcohol and Psychosocial factors In Eastern Europe) study, which randomly selected people aged 45 to 69 years from population registers in Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. A two–wave cohort study for drinking and smoking outcomes (n= 7,513) and a cross–sectional study for dietary outcomes (n= 11,012) were analysed by logistic regression and structural equation modelling. RESULTS: In terms of the potential role of OC in the relationship between ERI and health behaviours, OC and ERI may have bi–directional relationship; the effect of OC on ERI was stronger than the other direction in the middle–aged and older populations. Thus, antecedent role of OC in the relation between ERI and health behaviours was statistically significant, but mediator role of OC was not. With regards to the potential role of PC in the relationship between OC, ERI and health behaviours, both ERI and PC partially mediated the effects of OC on health behaviours; ERI and PC may have bi–directional relationship. CONCLUSION: This thesis will contribute to deeper understanding of intersecting pathways by which work stress (ERI) and personality constructs (OC and PC) jointly influence health behaviours, thereby providing insight into research, practice and policy
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1522338/
... In recent years, a large number of studies have examined the associations between personality trait change and work experiences, such as job satisfaction, job demands, or work investment (e.g., Hudson et al., 2012;Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). One robust finding to emerge from this literature is that work experiences correlate with personality trait changes and-as might be expectedthese associations are particularly strong for Conscientiousness. ...
Objective:
Theory and research have emphasized the impact of life events on personality trait change. In this article, we review prospective research on personality trait change in response to nine major life events in the broader domains of love and work.
Method:
We expected to find that life events lead to personality trait change to the extent that they have a lasting influence on individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Moreover, we predicted that love-related life events such as marriage or parenthood would be more strongly related to changes in traits that emphasize affective content, whereas work-related life events would be more likely to lead to change in traits that reflect behavioral or cognitive content.
Results:
The current state of research provided some evidence that life events can lead to changes in personality traits and that different life events may be differently related to specific trait domains.
Conclusions:
A more general conclusion emerging from this review is that the evidence for the nature, shape, and timing of personality trait change in response to life events is still preliminary. We discuss the implications of the results for theory and research and provide directions for future studies on life events and personality trait change.
... Those who invest positively in their new adult roles, as reflected in job attainment, work satisfaction, and financial security tend to experience positive increases in conscientiousness and self-control (Hudson & Roberts, 2016;Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003). Those who respond negatively to the challenges of emerging adulthood, reflected in counterproductive work behaviors, including making fun of coworkers, fighting with coworkers, stealing from the workplace, or using substances at work, tend to experience decreases in emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (Hudson & Roberts, 2016;Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). ...
In youth, maladaptive personality traits such as urgency (the tendency to act rashly when highly emotional) predict early onset alcohol consumption. In adults, maladaptive behaviors, including substance use, predict negative personality change. This article reports on a test of hypothesized maladaptive, reciprocal prediction between youth drinking and the trait of urgency. In a sample of 1,906 youth assessed every 6 months from the spring of 5th grade through the spring of 8th grade, and again in the spring of 9th grade, the authors found such reciprocal prediction. Over each 6 month and then 12 month time lag, urgency predicted increased subsequent drinking. In addition, over 6 of the 7 time lags, drinking behavior predicted subsequent increases in urgency. During early adolescence, maladaptive personality and dysfunctional behavior each led to increases in the other. The results of this process include cyclically increasing risk for youth drinking and may include increasing risk for the multiple maladaptive behaviors predicted by the trait of urgency. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Dropping out from treatment can be seen as an example of such behaviour, which has been associated with several traits from the domain of Negative emotionality (cf. Neuroticism) and Constraint (similar to Conscientiousness) of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (Roberts et al., 2006). Those authors propose that certain personality characteristics lead people to have certain experiences, and then will in turn be shaped by those experiences, reinforcing personality traits. ...
Internet-based guided self-help cognitive behavioural therapy (ICBT) seems a promising way of delivering eating disorder treatment. However, treatment drop-out is a common problem and little is known about the correlates, especially in clinical settings. The study aimed to explore prediction of drop-out in the context of a randomized controlled trial within specialized eating disorder care in terms of eating disorder symptomatology, personality traits, comorbidity, and demographic characteristics. 109 outpatients diagnosed with bulimia nervosa or similar eating disorder were randomized to two types of ICBT. Participants were assessed with several clinical- and self-ratings. The average drop-out rate was 36%. Drop-out was predicted by lower scores in the personality traits Dutifulness and Assertiveness as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory Revised, and by higher scores in Self-affirm as measured by the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. Drop-out was also predicted by therapist factors: one therapist had significantly more drop-outs (82%) than the other three (M = 30%). Theoretical and clinical implications of the impact of the predictors are discussed.
... Supporting this idea, there is now a set of longitudinal studies showing that ''de-investment'' is associated with a lack of increases and sometimes decreases in traits like neuroticism and conscientiousness. For example, participating in counterproductive work behaviors, such as stealing, arriving at work drunk, or fighting with one's coworkers and supervisors, was associated with decreases in emotional stability over time (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Similarly, continuing to abuse alcohol in young adulthood is associated with a lack of change in conscientiousness-related traits such as impulsiveness, which typically decreases during this age period (Littlefield, Sher, & Steinley, 2010). ...
The last two decades have seen a rapid acceleration of research on personality development focusing on the periods of late adolescence and young adulthood. The findings paint a picture of surprising quiescence in adolescence followed by a period of tremendous growth and change in personality traits in young adulthood. The patterns and potential reasons for these changes are discussed in the context of the Neo-Socioanalytic model of personality and the theory of emerging adulthood. The potential for convergence and collaboration between the fields of personality development and emerging adulthood is discussed.
... Fourth, personality-trait change may depend on certain moderating conditions. For example, according to SIT, parents who show strong commitment to their role should show more pronounced personality-trait change compared to parents who are less committed to their new role (Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Furthermore, the transition to parenthood is the start of a new relationship between a parent and a child. ...
Social investment theory (SIT) proposes that the transition to parenthood triggers positive personality trait change in early adulthood. Using data from a representative sample of first-time parents compared to nonparents, the results of rigorous tests do not support the propositions of SIT. Specifically, we found no evidence for the proposition that parents show more pronounced mean-level increases in emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness compared to nonparents. We did find that agreeableness and openness changed depending on how long someone was in the parent role. Finally, our results suggest that high extraversion and low openness in both genders and high conscientiousness in females predict the likelihood to enter into parenthood. Discussion focuses on why this transition seems to be unrelated to mean-level personality trait change and the implications of these results for SIT.
... There are several studies demonstrating that early childhood disorders, including externalizing disorders, may impact an individual's premorbid personality consistent with the scar model (e.g., Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006;Shiner & Masten, 2002). In contrast, the current study did not examine reciprocal effects between measures of temperament and externalizing behavior. ...
Understanding how specific genes contribute to risk for addiction remains challenging. This study tests whether childhood temperament and externalizing behavior in early adolescence account for a portion of the association between specific genetic variants and substance use problems in late adolescence. The sample consisted of 487 adolescents from the Michigan Longitudinal Study, a high-risk sample (70.2% male, 81.7% European American ancestry). Polymorphisms across serotonergic (SLC6A4, 5-HTTLPR), dopaminergic (DRD4, u-VNTR), noradrenergic (SLC6A2, rs36021), and GABAergic (GABRA2, rs279858; GABRA6, rs3811995) genes were examined given prior support for associations with temperament, externalizing behavior, and substance use problems. The temperament traits behavioral control and resiliency were assessed using interviewer ratings (ages 9-11), and externalizing behavior (ages 12-14) was assessed using teacher ratings. Self-reported substance use outcomes (ages 15-17) included maximum alcoholic beverages consumed in 24 hours, and frequency of past year cigarette and marijuana use. Behavioral control, resiliency, and externalizing behavior accounted for the associations between polymorphisms in noradrenergic and GABAergic genes and substance use in late adolescence. Individual differences in emotional coping and behavioral regulation represent nonspecific neurobiological underpinnings for an externalizing pathway to addiction. (PsycINFO Database Record
... According to the plasticity principle, personality traits are open systems that can change at any age due to interaction with environment. Consequently, personality and life experiences are in a reciprocal relation with each other over the life span, i.e., personality influences and is influenced by social experiences (see also Roberts, Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006;Tennen, Affleck, & Armeli, 2005). Despite their plasticity, personality traits can also be seen to develop through cumulative continuity, i.e., rank-ordering in personality traits increases throughout the life span (Roberts & Wood, 2006). ...
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 development have found that the mean-levels and rank-orders of personality traits change over time but they neglected possible changes in the variability of personality traits. The present meta-analysis aimed to fill this gap in the literature by integrating research from 362 longitudinal studies (total N = 344,270). Across traits, we found a remarkable stability of personality variability, indicating that people neither get more different nor more alike across time and age. The only deviations from this pattern were found in childhood, suggesting that the variability of extraversion, neuroticism, and openness decreases in the first years of life (ages 1 to 4) and that the variability of neuroticism increases in late childhood (ages 5 to 13). These findings were robust across various publication, sample, and assessment characteristics. Our results challenge contemporary theories of personality development that imply decreases or increases in the variability of personality traits. Furthermore, the high stability of personality variability has important implications for personality science as it influences statistical modeling and is relevant for the prediction of life outcomes.
Recent developments in technology and shifting societal patterns threaten to upend norms surrounding the world of work. The present paper introduces the idea of an emerging entrepreneurial economy and describes how it is reshaping our understanding of work, provides a framework for understanding whether and why individuals with dark personality traits may be attracted to careers in this new occupational frontier. Specifically, we will discuss how dark traits shape interest in remote work, the gig economy, social media and podcasting careers, and occupations related to cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, and crowdfunding. We also note how technologies enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) might contribute to uncertainty concerning how individuals with dark traits may function in these vocational contexts. We finish by making arguments for how future research can be improved in order to attain a more comprehensive understanding of dark personality in the entrepreneurial economy.
Insider threats represent a serious threat to organizations but are considered to be difficult to predict and prevent. Although a growing body of research has examined personological antecedents to insider threats, this literature lacks a unifying theoretical perspective connecting the characteristics that have been researched. In addition to cataloging the personality factors that have been associated with insider threat behaviors, this review also proposes neo-socioanalytic theory as a useful framework for organizing these factors and for distinguishing insider threats from counterproductive work behaviors and workplace accidents. The majority of risk and protective factors related to insider threats were shared for both malicious and non-malicious insider threat behaviors. However, the prior literature strongly suggests that malicious threats are motivated by selfishness and the rationalization of immoral behavior, while non-malicious threats are better understood as being associated with maladjustment and curiosity.
Objective:
Personality traits change in both mean levels and variance across the life span but the mechanisms underlying these developmental trends remain unclear. Social Investment Principle (SIP) suggests that social expectations drive personality changes in adulthood. Accordingly, we tested whether differences between personality traits in social expectations for them can explain their different change trajectories in young adulthood.
Methods:
A pool of 257 personality items was used to measure personality traits' means and variances (N = 1,096), and levels expected by friends, partners and bosses/supervisors (N = 121).
Results:
Raters were consistent in their expectations for how young adults should think, feel and behave. Traits under stronger expectations had higher mean levels and lower variances than traits under lower expectations; trait means and variances increased with age, but inconsistently with the SIP, these increases were unrelated to the traits' expected levels.
Conclusion:
Our results are only partially consistent with the SIP.
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 loosely related to contemporary trait models such as the Big Five. Since then, hundreds of new studies have emerged allowing for more precise estimates of personality trait stability and change across the life span. Here, we updated and extended previous research syntheses on personality trait development by synthesizing novel longitudinal data on rank-order stability (total k = 189, total N = 178,503) and mean-level change (total k = 276, N = 242,542) from studies published after January 1, 2005. Consistent with earlier meta-analytic findings, the rank-order stability of personality traits increased significantly throughout early life before reaching a plateau in young adulthood. These increases in stability coincide with mean-level changes in the direction of greater maturity. In contrast to previous findings, we found little evidence for increasing rank-order stabilities after Age 25. Moreover, cumulative mean-level trait changes across the life span were slightly smaller than previously estimated. Emotional stability, however, increased consistently and more substantially across the life span than previously found. Moderator analyses indicated that narrow facet-level and maladaptive trait measures were less stable than broader domain and adaptive trait measures. Overall, the present findings draw a more precise picture of the life span development of personality traits and highlight important gaps in the personality development literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Objectives:
Past taxonomies of goal-content have focused (either exclusively or predominantly) on generally-desirable values, and they suggest that some values oppose other values. However, many goals are generally-undesirable (i.e., the average person is committed to avoiding them), and these "vices" have been under-studied. This is an important gap because other models suggest that the "opposite" of a value is actually a vice.
Methods:
To fill this gap, we conducted a lexical investigation. Two large samples (involving 504 undergraduates & 257 online participants) first rated their commitment to approaching or avoiding a large number of goals from the English lexicon.
Results:
Analyses indicated that vices can be summarized in terms of Elitism, Rebellion, and Disrepute, which appear opposite from Inclusiveness, Tradition, and Prominence values (respectively) in MDS models. In Study 3 (involving 280 undergraduates) and Study 4 (involving 261 online participants), we found that Schwartz values of Universalism, Tradition, and Self-Enhancement actually appeared opposite from Elitism, Rebellion, and Disrepute (respectively) in MDS models, rather than from other values.
Conclusions:
This investigation develops an instrument which can distinguish between different vices at a holistic level, and it suggests that they are actually the opposite of select values.
In the past 20 years, the study of dark personality has seen a surge of interest among both academic researchers and practitioners. Although the research to date has documented that dark personality characteristics are important predictors of workplace behaviors and outcomes, there remain considerable challenges in the field in terms of both theorizing and assessment. The current chapter reviews the history of dark personality, competing models of dark traits, evidence of how and when dark personality impacts organizational outcomes and both current and emerging trends in dark personality assessment. We then suggest potential avenues for future theoretical development as well as for measurement and research design.
This entry provides a compact review of the evidence that personality characteristics are related to deviant work behaviors, with special attention directed at counterproductive work behaviors and abusive supervision. In particular, the roles that the Big Five personality traits, the attachment system, and dark personality characteristics play in these and other outcomes are highlighted.
This entry provides a compact review of the evidence that personality characteristics are related to deviant work behaviors, with special attention directed at counterproductive work behaviors and abusive supervision. In particular, the roles that the Big Five personality traits, the attachment system, and dark personality characteristics play in these and other outcomes are highlighted.
Objective:
Impulsigenic personality traits are among the many factors demonstrated to predict drinking behavior among late adolescents. The current study tested the opposite possibility, that during the emerging adulthood developmental period, problematic drinking behavior predicts increases in impulsigenic traits. This possibility is important because such traits increase risk for multiple forms of dysfunction.
Method:
Using a prospective design, we studied the personality traits and drinking behavior of 458 traditional college freshmen over one year.
Results:
We found that drinking problems predicted increases in urgency (the tendency to act rashly when highly emotional), lack of planning (the tendency to act without forethought), and lack of perseverance (difficulty maintaining focus on a task).
Conclusions:
Maladaptive personality change may be one mechanism that increases risk transdiagnostically for some individuals who drink problematically during college. Increases in impulsigenic traits predictable from problem drinking put individuals at risk for not only more drinking, but a host of other negative outcomes.
Behavioral-genetic studies show substantial non-genetic influences on variance of neuroticism within a population. Longitudinal studies show a small but steady drop in test-retest correlations with increasing time intervals. This suggest environmental effects on neuroticism, but a systematic overview of which environmental determinants account for change in neuroticism is lacking. We review (specific or unique) environmental influences that modify the neuroticism setpoint in adulthood and therewith individual life trajectories. Results are interpreted in light of the so-called ‘mixed model’ in which within-person changes in neuroticism are subdivided over short term perturbations around the setpoint of neuroticism versus more persistent changes in the setpoint itself. To account for genetic confounding and shared environmental influences studies of monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs discordant for neuroticism and longitudinal studies that report on environmental factors that predict within-individual change in neuroticism are reviewed. Our results indicate that the neuroticism setpoint is consistently touched by experiences that affect central aspects of one’s identity and status, mainly role transitions as partner (marriage/divorce) and employee (job loss/promotion). Especially interpersonal stress, conflict, and major events that were unpredictable, uncontrollable, unexpected, undesirable, and ‘off time’ from a life history perspective were followed by changes in neuroticism that persisted more than six months, which suggest setpoint change. Most change after severe SLEs persisted over a decade. Long-term and detailed studies are required to elucidate the details of the ‘mixed model’ of change in neuroticism. An understanding of the specifics of the events that lead to persistent changes in neuroticism may enable us to craft prevention strategies to tackle the vulnerability for mental disorders inherent in high neuroticism, rather than to wait for their manifestation.
It is well established that a substantial variation in personality traits can be attributed to genetic factors. However, this should not undermine the role of the environment in shaping an individual’s personality. We review research done on five important environmental predictors of personality trait development. These factors are parental socioeconomic status, parenting practices, peer relationships, romantic relationships, and work experiences. We found that, in general, the associations between these factors and personality traits are modest. Also, there is evidence for bidirectional relations between personality traits and the environmental factors. Despite being small in magnitude, the combined cumulative effect of these predictors over the years can be substantial. There are several lines of research that can be pursued in the future such as conducting meta-analyses of the associations of each of the environmental factors with personality traits and the influence of the interaction of the different factors on personality trait development.
Personality Development in AdulthoodSocial Roles and Personality DevelopmentConclusion
References
The current review synthesizes and builds from the extant literature to help explain how and why conscientiousness predicts a vast array of positive life outcomes. Toward this end, we present the Invest-and-Accrue model of conscientiousness, which describes conscientiousness as a disposition toward “investing” in ways that allow for future success. The value of this model is made apparent in its applicability across different life domains, as well as its potential for describing how individuals can change on conscientiousness throughout the life span. Moreover, the model can help explain why conscientiousness is relatively unique from other Big Five traits in its ability to predict positive life outcomes seemingly in any domain. In sum, this model should prove valuable for researchers across psychological disciplines, by providing an organizing framework from which to make connections across findings in personality, social, developmental, organizational, and educational psychology.
Objective:
To examine the rank-order and mean-level consistency of personal goals at two periods in the adult lifespan.
Methods:
Personal goal continuity was considered among a group of young adults (N = 145) who reported their goals three times over a three year period and among a group of midlife adults (N = 163) who specified their goals annually over a four year period. Goals were coded for a series of motive- (viz., achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power), and domain- (viz., finance, generativity, health, travel) based categories.
Results:
In both samples, we noted a moderate degree of rank-order consistency across assessment periods. In addition, the majority of goal categories exhibited a high degree of mean-level consistency.
Conclusions:
The results of this research suggest that (a) the content of goals exhibits a modest degree of rank-order consistency and a substantial degree of mean-level consistency over time, and (b) considering personality continuity and development as manifest via goals represents a viable strategy for personality psychologists. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Contrary to the hypothesis that personality is more or less stable after young adulthood, studies have robustly demonstrated that the Big Five personality traits continue to develop across the life span. Due to the centrality of the (paid) work context for adult life, developmental researchers have been interested in how aspects of working life may be related to personality development, while organizational researchers have long been interested in how personality traits are related to work outcomes such as job performance and job attitudes. In the following we review the current state of scholarly literature on the relationship between the work context and adult personality development across the adult life span as described by the “Big Five” personality traits. Specifically, we review the literature on the implications of the paid work context for adult personality development, the implications of adult personality development for work outcomes, and the relationships between personality development, retirement, and post-retirement volunteering.
Personality traits refer to relatively enduring, automatic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that distinguish one person from another that are evoked in trait-relevant contexts. Contemporary research has shown that personality traits are both consistent over time and yet change systematically in adulthood. In this chapter, we review the different ways that researchers conceptualize and assess personality trait stability and change. We summarize accumulated evidence pointing to at least moderate sized test-retest coefficients for personality traits across all phases of the life span and highlight the robust pattern of increasing rank-order consistency with age. We describe the consistent findings for mean-level changes in personality such that, on average, individuals tend to become more confident, warm, responsible, and emotionally stable as they grow older. Although mean-level changes are evident across the life span, the young adult years seem to be a particularly active time in the life span for mean-level changes in personality traits. We then note that different individuals may change to a greater or lesser extent than is captured by these mean-level trends thereby pointing to the importance individual differences in change. After describing the evidence for different forms of stability and change, we identify the mechanisms that may explain personality continuity and personality change. We discuss four processes of attraction, selection, manipulation, and attrition that promote consistency as well as the transformative processes that may explain how personality changes occur. Last, we describe the theoretical and practical implications of personality development research with an eye toward social policies to improve lives.Keywords:personality traits;personality consistency;personality change;developmental theory
We argue that positive personality development follows two distinct but interrelated trajectories that begin to diverge in adulthood; that is, personality adjustment and personality growth. We review empirical evidence stemming from a wide range of adult personality research to substantiate the usefulness of this distinction. We argue that aging, in modern industrialized societies, so far normatively optimizes adjustment but not growth. In line with this evidence and with a contextualistic perspective on development, we argue that whether the potential for personality change actually unfolds also depends on (social) contextual influences. We therefore discuss in an exemplary and more detailed fashion two specific contextual influences that affect positive (personality) development: age stereotypes and the work context.Keywords:personality development;adulthood;adjustment;growth;wisdom;contextualism
This longitudinal study provides an analysis of the relationship between personality traits and work experiences with a special focus on the relationship between changes in personality and work experiences in young adulthood. Longitudinal analyses uncovered 3 findings. First, measures of personality taken at age 18 predicted both objective and subjective work experiences at age 26. Second, work experiences were related to changes in personality traits from age 18 to 26. Third, the predictive and change relations between personality traits and work experiences were corresponsive: Traits that "selected" people into specific work experiences were the same traits that changed in response to those same work experiences. The relevance of the findings to theories of personality development is discussed.
Research has shown that personality-trait consistency is more common than personality-trait change and that when personality-trait change occurs, it is seldom dramatic. This finding results in a theoretical dilemma, for trait theories provide no ex- planation for personality change. Alternatively, most theories of adult developmental focus on change but not change in personality traits. To address this theoretical over- sight, we first describe the mechanisms that promote personality continuity, such as the environment, genetic factors, psychological functioning, and person-environment transactions. Then we describe the counterpart to continuity, the mechanisms that facil- itate personality change, such as responding to contingencies, observational learning, learning generalization, and learning from others' descriptions of ourselves. We argue that identity processes can explain both the mechanisms of continuity and change and form the basis for a theory that explains the empirical findings on personality-trait de- velopment over the life course. Specifically, we make the case that the development of a strong identity and certain facets of identity structure, such as identity achievement and certainty, are positively related to many of the mechanisms that promote person- ality continuity. Furthermore, we argue that one unintentional consequence of identity development is to put oneself into contexts that promote personality change, such as new roles or a different circle of friends.
Our previous research, based on cross-sectional data, provided prima facie evidence of a reciprocal relationship between the substantive complesity of men's work and their intellectual flexibility. The present study employs longitudinal data to make a more definitive assessment. Using maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis to separate measurement error from real change, it develops measurement models for both substantive complexity and intellectual flexibility. These models whos that, over a 10-year time span, the "stability" of both variables, shorn of measurment error, is high, that of intellectual flexibility specially so. Nevertheless, a structural equation causal analysis demonstrates that the effect of the substantive complexity of work on intellectual flexibility is real and remarkably strong-on the order of one-fourth is great as the effect of men's earlier levels of intellectual flexibility on their present intellectual flexibility. The reciprocal effect of intellectual flexibility on substantive complexity is even more pronounced. This effect, however, is not contemporaneous but, rather, a lagged effect occurring more gradually over time.
In this article we review answers to 5 questions concerning the development of personality across the life course: How early in the life course can we identify characteristics unique to individuals that will show continuity over time? When in the life course is personality fully developed? What life course factors moderate continuity and change in personality? What are the mechanisms that promote continuity in personality? And finally, what are the mechanisms that promote change in personality? Based on the answers to these 5 questions we conclude (a) that there is modest continuity from childhood to adulthood, (b) that personality traits do not become fixed at a certain age in adulthood and retain the possibility of change even into old age, and (c) that with time and age people become more adept at interacting with their environment such that personality consistency increases with age and is more common than change in midlife and old age.
79 monozygotic and 48 same-sex dizygotic twin pairs completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire twice, averaging 20 yrs of age at 1st and 30 yrs at 2nd testing. There were significant mean decreases in measures of Negative Emotionality (NE), increases in measures of Constraint (CO), but no significant mean changes for measures of Positive Emotionality (PE). Variance decreased for measures of NE but remained stable for measures of PE and CO. Biometrical analyses revealed that (1) NE variance reduction was due to diminishing genetic influences, (2) personality stability was due largely to genetic factors, and (3) although some evidence for genetic influence on personality change was observed, change was determined largely by environmental factors. It is concluded that the stable core of personality is strongly associated with genetic factors but that personality change largely reflects environmental factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
No abstract available.
The present research examined personality continuity and change in a sample of young men and women assessed at the beginning and end of college. Two-hundred seventy students completed measures of the Big Five personality traits when they first entered college and then four years later. Analyses indicate small- to medium-sized normative (i.e., mean-level) changes, large rank-order stability correlations, high levels of stability in personality structure, and moderate levels of ipsative (i.e. profile) stability. Overall, the findings are consistent with the perspective that personality traits exhibits considerable continuity over time, yet can change in systematic ways.
Choice, active response, self-regulation, and other volition may all draw on a common inner resource. In Experiment 1, people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control over eating. In Experiment 2, making a meaningful personal choice to perform attitude-relevant behavior caused a similar decrement in persistence. In Experiment 3, suppressing emotion led to a subsequent drop in performance of solvable anagrams. In Experiment 4, an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more passive (i.e., more prone to favor the passive-response option). These results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource.
Temperaments are often regarded as biologically based psychological tendencies with intrinsic paths of development. It is argued that this definition applies to the personality traits of the five-factor model. Evidence for the endogenous nature of traits is summarized from studies of behavior genetics, parent-child relations, personality structure, animal personality, and the longitudinal stability of individual differences. New evidence for intrinsic maturation is offered from analyses of NEO Five-Factor Inventory scores for men and women age 14 and over in German, British, Spanish, Czech, and Turkish samples (N = 5,085). These data support strong conceptual links to child temperament despite modest empirical associations. The intrinsic maturation of personality is complemented by the culturally conditioned development of characteristic adaptations that express personality; interventions in human development are best addressed to these.
Why do people's impulse controls break down during emotional distress? Some theories propose that distress impairs one's motivation or one's ability to exert self-control, and some postulate self-destructive intentions arising from the moods. Contrary to those theories, Three experiments found that believing that one's bad mood was frozen (unchangeable) eliminated the tendency to eat fattening snacks (Experiment 1), seek immediate gratification (Experiment 2), and engage in frivolous procrastination (Experiment 3). The implication is that when people are upset, they indulge immediate impulses to make themselves feel better, which amounts to giving short-term affect regulation priority over other self-regulatory goals.
This article presents meta-analytic results of the relationship of 4 traits--self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability (low neuroticism) with job satisfaction and job performance. With respect to job satisfaction, the estimated true score correlations were .26 for self-esteem, .45 for generalized self-efficacy, .32 for internal locus of control, and .24 for emotional stability. With respect to job performance, the correlations were .26 for self-esteem, .23 for generalized self-efficacy, .22 for internal locus of control, and .19 for emotional stability. In total, the results based on 274 correlations suggest that these traits are among the best dispositional predictors of job satisfaction and job performance. T. A. Judge, E. A. Locke. and C. C. Durham's (1997) theory of core self-evaluations is used as a framework for discussing similarities between the 4 traits and their relationships to satisfaction and performance.
This longitudinal study provides a comprehensive analysis of continuity and change in personality functioning from age 18 to age 26 in a birth cohort (N = 921) using the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (A. Tellegen, 1982). Data were analyzed using 4 different methods: differential continuity, mean-level change, individual differences in change, and ipsative change. Convergent evidence pointing toward personality continuity, as opposed to change, was found. The personality changes that did take place from adolescence to adulthood reflected growth in the direction of greater maturity; many adolescents became more controlled and socially more confident and less angry and alienated. Consistent with this, greater initial levels of maturity were associated with less personality change over time. The results indicate that the transition from adolescence to young adulthood is marked by continuity of personality and growth toward greater maturity.
Personality and social relationships were assessed twice across a 4-year period in a general population sample of 489 German young adults. Two kinds of personality-relationship transaction were observed. First, mean-level change in personality toward maturity (e.g., increase in Conscientiousness and decrease in Neuroticism) was moderated by the transition to partnership but was independent of other developmental transitions. Second, individual differences in personality traits predicted social relationships much better than vice versa. Specifically, once initial correlations were controlled for, Extraversion, Shyness, Neuroticism, self-esteem, and Agreeableness predicted change in various qualities of relationships (especially with friends and colleagues), whereas only quality of relationships with preschool children predicted later Extraversion and Neuroticism. Consequences for the transactional view of personality in young adulthood are discussed.
The Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; A. Tellegen, 1982, in press) provides for a comprehensive analysis of personality at both the lower order trait and broader structural levels. Its higher order dimensions of Positive Emotionality, Negative Emotionality, and Constraint embody affect and temperament constructs, which have been conceptualized in psychobiological terms. The MPQ thus holds considerable potential as a structural framework for investigating personality across varying levels of analysis, and this potential would be enhanced by the availability of an abbreviated version. This article describes efforts to develop and validate a brief (155-item) form, the MPQ-BF. Success was evidenced by uniformly high correlations between the brief- and full-form trait scales and consistency of higher order structures. The MPQ-BF is recommended as a tool for investigating the genetic, neurobiological, and psychological substrates of personality.
Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.
The present study examined the influence of stable personality traits on romantic relationships using longitudinal data on a large, representative sample of young adults. Relationship experiences (quality, conflict, and abuse) showed relatively small mean-level changes over time and significant levels of rank-order stability, even across different relationship partners. Antecedent personality traits (assessed at age 18) predicted relationship experiences at age 26 and change in relationship experiences from age 21 to 26. Conversely, relationship experiences also predicted change in personality. Importantly, these findings generally held across relationship partners, suggesting that some people tend to be generally happy (or unhappy) across relationships, and this is due, in part, to stable individual differences in personality. Discussion focuses on the broader implications of the findings, in particular the need for relationship researchers to consider the importance of personality for why relationships thrive or fail and the need for personality researchers to consider the impact of relationship experiences on intraindividual personality development.
This longitudinal study provides an analysis of the relationship between personality traits and work experiences with a special focus on the relationship between changes in personality and work experiences in young adulthood. Longitudinal analyses uncovered 3 findings. First, measures of personality taken at age 18 predicted both objective and subjective work experiences at age 26. Second, work experiences were related to changes in personality traits from age 18 to 26. Third, the predictive and change relations between personality traits and work experiences were corresponsive: Traits that "selected" people into specific work experiences were the same traits that changed in response to those same work experiences. The relevance of the findings to theories of personality development is discussed.
Different theories make different predictions about how mean levels of personality traits change in adulthood. The biological view of the Five-factor theory proposes the plaster hypothesis: All personality traits stop changing by age 30. In contrast, contextualist perspectives propose that changes should be more varied and should persist throughout adulthood. This study compared these perspectives in a large (N = 132,515) sample of adults aged 21-60 who completed a Big Five personality measure on the Internet. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased throughout early and middle adulthood at varying rates; Neuroticism declined among women but did not change among men. The variety in patterns of change suggests that the Big Five traits are complex phenomena subject to a variety of developmental influences.
To examine hostility measured in college and patterns of change in hostility from college to midlife as predictors of high health-related risk later in midlife.
Logistic regression models were used to test hostility/risk associations.
College hostility predicted being a current smoker, consuming more than two drinks of alcohol, low social support, achieving less than expected in career and in relationships, risk for depression, and appraisal of life changing for the worse in terms of family events at midlife. Change in hostility did not predict smoking and drinking; however, it did significantly predict social isolation, lower income (only for women), obesity, avoidance of exercise, high-fat diet, and negative changes in economic life, work life, and physical health events-all risk indicators measured during the next decade. Appraisals of social support, lowered expectations, risk for depression, and reports of family life changing for the worse were predicted at both time periods. When change in hostility was modeled with college hostility, all risk indicators were significantly predicted by college hostility.
High hostility in college and change in hostility from college to midlife predicts a full range of health risk indicators. When compared with the average population decline in hostility, gains in hostility at midlife are related to increased risk while declines in hostility are related to reduced risk. Higher midlife hostility is associated with increased odds of being in the higher risk group. Future research should focus on developing interventions to reduce hostility.
Continuity and change in Person-Environment Fit (PE Fit) and its relation to personality development was studied in a 4-year longitudinal study of college students (N=305). PE Fit demonstrated moderate rank-order stability and small increases in mean-levels over time. Antecedents to PE Fit included gender (being male), high academic ability, low agreeableness, and low neuroticism. Outcomes associated with PE Fit included greater personality consistency and changes in personality in the direction of higher self-esteem and lower agreeableness and neuroticism. The implications of the findings for personality development are discussed.
This study examined longitudinal relations among adolescents' family relationships, peer relationships, and problem behavior. Participants were 1,357 African American and European American adolescents who were interviewed at 3 time points: 7th grade (mean age = 12.7 years), the summer after 8th grade (mean age = 14.2 years), and 11th grade (mean age = 17.1 years). For all racial and gender groups, 7th-grade family characteristics (youth perceptions of autonomy and warmth) predicted a risky peer context during 8th grade, which in turn predicted problem behavior during 11th grade. Additionally, problem behavior in the 7th grade predicted 11th-grade problem behavior, directly as well as indirectly through the peer context. Racial and gender differences are discussed, as are implications for future research.
Personality and social relationships were assessed twice across a 4-year period in a general population sample of 489 German young adults. Two kinds of personality-relationship transaction were observed. First, mean-level change in personality toward maturity (e.g., increase in Conscientiousness and decrease in Neuroticism) was moderated by the transition to partnership but was independent of other developmental transitions. Second, individual differences in personality traits predicted social relationships much better than vice versa. Specifically, once initial correlations were controlled for, Extraversion, Shyness, Neuroticism, self-esteem, and Agreeableness predicted change in various qualities of relationships (especially with friends and colleagues), whereas only quality of relationships with preschool children predicted later Extraversion and Neuroticism. Consequences for the transactional view of personality in young adulthood are discussed.
Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.
Exploring personality through test construction: Development of the multidimensional personality questionnaire Construction of a self-report personality inventory can be a straightforward undertaking. We may take a ‘rational’ or ‘deductive’ approach (Burisch, 1984) and begin by formulating a construct from which to ‘deduce’ basic descriptors — in our case a set of construct-based self-report items. We might even draw on already developed constructs and start writing items immediately; Murray's (1938) carefully elaborated motivational trait constructs have served that function several times. Once enough items have been generated, scale construction, if purely deductive, is complete. A deductive orientation does not rule out the use of data to improve one's initial scales. Data-based deletion or addition of items can increase the internal consistency of a deductive scale. If our objective is to create a multi-scale inventory, we can also empirically enhance scale distinctiveness and independence. But even if deductive scale construction includes extensive ...
Since behavior is patterned by role expectations, the enactment of new roles in occupational mobility is likely to result in psychological change. This potential source of work attitudes and personality change in adulthood was explored in a longitudinal sample of 69 men from middle- and working-class families. Differential mobility was found to be related to role patterns and attitudes in adulthood and to personality (measured by self-descriptions and ratings) in three time periods; junior high school, senior high school, and adulthood (ages 33-38). The upwardly mobile tended to enter family roles at a later age than the non-mobile and were more orderly in their worklife. Mobile men, especially those of working-class origin, were more involved in the work role than the non-mobile, as expressed in role preferences, job satisfactions, and communal ties to the work setting. The upwardly mobile differed significantly in adolescence from the non-mobile on some aspects of ego functioning--such as impulse control--but personality differences were larger and more pervasive by the time the men reached their mid-thirties. A sense of well-being, autonomy, and effectiveness were associated with upward mobility only in adulthood.
Ronald K. Hambleton; H. Swaminathan; H. Jane Rogers., The following values have no corresponding Zotero field:
Label: B496
ID - 337
List of figures List of tables Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study 3. Sex differences in the amount of antisocial behaviour: dimensional measures 4. Sex differences in the prevalence of antisocial behaviour: categorical diagnostic measures 5. Sex differences in physical violence and sex similarities in partner abuse 6. Sex and the developmental stability of antisocial behaviour 7. Sex and the age of onset of delinquency and conduct disorder 8. Sex effects in risk predictors for antisocial behaviour: are males more vulnerable than females to risk factors for antisocial behaviour? 9. Sex effects in risk predictors for antisocial behaviour: are males exposed to more risk factors for antisocial behaviour? 10. Can sex differences in personality traits help to explain sex differences in antisocial behaviour? 11. Sex and comorbidity: are there sex differences in the co-occurrence of conduct disorder and other disorders? 12. Do girls who develop antisocial behaviour surmount a higher threshold of risk than their male counterparts? 13. Sex differences in the effects of antisocial behaviour on young adult outcomes 14. Sex, antisocial behaviour and mating: mate selection and early childbearing 15. Evaluating the recommendation to relax the criteria for diagnosing conduct disorder in girls 16. Life-course persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial behaviour among males and females 17. Priorities for a research agenda References Index.
Theories of adult development all agree that adulthood is a time of important changes in goals, resources, and coping. Yet, impressed with the rank-order stability of individual differences in personality, many researchers interested in personality traits and personality assessment doubt that personality changes in meaningful and systematic ways during adulthood. This article reviews large studies of mean-level change in personality characteristics measured with broad-band personality inventories, and includes both cross-sectional and cross-cohort longitudinal research. The results show considerable generalizability across samples, cohorts, and studies. In particular, people score higher with age on characteristics such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and norm-adherence, and they score lower with age on social vitality. These findings provide evidence that personality does change during adulthood and that these changes are non-negligible in size, systematic, not necessarily linear, and theoretically important. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Findings of recent studies of rank-order consistency and of normative change on personality inventories in cross-sectional and longitudinal samples support the notion that personality helps the individual adapt to changes across the life span and changes in the process. Rank-order consistency does not peak until late middle age and is never complete. Cross-sectional studies using a variety of inventories in a variety of cultural settings suggest that norm-orientation (control) increases with age and intensity of social involvement decreases, with no consistent relation to age for social assurance and complexity. Three longitudinal samples show findings similar to those of the cross-sectional studies, although different samples change on different aspects of norm-orientation and social involvement, in different amounts, and at different times, as each sample faced a distinctive course of adaptational challenges. Findings from the Mills Longitudinal Study test hypotheses about the relation of gender, lifestyle, and social influences to personality change. Generality across samples and cohort differences are explored, 2 kinds of personality change in adult development are described, and personality changes in terms of self and identity processes are illustrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In a 30-year longitudinal study of adult women (N = 104), we addressed three questions about changes in dispositional well-being: (1) Do women increase in dispositional well-being from young adulthood to midlife? (2) Are changes in dispositional well-being related to role quality? And, (3), Are the correlates between changes in dispositional well-being and role quality dependent on the method one uses to calculate change scores? Three out of four measures of dispositional well-being showed little or no mean-level change from age 21 to age 52. The fourth measure of dispositional well-being, reflecting effective functioning or maturity, showed a statistically significant but substantively small increase over the same 30-year period. The relation between change in dispositional well-being and role-quality was tested across the 30-year span of the longitudinal study. The results showed that positive role-quality was associated with increases on measures of effective functioning and well-being and decreases on measures of anxiety and psychoneuroticism. The method of calculating change scores did affect results with growth modeling and residualized change results being essentially identical and difference scores resulting in fewer statistically significant findings.
If self-regulation is a limited resource, the capacity to inhibit aggressive behavior should be lower among people who have already exercised self-regulation. In Experiment 1, participants who had to resist the urge to eat tempting food later reacted more aggressively to an insult than other participants who were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. In Experiments 2 and 3, some participants had to self-regulate by making themselves concentrate on a boring film and stifling their physical and facial movements, and afterward they, too, responded more aggressively than controls. Experiment 3 also showed that the results were not due to differential moods and that one act of self-regulation (unrelated to aggression) was sufficient to enhance subsequent aggressive responses toward the experimenter. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In this paper I use interdependence theory as an analytic framework for depicting the logically interconnected network of expectations that determines social interaction. The framework focuses on expectations about a partner’s goals (B) relevant to particular interdependence situations (S), and suggests that expectations about these two elements define the social situation that activates a person’s own goals (A). Together, these elements determine interaction behavior (I). This SABI framework is complementary to Mischel and Shoda’s (1995) CAPS theory of personality in its logic. It depicts a person’s interpersonal dispositions as having profiles or signatures dependent on both the expected features of situations and the expected dispositions of partners. A taxonomic theory for classifying both situations and the functionally relevant goals of interaction partners is outlined. Research on attachment theory and trust is used to illustrate the model. Finally, I suggest that people’s expectations about partners’ prosocial motivations—their perceived responsiveness toward the self—play an imperial role in social cognition, and, further, that complex SABI models can be seen as detailing a set of security operations that serve as a program for social action. SABI models detail the set of mechanisms that constitute the basic survival kit of interpersonal relations.
The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying structure of the trait domain of Conscientiousness using scales drawn from 7 major personality inventories. Thirty-six scales conceptually related to Conscientiousness were administered to a large community sample (N= 737); analyses of those scales revealed a hierarchical structure with 6 factors: industriousness, order, self-control, responsibility, traditionalism, and virtue. All 6 factors demonstrated excellent convergent validity. Three of the 6 factors, industriousness, order, and self-control, showed good discriminant validity. The remaining 3 factors—responsibility, traditionalism and virtue—appear to be interstitial constructs located equally between Conscientiousness and the remaining Big Five dimensions. In addition, the 6 underlying factors had both differential predictive validity and provided incremental validity beyond the general factor of Conscientiousness when used to predict a variety of criterion variables, including work dedication, drug use, and health behaviors.
The present study investigated the relationship of traits from the 5-factor model of personality (often termed the “Big Five”) and general mental ability with career success. Career success was argued to be comprised of intrinsic success (job satisfaction) and extrinsic success (income and occupational status) dimensions. Data were obtained from the Intergenerational Studies, a set of 3 studies that followed participants from early childhood to retirement. The most general findings were that conscientiousness positively predicted intrinsic and extrinsic career success, neuroticism negatively predicted extrinsic success, and general mental ability positively predicted extrinsic career success. Personality was related to career success controlling for general mental ability and, though adulthood measures of the Big Five traits were more strongly related to career success than were childhood measures, both contributed unique variance in explaining career success.
There is now little doubt that individuals who are well-adjusted, socially stable, and well-integrated into their communities are at significantly lower risk for disease and premature mortality than those who are more unstable, impulsive, isolated, and alienated. The reasons for these associations, however, are complex and the pathways insufficiently studied. This article employs a life-span data set to explore how childhood personality relates to health-related growth and development (dynamisms), patterns of reactions and health behaviors (mechanisms), and movements toward and away from suitable environments (tropisms). Illustrations from the 7-decade Terman longitudinal data reveal important areas in which previous, cross-sectional research has misinterpreted associations between personality and health. In particular, Sociability has been overrated as a life-span health risk factor, Conscientiousness has been underrated, and Neuroticism has been confused. Without sufficient attention to the processes underlying the associations between personality and health, significant suboptimal allocations of intervention resources result.
The influences on and consequences of women's labor force experience are examined using data from members of the Berkeley longitudinal studies born between 1920 and 1929. In adolescence, these women were overwhelmingly oriented toward marriage and family rather than career, yet more than two-thirds eventually spent substantial time in the paid labor force. Consistent labor force participation was lower for women who had been attractive, outgoing, feminine, self-confident, and status seeking in their high school years. High labor force participation, however, was associated with increases in self-confidence, status seeking, assertiveness, and intellectual investment between adolescence and later adulthood. The demographic correlates of labor force participation changed over the life course: as family responsibilities diminished in the later middle years, both family composition and husband's occupational status decreased in importance, while the importance of a woman's own education level and her husband's expected retirement income increased.
When viewed in the aggregate, studies of the longitudinal consistency of intelligence, personality traits and self-opinion (self-esteem, life satisfaction etc.) show a hierarchy of consistency. Uncorrected retest coefficients over periods of 6 months to 50 yr are analyzed as the product of period-free reliability (R) and the true stability of the construct (sn, where s is the coefficient of annual stability and n the number of years of the retest interval). The annual stabilities of intelligence, personality traits and self-opinions are estimated as 0.99, 0.98 and 0.94, respectively. While intelligence and personality may be regarded as relatively stable characteristics over the length of the adult lifespan, self-opinion has little stability over periods of more than 10 yr. The hierarchy of consistency should be taken into account in causal models of human development. Although self-opinion is not a longitudinally-stable characteristics, it may still be predicted over long periods of time by higher-order constructs such as personality traits and intelligence.
In this paper, we evaluate the Five Factor Theory (FFT; McCrae & Costa, 1999) and Social Investment (
[22] and [69]) explanations of normative personality trait development in adulthood. FFT theory proposes that personality trait development is largely a genetic phenomenon, whereas the Social Investment theory proposes that it is largely the result of experiences in universal social roles in young adulthood. A review of cross-cultural, longitudinal, and behavior genetics studies reveals little support for the FFT position and provisional support for the Social Investment theory.
Printout. Thesis (A.M.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 25-28).
With 575 college students, the relationship between A. Tellegen's (1985) personality model, assessed with the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), and the Big Five model, operationalized by Costa and McCrae's (1985) NEO Personality Inventory, was investigated. Correlations and joint factor analyses indicated that the MPQ constructs could be well-organized under the Big Five model, and the NEO constructs could be well-organized under the Tellegen higher-order dimensions (plus Absorption). Tellegen's higher-order dimensions relate to components of the Big Five hierarchically: Negative Emotionality encompasses Big Five Neuroticism and Agreeableness, Positive Emotionality encompasses Extraversion and the surgent aspect of Conscientiousness, and Constraint encompasses the controlled aspect of Conscientiousness and much of Openness to Experience.
The present study tested whether work experiences were associated with personality change across two periods of adulthood (age 21 to 27 and 27 to 43) in a longitudinal sample of women (N = 81). Two competing theoretical perspectives were tested: the plaster theory, which claims that personality does not change after age 30, and the plasticity theory, which claims that personality can change at any time in adulthood. Evidence was found for both correlational consistency of personality in adulthood and for the socialization effect of work on personality change. Work experiences were not associated with personality change in young adulthood but were associated with changes between young adulthood and midlife. In the period from age 27 to age 43 women who worked more became more agentic, and women who were more successful in their work became both more agentic and more normadhering. This pattern of associations between personality change and work experience provided support for the plasticity model of personality change.
We examined whether positive implications of mother-child mutually responsive orientation, demonstrated earlier at toddler and preschool age, extend longitudinally into early school age. The focus of the present study was on the long-term consequences of mutually responsive orientation for the development of conscience. Mutually responsive orientation encompassed shared cooperation and shared positive affect between mother and child. It was measured as a composite of those qualities observed in dyadic naturalistic interactions and reported by mothers, at toddler and preschool age. Children's conscience was assessed at early school age (N = 83) using multiple measures, including observations of moral behavior, alone and in the peer context, and moral cognition. Mother-child mutually responsive orientation at toddler and preschool ages predicted children's future conscience, even after controlling for the developmental continuity of conscience. Model-fitting analyses revealed that mutually responsive orientation at toddler age had a direct effect on future conscience, not mediated by such orientation at preschool age. The findings extend those of earlier work that revealed the importance of mother-child mutually responsive orientation for socialization, and they confirm the value of the relationship approach to social development, including long-term outcomes.
Epidemiological personology refers to a paradigm in which a developmental perspective on individual differences is paired with a population-based sampling frame to yield insights about the role of personality in consequential social outcomes. We review our work in epidemiological personology, linking personality to diverse, problematic social outcomes: Mental disorders, health-risk behaviors, and violence. We conclude that broad-band personality measurement is both feasible and fruitful in large-scale research on problem behaviors, and we call for increased collaboration between personality psychologists and researchers in fields such as public health, epidemiology, and sociology.
This article addresses three questions about personality development in a 30-year longitudinal study of women (N = 78): (1) To what extent did the women maintain the same position in relation to each otheron personality characteristics over the 30 years, and what broad factors were related to the amount of change in their rank order? (2) Did the sample as a whole increase or decrease over time on indices of personality growth, and did they change in ways distinctive to women? (3) Were experiential factors associated with individual differences in the amount of change? Results showed that personality was quite consistent while also showing that time interval was positively related to rank-order change and age was negatively related to rank-order change. Over the period from age 21 to age 52, the women increased on measures of norm-orientation and complexity and showed changes on measures of Dominance and Femininity/Masculinity consistent with the hypothesis that changing sex roles would lead to increases in Dominance and increases, then decreases, in Femininity/Masculinity. A third set of results showed that changes in Dominance and Femininity/Masculinity were associated with life circumstances such as marital tension, divorce, and participation in the paid labor force. The implications of the findings for personality development and growth are discussed.