No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Trajectories of Big Five Personality Traits: A Coordinated Analysis of 16 Longitudinal Samples
Abstract
This study assessed change in self‐reported Big Five personality traits. We conducted a coordinated integrative data analysis using data from 16 longitudinal samples, comprising a total sample of over 60 000 participants. We coordinated models across multiple datasets and fit identical multi‐level growth models to assess and compare the extent of trait change over time. Quadratic change was assessed in a subset of samples with four or more measurement occasions. Across studies, the linear trajectory models revealed declines in conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness. Non‐linear models suggested late‐life increases in neuroticism. Meta‐analytic summaries indicated that the fixed effects of personality change are somewhat heterogeneous and that the variability in trait change is partially explained by sample age, country of origin, and personality measurement method. We also found mixed evidence for predictors of change, specifically for sex and baseline age. This study demonstrates the importance of coordinated conceptual replications for accelerating the accumulation of robust and reliable findings in the lifespan developmental psychological sciences. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology
... Conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and low neuroticism are theorized to promote positive health behaviors, adaptive social functioning, and positive stress profiles that benefit health and ultimately support longevity. Theory and meta-analytic evidence suggest that these personality traits change across the lifespan (Ardelt, 2000;Bleidorn et al., 2022;Graham et al., 2020;Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;Roberts & Mroczek, 2008;), yet little is known about how personality trait change is associated with longevity. In 11 independent samples of middleaged and older adults, the present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in midlife and old age is associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. ...
... In fact, cumulative mean-level change across the adult lifespan exceeds one full standard deviation for many Big Five traits (Bleidorn et al., 2022). On average, personality trait change trends in the direction of greater psychological maturity across most of the lifespan Graham et al., 2020;Roberts & Mroczek, 2008;Roberts & Nickel, 2021;Roberts & Wood, 2006;Specht et al., 2011Specht et al., , 2014, with increases in agreeableness in young adulthood, increases in conscientiousness through young adulthood and midlife, and decreases in neuroticism across the entire adult lifespan (Bleidorn et al., 2022). In older adulthood, meta-analytic evidence suggests that neuroticism continues to decrease, but trajectories of the other traits reverse, resulting in late-life decreases in all Big Five traits (Bleidorn et al., 2022). ...
... Because the central focus of the present study is associations between personality trait change and mortality, and associations between personality trait level and mortality have been reported elsewhere for most of these samples (Graham et al., 2020), we did This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
People who are higher in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness and lower in neuroticism tend to live longer. The present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in middle and older adulthood would also be associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. Personality trait change may causally influence mortality risk through corresponding changes in health behaviors, social processes, and stress experience. Alternatively, personality trait change may be a marker of successful or unsuccessful adaptation to life circumstances, which in turn influences mortality risk, or shared risk factors may impact personality trait change and mortality risk. In the latter case, personality trait change may serve as a “psychosocial vital sign” pointing toward increased risk. In 11 samples of middle-aged and older adults (combined N = 32,348), we used multilevel growth curve models to estimate personality trait level and personality trait change across three to 11 measurement occasions spanning 6–43 years. Next, we used Cox proportional hazards models to test whether personality trait level and personality trait change were associated with mortality risk. Higher conscientiousness (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.83), extraversion (HR = 0.93), and agreeableness (HR = 0.88) were associated with longer survival while higher neuroticism was associated with shorter survival (HR = 1.22). In contrast to personality trait level, we found limited evidence for associations between personality trait change and mortality risk. We discuss conceptual and methodological implications of the present findings that may guide future research on associations between personality trait change, health, and mortality.
... A substantial amount of work exists showing that although personality is relatively stable across time, it also changes and continues to develop throughout the lifespan Graham et al., 2020;Roberts et al., 2006). Through this research, general trends of personality development, particularly for the Big Five traits (Goldberg, 1990), were discovered and continue to be refined . ...
... Considerable research has been dedicated to identifying average mean-level trends of the Big Five traits across the lifespan. Through this work, significant changes in all traits have indeed been found (Atherton et al., 2022;Bleidorn et al., 2022;Denissen et al., 2019;Graham et al., 2020;Oltmanns et al., 2020;Roberts et al., 2006;Specht et al., 2011). Meta-analyses indicate that although traitspecific trends do emerge, broadly, most change typically occurs in younger and older adulthood, with less change occurring in the rest of the lifespan Roberts et al., 2006). ...
... Generally, the most complex form that is fit tends to fit the data the best. For example, a recent metaanalysis favored piecewise linear spline models ; a coordinated data analysis found that, depending on the trait, quadratic forms usually fit best compared to linear (Graham et al., 2020); and another study testing linear, curvilinear, and nonlinear forms across four data sets found that cubic trajectories most often fit the best (Wright & Jackson, 2024a). ...
Decades of research have identified average patterns of normative personality development across the lifespan. However, it is unclear how well these correspond to trajectories of individual development. Past work beyond general personality development might suggest these average patterns are oversimplifications, necessitating novel examinations of how personality develops and consideration of new individual difference metrics. This study uses five longitudinal data sets from Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States (N = 128,345; Mage = 45.42; 53% female) to examine personality development using mixed-effects location scale models. These models quantify individual differences in within-person residual variability, or sigma, around trajectories—thereby testing if models that assume sigma is homogeneous, unsystematic noise are appropriate. We investigate if there are individual differences in longitudinal within-person variability for Big Five trajectories, if there are variables associated with this heterogeneity, and if person-level sigma values can uniquely predict an outcome. Results indicated that, across all models, there was meaningful heterogeneity in sigma—the magnitude of which was comparable to and often even greater than that of intercepts and slopes. Individual differences in sigma were further associated with covariates central to personality development and had robust predictive utility for health status, an outcome with long-established personality associations. Collectively, these findings underscore the presence, degree, validity, and potential utility of heterogeneity in longitudinal within-person variability and indicate the typical linear model does not adequately depict individual development. We suggest it should become the default to consider this individual difference metric in personality development research.
... This adaptation results in "personality maturation" throughout adulthood, which denotes increases in socially desirable traits and decreases in less socially desirable traits such as neuroticism. Later on, in very old age, there may be increases in neuroticism, for example, because anxiety about the end of one's life and serious health issues set in (Graham et al., 2020;Mueller et al., 2017). ...
... The stability in extraversion in our sample is in line with some studies that found stability of extraversion in midlife and reported declines only later in life (Berg & Johansson, 2014;Seifert et al., 2023), although others suggest linear declines throughout adulthood (Graham et al., 2020). The lack of retirement effects on extraversion is, however, partly in contrast to the results from Löckenhoff et al. (2009), who found declines in activity, which is a facet of extraversion. ...
... Furthermore, our non-retiring control group was on the verge of retirement as well and anticipatory effects may have led to declines in neuroticism in this group already before retirement. It is further important to consider that Graham et al. (2020) showed that the specific personality scale used in a study seems to moderate the extent to which changes in personality are detected. None of the previous studies used the exact scale that was assessed in the NorLAG study. ...
Our personality develops over the whole lifespan and in particular when our life circumstances change. Retirement is a life event that brings changes in identity, day structures, and social roles of former workers. Therefore, it may affect personality traits such as the Big Five (neuroticism, extraversion, intellect, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). Previous studies have shown conflicting results concerning the question whether and how retirement is associated with changes in personality traits. Furthermore, there is little knowledge about the role of the job people leave behind when retiring. In the present study, we compared personality development over a 10-year period, based on two waves of a Norwegian survey, between retiring and continuously working blue-collar versus white-collar workers (n = 1,263, Mage = 56.58). Latent change score models showed that neuroticism and openness declined in the sample, but to a comparable degree in all groups. We further found differences in baseline personality traits between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers, as well as between those retiring and not retiring, implying selection into retirement by personality traits. Item level analyses showed declines in some items. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of our results in light of previous ambiguous findings and emphasize the possible heterogeneity across retirees.
... One of the theories explaining personality is Big Five theory, which proposes five basic personality dimensions (Eysenck, 1956;Costa, McCrae, 1992;Graham et al., 2020). Initial research on the structure of the Big Five came from the lexical strona 162 approach (Goldberg, 1992), and since the 1990s it came from the questionnaire approach (Costa, McCrae, 1992), which confirmed five basic dimensions. ...
... Initial research on the structure of the Big Five came from the lexical strona 162 approach (Goldberg, 1992), and since the 1990s it came from the questionnaire approach (Costa, McCrae, 1992), which confirmed five basic dimensions. Research also shows that the five broad personality traits are relatively stable throughout individuals' lives, from childhood to adulthood (Markey, Markey, Tinsley, 2004;Brandt et al., 2020;Graham et al., 2020). There are five basic personality traits: neuroticism, which refers to the tendency to experience negative feelings; extraversion, which refers to the intensity of interactions with other people; openness to experience, which is characterized by tolerance to novelty; agreeableness, which is characterized by an attitude towards other people; and conscientiousness, characterized by persistence in pursuing a goal. ...
... The types of motivation according to self-determination theory, apart from external factors (Deci, Ryan, 2000), may also depend on internal factors-personality traits (Chue, 2015;Delaney, Royal, 2017), which are something constantly observed throughout life and biologically determined (Markey, Markey, Tinsley, 2004;Graham et al., 2020). People who are highly agreeable and extroverted have higher social competences (Szczygiel, Mikolajczyk, 2018), which may be associated with meeting the relatedness need of individuals and, as a result, with higher intrinsic motivation (Ryan, Deci, 2020). ...
According to self-determination theory, motivation in school is most often explained by external, situational factors, but more research is needed to explain the motivation through internal factors. The aim of the study was to explore school motivation according to the self-determination theory in terms of the Big Five personality traits and shyness. Participants were 400 eight- to twelve-year-old children for elementary school. Children completed self-reports of the school motivation scale, the personality inventory for children, and the shyness scale. Among the results, controlled motivation was most strongly associated with neuroticism, and autonomous motivation with agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. General nervousness (neuroticism subscale) was positively related to amotivation and controlled motivation, and negatively related to intrinsic motivation. Shyness was positively associated with controlled motivation. Moreover, depending on the level of general nervousness and the level of introversion (extroversion subscale), the relationship between shyness and controlled motivation changed significantly and was insignificant at low levels of both general nervousness and introversion. Some differences were revealed according to shyness types: introverted shyness had higher amotivation and lower autonomous motivation than did social shyness. The results and their implications are discussed.
... This adaptation results in 23 "personality maturation" throughout adulthood, which denotes increases in socially desirable traits and decreases in less socially desirable traits such as neuroticism. Later on, in very old age, there may be increases in neuroticism, for example, because anxiety about the end of one's life and serious health issues set in (Graham et al., 2020;Mueller et al., 2017). ...
... The stability in extraversion in our sample is in line with some studies that found stability of extraversion in midlife and reported declines only later in life (Berg & Johansson, 2014;Seifert et al., 2023), although others suggest linear declines throughout adulthood (Graham et al., 2020). The lack of retirement effects on extraversion is, however, partly in contrast to the results from Löckenhoff et al. (2009), who found declines in activity, which is a facet of extraversion. ...
... Furthermore, our non-retiring control group was on the verge of retirement as well and anticipatory effects may have led to declines in neuroticism in this group already before retirement. It is further important to consider that Graham et al. (2020) showed that the specific personality scale used in a study seems to moderate the extent to which changes in personality are detected. None of the previous studies used the exact scale that was assessed in the NorLAG study. ...
Our personality develops over the whole lifespan and in particular when our life circumstances change. Retirement is a life event that brings changes in identity, day structures and social roles of former workers. Therefore, it may affect personality traits such as the Big Five (neuroticism, extraversion, intellect, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). Previous studies have shown conflicting results concerning the question whether and how retirement is associated with changes in personality traits. Furthermore, there is little knowledge about the role of the job people leave behind when retiring. In the present study, we compared personality development over a ten-year period, based on two waves of a Norwegian survey, between retiring and continuously working blue-collar vs. white-collar workers (n = 1,263, M age = 56.58). Latent change score models showed that neuroticism and openness declined in the sample, but to a comparable degree in all groups. We further found differences in baseline personality traits between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers, as well as between those retiring and not retiring, implying selection into retirement by personality traits. Item level analyses showed declines in some items. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of our results in light of previous ambiguous findings and emphasize the possible heterogeneity across retirees.
... Although moderately stable, people experience meaningful changes in their personality states and traits across their lifetime Graham et al., 2020;Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;Roberts et al., 2006). These changes are thought to be a function of both internal processes (i.e., biological maturation) and the environment (i.e., life experiences, social roles, relationship transactions; Bleidorn et al., 2018;Roberts, 2018;Roberts & Jackson, 2008;Specht et al., 2014). ...
... These changes are thought to be a function of both internal processes (i.e., biological maturation) and the environment (i.e., life experiences, social roles, relationship transactions; Bleidorn et al., 2018;Roberts, 2018;Roberts & Jackson, 2008;Specht et al., 2014). There are also significant individual differences in how people change over time (or interindividual differences in intraindividual change; Bleidorn et al., 2022;Graham et al., 2020;Mroczek & Spiro, 2003;Roberts & Mroczek, 2008;Schwaba & Bleidorn, 2018). Yet, previous studies have primarily used variable-centered approaches to examine aggregate changes in personality traits across people within a population. ...
Typical nomothetic, dimensional conceptualizations of personality traits have demonstrated that traits show robust patterns of change across the lifespan. Yet, questions linger about both the mechanisms underlying trait change and the extent to which we can understand any individual using only dimensional approaches. Alternatively, a person-specific conceptualization of personality that emphasizes processes specific to one person may offer more insight into changes at the expense of generalizability. We argue that taking an idiographic, person-specific dynamic network approach to understanding a person provides an opportunity to bridge the nomothetic–idiographic gap and understand processes underlying trait change that may point to how personality changes across the lifespan. In this study, we examined whether the properties of idiographic personality networks were related to between-person personality trait changes in a sample of college students (N = 418). We used dynamic exploratory graph analysis to construct N = 1 personality networks and then included network parameters in multilevel growth models over a 2-year period using self- and informant-report data. We found that network parameters were largely unrelated to between-person change for self-reports but were related to some informant-reports. Discussion revolves around continuing to bridge the two approaches together to create a holistic picture of personality change.
... Conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and low neuroticism are theorized to promote positive health behaviors, adaptive social functioning, and positive stress profiles that benefit health and ultimately support longevity. Theory and meta-analytic evidence suggest that these personality traits change across the lifespan (Ardelt, 2000;Bleidorn et al., 2022;Graham et al., 2020;Roberts & Mroczek, 2008;Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;), yet little is known about how personality trait change is associated with longevity. In 11 independent samples of middle-aged and older adults, the present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in midlife and old age is associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. ...
... In fact, cumulative mean-level change across the adult lifespan exceeds one full standard deviation for many Big Five traits (Bleidorn et al., 2022). On average, personality trait change trends in the direction of greater psychological maturity across most of the lifespan Graham et al., 2020;Mroczek & Roberts, 2008;Roberts & Wood, 2006;Specht et al., 2011Specht et al., , 2014, with increases in agreeableness in young adulthood, increases in conscientiousness through young adulthood and midlife, and decreases in neuroticism across the entire adult lifespan (Bleidorn et al., 2022). In older adulthood, meta-analytic evidence suggests that neuroticism continues to decrease, but trajectories of the other traits reverse, resulting in late-life decreases in all Big Five traits (Bleidorn et al., 2022). ...
People who are higher in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and lower in neuroticism tend to live longer. The present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in middle and older adulthood would also be associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. Personality trait change may causally influence mortality risk through corresponding changes in health behaviors, social processes, and stress experience. Alternatively, personality trait change may be a marker of successful or unsuccessful adaptation to life circumstances, which in turn influences mortality risk, or shared risk factors may impact personality trait change and mortality risk. In the latter case, personality trait change may serve as a “psychosocial vital sign” pointing toward increased risk. In 11 samples of middle-aged and older adults (combined N = 32,348), we used multilevel growth curve models to estimate personality trait level and personality trait change across 3-11 measurement occasions spanning 6-43 years. Next, we used Cox proportional hazards models to test whether personality trait level and personality trait change were associated with mortality risk. Higher conscientiousness (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.83), extraversion (HR = 0.93), and agreeableness (HR = 0.88) were associated with longer survival, while higher neuroticism was associated with shorter survival (HR = 1.22). In contrast to personality trait level, we found limited evidence for associations between personality trait change and mortality risk. We discuss conceptual and methodological implications of the present findings that may guide future research on associations between personality trait change, health, and mortality.
... The authors found a decrease in Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness over time, with a higher decline in Conscientiousness among people 60 years and older. They also reported a U-shaped change in Neuroticism with an increase towards older adulthood and middle adulthood stability in Openness with decrease in older age (Graham et al., 2020). ...
... Covariates. Based on previous evidence, we selected potential confounders assuming they could be alternative explanations for the relationship between personality traits and loneliness (Chapman et al., 2010;Dahlberg et al., 2022;Graham et al., 2020;Hakulinen et al., 2015;Luo et al., 2022). We modelled participants' age at baseline using the participant's years at the moment of the survey. ...
Objective:to compare the relationship between personality traits and the loneliness rate of change between the UK and the US.
Methods:We used data from 7932 older adults 52 years and older from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and 7,979 older adults 50 years and older from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). In ELSA, we considered wave 5 (2010/2011) as our baseline and wave 6 (2012/2013) to wave 9 (2018/2019) for loneliness follow-up. In HRS, we used wave 10 (2010) as baseline and wave 11 (2012) to wave 14 (2018) as follow-up. Loneliness was measured using the three-item R-UCLA, and personality traits were measured using the 25 items from MIDUS 1 and 2 Studies. We used the rate of change to analyse the changes in loneliness over time and multilevel mixed-effects linear regression to analyse the relationship between personality traits and loneliness rate of change. We adjusted the models by social isolation, sociodemographic, economic and health outcomes.
Results:ELSA and HRS participants were similar except for their age (67 years in ELSA and 73 in HRS) and ethnicity (98% white in ELSA and 79% white in HRS). Over eight years, we observed a decrease in loneliness in the participants of both cohorts. The overall rate of decline was -3.93 in ELSA and -2.38 in HRS. Among the ELSA participants, in the fully adjusted models, extroversion (ß= 0.012, 95% CI: 0.004-0.021) and neuroticism (ß= - 0.010, 95% CI: -0.018-0.002) were the only personality traits associated with the loneliness rate of decline, while among the HRS participants, extroversion (ß=0.084, 95% CI: 0.070- 0.098), neuroticism (ß=-0.095, 95% CI: -0.109-0.082), agreeableness (ß=0.055, 95% CI: 0.039-0.071), conscientiousness (ß=0.045, 95% CI:0.029-0.061) and openness to experience (ß=0.031, 95% CI: 0.019-0.044) were associated with the loneliness rate of decline in the fully adjusted models.
Conclusion:There are important country differences in the relationship between personality traits and loneliness rate of decline. We hypothesised that in the absence of a social protection system and universal health care, the role of psychological factors might become even more relevant to predict loneliness. Cultural factors might also be playing a role.
... Using a flexible modeling approach to examine personality change, such as in the present study, ensures a range of fluctuations can be detected. However, it is not uncommon for changes to be modeled with simple linear or quadratic trajectories3,48 , only for it to then be concluded that personality traits are stable over years or decades. This not only overlooks substantial changes that single individuals can have that do not adhere to these restrictive forms 49 , but it further harms efforts to inform the public that personality can and does change, and that these changes matter. ...
Researchers and laypeople alike have traditionally viewed personality as being highly stable across the lifespan. Although recent research has supported personality’s malleability, it is unclear how lifespan changes in personality traits compare to changes in other individual differences and how the public perceives this relative stability. Here, we investigate these perspectives using a multimethod, comparative approach across personality and other individual differences. In an online survey with a US-representative sample (n = 887), we found that laypeople believe personality traits change significantly less across the lifespan than other variables from domains like health and well-being. In contrast, using data from eight longitudinal panel studies (n = 166,971), we found that changes in personality were similar to many other commonly studied aspects of life, even surpassing lifespan changes in life satisfaction, self-esteem, subjective health, and church attendance, among others. Together, our results highlight that the durable view that personality traits are among the most stable aspects of life is at odds with the empirical reality. Given the implications of personality change and beliefs about personality change for future outcomes and successful interventions, it is crucial to effectively disseminate evidence to foster accurate beliefs about personality change.
... In addition, advanced age was a unique predictor of the reserved profile. This association might be related to the steady decline in openness, extraversion and conscientiousness (a lesser degree) with increasing age in older adults [47]. This study also discovered that good sleep quality and a high level of education were uniquely associated with the resilient profile (marked by lowest neuroticism and highest other traits), a finding that is consistent with the evidence from the study conducted by previous study [13], which also demonstrate that individuals within the resilient profile have better sleep quality. ...
Background
Motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome is a predementia syndrome characterized by subjective cognitive complaints and slow gait in the absence of dementia and mobility disability. Although past research has suggested that personality traits could play a significant role in the onset and progression of MCR among older adults, the exact relationships between specific personality profiles and MCR remain unclear. This study aimed to examine the relationship between personality profiles and MCR among community-dwelling older adults.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted from March 2021 to January 2022. Personality traits, including openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism, were measured using the 40-item brief version of the Chinese Big Five Inventory. The Latent profile analysis was used to identify personality profiles among these older adults who shared similar patterns of personality traits. The Lanza, Tan, and Bray’s approach was employed to investigate the personality profile-specific differences in MCR prevalence. Furthermore, a stepwise multinomial logistic regression revealed unique population characteristics for different personality profiles.
Results
A total of 538 eligible participants were included in this study. The mean age was 73.25 years (SD = 9.0) and 62.50% were females. This study identified four distinct personality profiles: the resilient, ordinary, reserved, and anti-resilient profiles. The resilient profile exhibited the lowest prevalence of MCR (mean = 6%, SE = 0.024), whereas the anti-resilient profile had the highest (mean = 20.3%, SE = 0.043). The prevalence of MCR differed among personality profiles (overall χ² = 14.599, p = 0.002). Personality profile membership was characterized by different population characteristics. Notably, the anti-resilient profile was association with symptoms of depression (OR = 28.443, 95%CI = 11.095–72.912), while the reserved profile was linked with advanced age (OR = 1.031, 95%CI = 1.003–1.061). Overall, a low education level and poor sleep quality were the robust attribution factors.
Conclusions
This study revealed that personality profiles may assist in identifying older adults at greater risk of MCR. Increased awareness and management of personality profiles may contribute to the prevention of MCR.
... due to health history or lapsing insurance contracts. Furthermore, research indicates that personality traits tend to undergo particularly pronounced changes well into one's twenties, and again after retirement age, but tend to be more stable in between (Graham et al., 2020;Josef et al., 2016). With our age restriction, we aim to minimize the potential impact of substantial personality changes on our estimates. ...
Personality traits drive people’s financial decisions and hence affect their lives. Yet, we know little about the relationship between personality traits and insurance decisions. Do Risk-Taking, the Big Five and Locus of Control predict a variety of personal insurance decisions? Using a sample of 14,624 German adults with the goal of identifying associations between personality and insurance demand, we found that personality traits predict demand for various insurance types. We also found that associations may be mediated by demographic variables and may depend on the statistical modeling approach (e.g., including nonlinear relationships or examining between- and within-person effects). These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of personality in insurance demand and highlight the need for further exploration of this relationship, as our results demonstrate that personality-insurance-demand-associations depend on the examined insurance type.
... While there are a number of factors that may play a role in lower levels of stress in later life, such as a decrease in social roles with the cessation of work and parenting roles or the decline in neuroticism with age (Graham et al., 2020), it is likely that the ways in which older adults cope with problems also may be a key component, for example, the use of strategies such as proactive and anticipatory coping to ameliorate problems before they occur (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997) and threat minimization if they do arise (Charles, 2010). Alternatively, through long experience, individuals may learn to moderate their appraisals of stress (Boeninger et al., 2009) and cope in a more efficient fashion, which entails judicious use of energy and resources, as well as choosing strategies that are most appropriate for the given situation (Aldwin et al., 2023). ...
Resilience is central to understanding how individuals withstand the adverse effects of stress, but there is no generally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes resilience in later life. The present study tests the coping, appraisal, and resilience in aging model, which posits that resilient older adults, when faced with a problem, can draw upon their lifelong experience to minimize coping effort to conserve resources but still maintain a sense of coping efficacy (perceptions of how well they had handled the specific problem). We assessed coping effort and efficacy in 896 men in the Veterans’ Affairs Normative Aging Study (Mage in 1993 = 64.46, SD = 6.6, range = 50–89) who were followed for 24 years (1993–2016), providing 3,459 observations. Multilevel modeling showed that coping effort decreased significantly, but coping efficacy showed only modest decreases with age. Group-based multitrajectory models indicated three groups. Struggling Copers (22.4%) had low, stable coping effort and efficacy. Modest Decliners (36.9%) had moderate levels of coping effort and high efficacy, both of which decreased with age. Optimal Copers (40.7%) had initially high coping effort, which declined more steeply, and stable, high coping efficacy. Struggling Copers were highest on neuroticism and pessimism at baseline, while Modest Decliners were lowest on neuroticism and highest on extraversion. The complex pattern of results suggested that both resource conservation and decreasing perceived control models were applicable, but to different subgroups. Nonetheless, nearly 80% of the sample were able to sustain high levels of coping efficacy, indicating good resilience in later life.
... Meanwhile, findings in the literature on older people are scarce. It is likely that values also change throughout old age as personality traits retain plasticity (Graham et al., 2020;Roberts and Nickel, 2017). However, value development at old age demands an examination that takes into account the impact of preparing for old age and death (Brandtstädter et al., 2010), data quality due to older people being a hard to reach population (Kammer, Falk, Herzog, & Fuchs, 2019), and, finally, a comparative study of the old (65+) and old old (80+) people with their unique challenges and opportunities due to advances in the health and technology sectors (Baltes & Smith, 2003). ...
Value development over the life-span is rarely studied due to theory and data limitations. We use the LISS data, a Dutch longitudinal dataset, to study value change in adults aged 25–70 over 11 years from 2008 to 2019 (N=10,860), using the neo- socioanalyitcal model (NSM) as a theoretical framework. We find few cohort differences, differences between age groups and non-linear value change within individuals that continues until late adulthood. Gender differences in mean-levels are stable except in universalism and self-direction, while gender differences in rates of change are observed. We conclude that the NSM provides a fruitful framework to interpret value change as a maturation process toward becoming functioning members of society along gendered and age-graded normative stages.
... In the general population, there is an increase in emotional stability from emerging adulthood until around age 80 (Graham et al., 2020). There is also greater focus on positive experiences, emotions, and high-quality relationships, as suggested by socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006). ...
Loneliness is prevalent among sexual minority adults and is associated with minority stress. Yet there is limited understanding of how loneliness and minority stress vary across key demographic variables. This cross-sectional study explored age and gender differences in a minority stress model linking sexual orientation marginalization to social and emotional loneliness via proximal stress (internalized homonegativity, conceal-ment, and stigma preoccupation) and via social anxiety and inhibition. The study also assessed age and gender differences in the protective influence of LGBTQ community involvement. 7,856 sexual minority adults from 85 countries completed an online survey. They were categorized as emerging adults (18−24, n = 3,056), young adults (25−34, n = 2,193), midlife adults (35−49, n = 1,243), and older adults (50−88, n = 1,364). Gender identity groups were cisgender men (n = 4,073), cisgender women (n = 3,017), and transgender individuals (n = 766). With each successive age group, there was a lower prevalence of sexual orientation marginalization, proximal stress, social anxiety, inhibition, and emotional loneliness, along with more community involvement. Sexual orientation marginalization was more pronounced among cisgender women and, especially, transgender individuals. The latter also exhibited the most social anxiety, inhibition, loneliness, and community involvement. Proximal stress was more prevalent among cisgender men than cisgender women and transgender individuals. Multiple group structural equation modeling supported the applicability of the loneliness model across age and gender groups, with only a few variations; these mainly related to how strongly community involvement was linked to marginalization, internalized homonegativity, and social loneliness.
... Results are then synthesized, often (but not always) using the tools of meta-analysis to draw conclusions about both the target hypotheses and the extent to which findings were replicated across studies Mroczek et al., 2022;Weston et al., 2020;Willroth et al., 2022). These approaches have gained popularity within the last decade as one way of addressing issues of replicability within subfields of the psychological sciences that rely on long-term longitudinal data (Beck et al., 2023;Graham et al., 2017;Graham et al., 2020; The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2024, Vol. 79, No. 8 3 Graham et al., 2022;Luo et al., 2022;Turiano et al., 2020;Weston et al., 2020;Willroth et al., 2022;Wood et al., 2018;Yoneda et al., 2021). ...
Objectives
Examining loneliness and social isolation during population-wide historical events may shed light on important theoretical questions about age differences, including whether these differences hold across different regions and the timecourse of the unfolding event. We used a systematic, preregistered approach of coordinated data analysis (CDA) of four studies (total N = 1,307; total observations = 18,492) that varied in design (intensive repeated-measures and cross-sectional), region, timing, and timescale during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Method
We harmonized our datasets to a common period within 2020-2021 and created a common set of variables. We used a combination of ordinary least squares regression and multilevel modeling to address the extent to which there was within- and between-person variation in the associations between social isolation and loneliness, and whether these associations varied as a function of age.
Results
Within- and between-person effects of social interactions were negatively associated with loneliness in one study; in follow-up sensitivity analyses, these patterns held across early and later pandemic periods. Across all datasets, there was no evidence of age differences in the within-person or between-person associations of social interactions and loneliness.
Discussion
Applying the CDA methodological framework allowed us to detect common and divergent patterns of social interactions and loneliness across samples, ages, regions, periods, and study designs.
... Roberts et al. (2006) challenged the notion that personality traits cease changing after a certain age in a meta-analysis. Regarding this, a longitudinal meta-analysis by Graham et al. (2020) demonstrated that Neuroticism scores decrease toward early adulthood and increase again toward old age. In contrast, Conscientiousness follows the opposite trajectory, increasing toward middle age and decreasing toward older age. ...
This study provides significant evidence for the universality of the Big Five personality traits in Latin American countries by evaluating the factor congruence of the Revised International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) across different nations. The study's aim to analyze the psychometric properties of the IPIP, along with its relationships to gender, age, and daily activities, allows for a better understanding of how personality traits manifest in diverse cultural contexts.
The findings confirm that the five-dimensional personality structure—Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience—holds true across the samples from Latin America, indicating the robustness of the Big Five framework in this region. Moreover, the research uncovered notable differences in personality traits based on gender and age, further enhancing the understanding of individual variability in personality traits.
The connections found between personality factors and self-reported daily activities, particularly recreational activities, provide additional validation of the instrument. This reinforces the practical application of the Big Five traits in assessing behavioral tendencies across different demographics.
Finally, the study suggests the psychometric consistency of the IPIP in Latin America, while acknowledging the need for further research to explore potential cultural differences that could enhance the understanding of personality trait development in this region. The conclusion outlines areas for future investigation, such as exploring the nuances of cross-cultural adaptation and the potential impact of sociocultural factors on personality expression.
... The degree to which personality traits persist throughout a person's life is not entirely clear. Research to date has acknowledged variations during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006;Lucas & Donnellan, 2011;Graham et al., 2020). An inverted U-shaped curve is thought to represent the pattern of trait consistency, with stability increasing until approximately the age of 40 and then declining after the age of 60 (Seifert, Rohrer, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2022). ...
Currently, there is no theory that identifies the ideal personality type for sports coaches. The study’s goal is to gain insight into the personalities of German basketball coaches and use existing study results from other professional groups to make recommendations for the content of coaches’ education. Given the German Olympic Sports Federation’s emphasis on comprehensive coach education that includes personal development, this paper examines the relationship between a coach’s vocation and personality, filling in knowledge gaps about how coaches’ personalities appear. The analyses are based on a unique dataset of 360 German basketball coaches and data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), allowing for a more in-depth comparison of coaches’ Big Five personality traits. Using SOEP data from the German general population, teachers, and managers as benchmarks, this paper investigates the relationship between different coaching license levels and distinct personality profiles, providing insights into the characteristics displayed by coaches at various professional levels. The analysed data indicate that lower coaching licence levels are associated with lower neuroticism and more agreeableness, whereas openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion are higher. When comparing coaches to the general population and other occupational groups, A‑license coaches have more characteristics that are similar with managers, whilst C‑license coaches have more parallels with teachers. Furthermore, examining particular traits and individual comparisons, it is transparent that C‑license coaches are more agreeable than A‑license coaches. The findings suggest that coach development programs should be improved by incorporating insights from teachers and managers to select coaches and update educational paradigms more carefully. The study emphasizes the importance of traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness in coaching success and identifies potential areas for intervention to maximize coaching efficacy. In conclusion, this study adds to our empirical understanding of the complex relationships between personality traits, professional roles, and effective coaching on multiple levels. Furthermore, it emphasizes the dynamic relationship between an individual coach’s intrinsic disposition and professional efficacy, showing the importance of tailored interventions to improve coaching outcomes.
... Evaluating the role of adolescent levels of life goals in predicting occupational outcomes in young adulthood can thus lead to a better understanding of the role of motivational constructs in explaining future work outcomes. Second, the transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a key developmental period for studying changes in goals due to the many role changes and life transitions people experience during this time, such as moving away from home, starting college or their first job, or entering their first committed romantic relationship Graham et al., 2020;Lucas & Donnellan, 2011;Roberts, 2006). By understanding how changes in life goals relate to educational and occupational outcomes (above and beyond adolescent levels), we show how changes within individuals may also predict desired educational and occupational attainment. ...
Life goals play a major role in shaping people’s lives and careers. Although life goals have prior documented associations with occupational and other life outcomes, no prior studies have investigated associations between life goal development and occupational outcomes. Using two representative samples of Icelandic youth (Sample 1: n = 485, Sample 2: n = 1,339), followed across 12 years from adolescence to young adulthood, we examined life goal development and associations with educational attainment and a wide range of occupational outcomes. We found that life goals had relatively high rank-order and profile stability across the 12 years. Most life goals decreased in importance during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, except for family- and community-related goals, pointing to a continued focus on building social relationships in young adulthood. We also found meaningful variation in change at the item level within certain goal domains. Furthermore, adolescent levels of life goals, as well as changes in certain goals, predicted educational attainment and occupational outcomes in young adulthood. This suggests that life goals motivate career behaviors beginning at an early age and that subsequent changes in certain life goals also matter for educational and occupational outcomes. Dominance analyses revealed that education and prestige life goals were generally the strongest predictors of future outcomes. Overall, these results highlight the importance of life goal development in predicting later educational attainment and occupational outcomes.
... A possible explanation of the mixed empirical results could come from individual differences on how life transitions unfold in one's life and the individual psychological reaction to them. Indeed, research shows that not all individuals demonstrate personality trait change at the same time, in the same direction or to the same degree (Graham et al., 2020). Moreover, individual differences in personality trait change appear to be most prominent in young adulthood (Bleidorn et al., 2022;Schwaba & Bleidorn, 2018). ...
... Personality traits reflect individuals characteristics in terms of feelings, behaviour, and thoughts (Costa and McCrae 1992). Studies of personality traits suggest that the traits are stable across the lifespan (Graham et al. 2020;Markey, Markey, and Tinsley 2004). Early personality trait studies were conducted using the lexical approach, and then later using questionnaire methods (Costa and McCrae 1992;Goldberg 1992). ...
Although research results so far indicate that personality traits are associated with phubbing, the results of different studies are not always consistent. Therefore, in the current study, we decided to broaden the knowledge and to explore which personality traits are related and explain phubbing in adolescents and whether Internet addiction is a significant mediator of this relationship. The study participants were 430 adolescents aged 13–17, who completed a self-report measurement of personality traits, phubbing/phone obsession and communication disturbance, and Internet addiction. Among the obtained results: (a) phubbing in adolescents was significantly associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness (b) neuroticism was the most significant predictor of phubbing in adolescents, i.e. the higher the neuroticism, the higher the phubbing, (c) significant, mediation of the relationship between personality traits and phubbing through Internet addiction was observed, i.e. the higher the conscientiousness, the lower the Internet addiction and the lower both the phone obsession and communication disturbance. These results emphasise the important role of mediators in the relationship between personality traits and phubbing in adolescents.
... When wanting to generalize associations with emotional reactivity and recovery, it is necessary to include age-heterogeneous samples and consider the arousal level of NA. Personality, emotional reactivity to, and emotional recovery from stressors differ across the lifespan (Graham et al., 2020;Schilling & Diehl, 2015): Older adults experience vulnerabilities because of declining cognitive and physiological resources which may impact emotion regulation capacities (Charles & Luong, 2013;Salthouse, 2019;Shiota & Levenson, 2009;Uchino et al., 2006). Yet, older adults may also benefit from experience-based strengths in emotion regulation (Charles & Luong, 2013). ...
... Numerous developmental studies have shown that despite the relative stability of personality traits, they are malleable and continue to change in adulthood and old age (e.g., Bleidorn et al., 2022;Graham et al., 2020;Roberts et al., 2006). However, compared to the large body of developmental research on personality traits across the lifespan, relatively little is known about intentional or volitional change through interventions. ...
The mechanisms of change underlying the effectiveness of personality change interventions are largely unclear. In this study, we used data from a three-month digital intervention with an intensive longitudinal design to test whether a greater realization of general change factors is partly responsible for personality change. Participants (N = 679, 53.0% female; age: M = 25.3 years, SD = 7.1) seeking to increase either Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, or Extraversion provided self-ratings on their weekly personality states and the three generic change factors of strengths, insights, and behavioral practice. We found a single-factor structure of change factors within and between individuals. Results showed within-person increases in Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness states as well as increases in change factors across the intervention. Changes in personality states were coupled with changes in generic change factors. Finally, the results provide initial support for the hypothesis that the realization of general change factors is partly responsible for the effects of the intervention. Within-person increases in the change factors were associated with subsequent increases in Extraversion and Emotional Stability states during the following week. The present findings highlight the need to better understand how and why people change in personality as a result of interventions. Plain language summary: Recent studies have shown that it is possible to change personality traits through psychological interventions. However, the mechanisms of change are largely unclear. The present study therefore examined whether targeting supportive (strengths), learning (insight) and action (behavioral practice) factors through intervention contributes to personality change. Our results provide initial evidence that these general change mechanisms are partly responsible for personality changes.
... Despite the relatively enduring nature of personality traits, numerous longitudinal studies have shown that traits are malleable and continue to evolve across adulthood, albeit slowly (Graham et al., 2020;Mroczek et al., 2021;Roberts et al., 2006). Recent research suggests that the rather slow process of personality-trait change can be accelerated by psychological interventions, provided that people also desire change (Hudson et al., 2019(Hudson et al., , 2020Jackson et al., 2021). ...
A growing body of research suggests that personality traits can be changed through psychological interventions, but it is unclear whether and to what extent these trait changes are accompanied by changes in self-esteem. The present study examined the link between changes in personality traits and self-esteem during a coaching intervention for personality change. We used data (N = 1,179) from a 3-month digital coaching intervention study with three measurement occasions (pretest, posttest, follow-up) across 6 months and focused on the three largest intervention groups, which included participants who wanted to decrease negative emotionality (n = 406), increase extraversion (n = 375), or increase conscientiousness (n = 398). Accordingly, we focused on the associations between self-esteem and the three personality traits that were targeted in the intervention groups. The main results are as follows: First, self-esteem increased on average for those participants who wanted to decrease their negative emotionality or increase their extraversion. Second, the rates of change in personality traits and self-esteem were strongly associated with each other, most notably between negative emotionality and self-esteem. Third, these associations were similar across all three intervention groups and also between the intervention and postintervention phase of the study, indicating a more general pattern of correlated change. We discuss the potential relevance of correlated change for consulting research and practice.
This article examines empirically the relationship between personality and employment using individual‐level survey data collected in The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). The analysis is based on a subsample of Irish women who left their jobs because of the so‐called marriage bar, which was a legal requirement at the time that women must leave employment when they marry. Two groups of women are compared: Those who did, and those who did not, return to work after having to leave because of the marriage bar. The main finding is that personality does impact employment, with less agreeable and more extroverted women being more likely to return to work after a spell of non‐employment. More generally, the analysis highlights the role of non‐cognitive abilities in labor market success.
The interpersonal circumplex describes two major axes of personality that guide much of social behavior. Agency, one half of the interpersonal circumplex, refers to relatively stable behavioral patterns that center on self-focused dominance and assertiveness assessed in terms of goals, values, or personality traits. However, the psychometric overlap between agency and the most closely linked big five dimension, extraversion, is not well-established, and little behavior genetic work has documented evidence concerning the role of genetic and environmental influences on trait agency. We used the Midlife Development in the United States study to examine agency, big five, and generativity with replication and robustness checks (Nnon−twins = 5,194; Ntwins = 1,914; NMilwaukee = 592). Results indicated that agency was higher in men (d = − 0.24), moderately heritable (44.4%), strongly correlated with extraversion (r =.51), moderately correlated with generativity (r =.36), and approximately 41% of the variance in agency was shared with the big five. The current brief measure of agency across two samples reflected smaller gender differences than historical expectations but supported its distinction from the big five traits at the current levels of analysis.
Personality-development research is flourishing. Here, we extend these efforts horizontally (new constructs) and vertically (new levels within the same construct) by charting out age-graded differences in Schwarz’s human values across 80,814 individuals. Conducting a systematic investigation of cross-sectional age-graded differences in human values—from late teenage years to post-retirement—featuring 36 analytical model choices and 180,000 simulation-based decisions, our analyses replicate some earlier findings (e.g., increasing self- and growth-focus during adolescence and increasing security concerns during adulthood), while also highlighting complex and previously unappreciated dynamics. As such, while it is a common practice to aggregate specific values into parsimonious higher-order concepts to ease interpretation, this may risk overlooking meaningful trends in lower-order value development. Specifically, revealing unique and asynchronous patterns for value nuances, we find that aggregation (a) leads to a loss of critical information, (b) creates conflicting results when nuances diverge, and (c) significantly reduces predictive power.
Understanding whether risk preference represents a stable, coherent trait is central to efforts aimed at explaining, predicting and preventing risk-related behaviours. We help characterize the nature of the construct by adopting a systematic review and individual participant data meta-analytic approach to summarize the temporal stability of 358 risk preference measures (33 panels, 57 samples, 579,114 respondents). Our findings reveal noteworthy heterogeneity across and within measure categories (propensity, frequency and behaviour), domains (for example, investment, occupational and alcohol consumption) and sample characteristics (for example, age). Specifically, while self-reported propensity and frequency measures of risk preference show a higher degree of stability than behavioural measures, these patterns are moderated by domain and age. Crucially, an analysis of convergent validity reveals a low agreement across measures, questioning the idea that they capture the same underlying phenomena. Our results raise concerns about the coherence and measurement of the risk preference construct.
Introduction
Housing insecurity is a social determinant of health, as evidenced by its associations with mental, physical, and biological outcomes. The scientific understanding of the mechanisms by which housing insecurity is associated with health is still limited. This review adapts existing stress process models to propose a conceptual model illustrating potential pathways linking the specific stressor of housing insecurity to physiological and epigenetic manifestations of stress among aging adults.
Methods
This narrative review examines literature across multiple fields, including public health, psychology, and sociology. The literature selected for this review was identified through scientific databases including Web of Science, PubMed, JSTOR, and Google Scholar; primarily peer-reviewed empirical studies, literature reviews, and research reports published in English between 1981 and 2024; and principally based in the United States context. A synthesis of this literature is presented in a proposed conceptual model.
Results
The literature supports the existence of two main predictors of housing insecurity: sociodemographic characteristics and the historical/current context. The main mediating pathways between housing insecurity and manifestations of stress include health behaviors, psychosocial resources, and structural resources. Moderating factors affecting the associations between housing insecurity and manifestations of stress include government assistance, chronic discrimination/unfair treatment, and individual differences. These interdependent mediating and moderating mechanisms affect stressor reactivity, a proximal manifestation of stress, which contributes to the physiological and epigenetic distal manifestations of stress in aging adults.
Discussion and implications
The prevalence of housing insecurity among aging adults is growing in the United States, with significant implications for public health and health disparities, given the growing percentage of aging adults in the population. Further empirical testing of the mediating and moderating mechanisms proposed in the conceptual model will elucidate how housing insecurity is connected to health and provide insight into preventive strategies to ameliorate the adverse effects of housing insecurity on biological health among aging adults.
The “Stress Tests and Biomarkers of Resilience” conference, hosted by the American Geriatrics Society and the National Institute on Aging, marks the second in a series aimed at advancing the field of resilience science. Held on March 4–5, 2024, in Bethesda, Maryland, this conference built upon the foundational work from the first conference, which focused on defining resilience across various domains—physical, cognitive, and psychosocial. This year's gathering centered around three factors: the biology that underlies resilient outcomes; the social, environmental, genetic, and psychosocial factors that impact that resilience biology; and the biomarker testing and imaging that predicts resilient outcomes for older adults. The presentations and discussions around these topics were underscored by considerations around the many impacts of social determinants of health on resiliency interventions, and by advances in the modern training and research methodologies that influence data collection and experiment design.
We critically evaluate Dupré and Wille's (2024) proposal for using assessments for organizational personality development through the lens of empirical evidence on adult personality change. We present an overview of research on personality stability and malleability throughout adulthood examining rank‐order stability, mean‐level changes, and the impact of life events and interventions. Empirical evidence reveals that while personality exhibits some plasticity in young adulthood, significant changes become increasingly rare beyond age 30. For older employees, personality remains highly stable, making age an important consideration in workforce development. Life experiences and intentional interventions have been shown to prompt modest personality changes, with emotional stability being the most malleable trait. We quantify these changes, noting shifts of up to two‐thirds of a standard deviation in emotional stability through targeted interventions, with more limited effects on other Big Five traits. We also provide insights for organizational assessment practices, including the need for tailored personality (re‐)assessment intervals and age‐based norm composition for better utilization of personality information. With Cybernetic Trait Complexes Theory, we introduce a framework for aligning personality traits with situational cues in work environments. This approach emphasizes trait activation rather than personality modification, allowing organizations to harness employees' strengths by strategically designing environments that naturally encourage beneficial trait expression. This shifts the focus from personality change to strategic activation of beneficial traits through environmental design. We describe how organizations can leverage employees' existing personality trait complexes while fostering incremental behavioral adaptations, offering a pragmatic alternative to traditional employee development approaches. By aligning individuals with environments that activate their traits, organizations can enhance both personal and organizational outcomes, contributing to broader societal benefits as well.
Lifespan developmental theories suggest age-related shifts in motivation, cognition, emotion regulation, and stressor experience lead to changes in mean levels of negative and positive affect across the lifespan. The present research used coordinated data analysis to examine mean-level affective trajectories in 186,752 participants ranging from 11–104 years old across 14 longitudinal studies. Random-effects models were used to estimate meta-analytic effect sizes. On average, negative affect decreased until early older adulthood, and then remained stable throughout older adulthood. Meanwhile, positive affect remained stable across most of the younger and middle-aged adult lifespan, before starting its descent in later middle-aged adulthood and continuing to decline throughout older adulthood. Studies with older samples showed a clearer flattening effect of negative affect and steeper decline of positive affect in late-life relative to younger samples. These findings suggest that lifespan developmental affect trajectories are nuanced and not a direct inverse of each other.
It is unclear which psychosocial factors explain individual differences in seeking primary, secondary, and tertiary care, and under which conditions. The current work integrates the study of personality and health care into existing theoretical models to determine extent to which traits can be used to understand who seeks health services. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study ( N = 14,358, with 141,401 distinct measurements), multilevel logistic models were used to estimate the likelihood of using health services from known correlates of healthcare utilization (age, self-rated health, and diagnosis of chronic conditions), personality traits, and the interaction of these domains. Independent of health status, traits were associated with the use of health services. Little evidence of moderation was found, although chronic conditions strengthened the association between conscientiousness and seeking health care. These results suggest that personality traits may influence health beyond simply affecting the need for health services.
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) lead to improvements in mental health, and also increase trait mindfulness. Yet, trait mindfulness shows definitional and empirical overlaps with the personality dimension of neuroticism which is linked to mental health and is malleable through interventions as well. This meta-analysis examined whether previously reported associations between increases in self-reported trait mindfulness and mental health in MBIs, as well as in non-MBIs and treatment-as-usual (TAU) and waitlist controls, are mediated through concomitant changes in neuroticism on the between-study level. Data of 45 intervention studies (39 randomized controlled trials; total N = 2913) were investigated with three-level meta-analysis and the causal steps approach. Change in neuroticism mediated change in trait mindfulness and fully accounted for its mediational effects on mental health. Similar associative patterns were found for the active and TAU and waitlist control groups as well. Accounting for small-study effects did not alter this pattern of results. The findings highlight the relevance of neuroticism for intervention research and may explain previously observed apparent effects of trait mindfulness in non-MBIs and TAU and waitlist controls on mental health. The construct of trait mindfulness may need conceptual reconsideration and resharpening, and the investigation of personality change should be intensified in intervention research.
Changes in personality are often modeled linearly or curvilinearly. It is a simplifying—yet untested—assumption that the chosen sample-level model form accurately depicts all person-level trajectories within the sample. Given the complexity of personality development, it seems unlikely that imposing a single model form across all individuals is appropriate. Although typical growth models can estimate individual trajectories that deviate from the average via random effects, they do not explicitly test whether people differ in the forms of their trajectories. This heterogeneity is valuable to uncover, though, as it may imply that different processes are driving change. The present study uses data from four longitudinal data sets (N = 26,469; Mage = 47.55) to empirically test the degree that people vary in best-fitting model forms for their Big Five personality development. Across data sets, there was substantial heterogeneity in best-fitting forms. Moreover, the type of form someone had was directly associated with their net and total amount of change across time, and these changes were substantially misquantified when a worse-fitting form was used. Variables such as gender, age, trait levels, and number of waves were also associated with people’s types of forms. Lastly, comparisons of best-fitting forms from individual- and sample-level models indicated that consequential discrepancies arise from different levels of analysis (i.e., individual vs. sample) and alternative modeling choices (e.g., choice of time metric). Our findings highlight the importance of these individual differences for understanding personality change processes and suggest that a flexible, person-level approach to understanding personality development is necessary.
Cross-sectional work suggests that higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness are consistently related to more subjective cognitive complaints. Little is known about the longitudinal associations. We used data from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development to examine how personality and cognitive complaints jointly unfolded over 20 years. Participants came from a midlife ( n = 502, M age = 43.7) and an older age group ( n = 500, M age = 62.5). Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were used to test the personality-complaint associations at the between-person and within-person levels. Analyses controlled for gender, education, subjective health, objective health, and memory. At the between-person level, higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were associated with more cognitive complaints over 20 years, and these associations were stronger in older than middle-aged adults. Among older adults, lower extraversion, openness, and agreeableness were longitudinally associated with more cognitive complaints. At the within-person level, all five traits were concurrently related to cognitive complaints, with small to medium-sized effects, but not across all measurement occasions. Few cross-lagged effects were found, with no consistent pattern across time or age cohorts. This work provides longitudinal evidence of personality-complaint associations and suggests that these associations varied more across individuals than within individuals over time.
The lifespan development of personality traits has evolved from a niche topic to a core subject of psychological science. Looking back at 20 years of research, I review the personality development literature against three criteria for strong psychological theories. Overall, the field has come a long way toward refining our theoretical understanding of lifespan personality trait development. Major accomplishments include the establishment of evidence-based trait measures, the identification of robust patterns of trait stability and change, and the documentation of both environmental and genetic contributions to lifespan personality development. These insights put the field in a position to make transformative advances toward stronger and more precise theories. However, there are still several open questions. I discuss ideas to overcome existing obstacles to the development of strong lifespan personality theories and close with an overall evaluation of the theoretical status of the field.
Personality traits drive people’s financial decisions and hence affect their lives. Yet, we know little about the relationship between personality traits and insurance decisions. Do Risk-Taking, the Big Five and Locus of Control predict a variety of personal insurance decisions? Using a sample of 14,624 German adults with the goal of identifying associations between personality and insurance demand, we found that personality traits predict demand for various insurance types. We also found that associations may be mediated by demographic variables and may depend on the statistical modeling approach (e.g., including nonlinear relationships or examining between- and within-person effects). These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of personality in insurance demand and highlight the need for further exploration of this relationship, as our results demonstrate that personality-insurance-demand-associations depend on the examined insurance type.
Individuelle Persönlichkeitsunterschiede können in Psychotherapie und Beratung sowohl Probleme als auch Ressourcen darstellen. In der Praxis besteht oft ein Mangel an Wissen über nichtpathologische Persönlichkeitseigenschaften. Zudem wurden einige traditionelle Vorstellungen über Persönlichkeit im Erwachsenenalter durch neue Forschungsergebnisse widerlegt. Diese Arbeit präsentiert Erkenntnisse aus der Persönlichkeitsforschung, um Anregungen für die Praxis zu bieten.
Loneliness is a pervasive experience with adverse impacts on health and well-being. Despite its significance, notable gaps impede a full understanding of how loneliness changes across the adult life span and what factors influence these changes. To address this, we conducted a coordinated data analysis of nine longitudinal studies encompassing 128,118 participants ages 13 to 103 from over 20 countries. Using harmonized variables and models, we examined loneliness trajectories and predictors. Analyses revealed that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve, decreasing from young adulthood to midlife and increasing in older adulthood. These patterns were consistent across studies. Several baseline factors (i.e., sex, marital status, physical function, education) were linked to loneliness levels, but few moderated the loneliness trajectories. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of loneliness and underscore the need for targeted interventions to reduce social disparities throughout adulthood.
Personality traits are assumed to change slowly and incrementally. Recent intervention studies apparently challenge this assumption, showing that personality traits can also change quickly and substantially. However, how frequently do such quick changes manifest in the general population? This study sought to determine (1) a base rate of year-to-year changes in the general population and (2) the extent to which these shifts are related to longer-term change patterns. We examined year-to-year change in Big Five traits with nationally representative data from 7005 German participants, annually tracked for up to six years. Year-to-year patterns exhibited stability and change (e.g., ≥ 1 SD year-to-year change in ≈ 20%). Across participants, year-to-year trait score increases and decreases occurred in equal proportions, suggesting that in a given sample, year-to-year changes in different directions average out. Within participants, however, in all domains but agreeableness, year-to-year changes reliably propagated to longer-term trajectories. While much of the year-to-year change faded away in subsequent years, lasting shifts in individuals’ trait levels remained, particularly upon pronounced year-to-year decreases. Overall, (pronounced) year-to-year changes were relatively common, largely reversible, and yet predictive of individuals’ longer-term trajectories. We discuss how the results bridge set-point assumptions with assumptions of incremental trait change.
This study aims to examine the prevalence rates of compulsive and histrionic characteristics among pilots from diverse demographic backgrounds such as South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western pilots. The research aims to identify differences in personality traits and explore potential correlations within each ethnic group of commercial pilots. The data was provided by sixty pilots, equally representing three different ethnic groups, with twenty participants in each demographic. To collect the data, the researchers used a measuring tool designed to reveal signs of mental disorders, known as the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI). According to ANOVA results, there is a notable difference in prevalence rates for compulsive and histrionic traits among the three different ethnic groups (F (2,87) = 4.76, p =0.00057). Overall, the results showed that South Asian pilots had more compulsive traits than Middle Eastern and Western pilots. On the other hand, Middle Eastern pilots were found to have a higher occurrence of histrionic traits compared to their counterparts from South Asia and Westen pilots. The correlation analysis confirmed that there was a substantial link between histrionic and compulsive traits (r = 0.51, p < 0.05). A similar trend was seen for Middle Eastern pilots, where a weakly positive link (r = 0.24, p < 0.05) was visible. On the other hand, the Western pilots showed a weak, inverse correlation between compulsive and histrionic characteristics (r = - 0.14, p<00), displaying unique profiles within this group in terms of their mutual interaction. These results offer a profound understanding of the relationship between ethnicity and personality traits in pilots.
Objective
Investigate short‐term personality development during the post‐graduation transition.
Background
Prior research indicates that long‐term personality development matters for employment outcomes. However, this evidence is primarily limited to multi‐year longitudinal studies. This research switches the focus to personality changes during a shorter, impactful life transition.
Method
We examined how short‐term personality development during the 14‐month post‐graduation transition relates to early career outcomes among two diverse samples of graduates from universities ( N = 816) and community colleges ( N = 567). We used latent growth curve models to examine associations between career outcomes measured 14 months after graduation with initial personality levels and personality changes.
Results
Results revealed that mean‐level changes in personality were small and mostly negative. Moreover, individual differences in personality changes were not associated with career outcomes. However, initial levels of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and extraversion positively related to both subjective and objective career success. Initial levels of agreeableness were also positively related to subjective (but not objective) success.
Conclusions
Findings indicate that individual differences in personality trait levels at graduation are stronger predictors of early career success compared to short‐term personality changes during the post‐graduation transition. Taken together, these results help define the time sequence through which personality changes relate to career outcomes.
As more data is shared and concerns over the replicability, reproducibility, and generalizability of psychological and other social sciences continue, more researchers aim to conduct multi-study or multi-sample research and synthesize findings via data synthesis, using different parameterizations of individual participant meta-analysis. However, there is no overarching framework organizing different parameterizations and a relatively small number of simulation-based or empirical examples testing or comparing these parameterizations. Thus, this tutorial paper has three main goals. First, we provide an overview of six parameterizations of individual participant meta-analysis, which we organize into a taxonomy based on different features of each parameterization (e.g., sample-specific parameters, meta-analytic parameters, number of models required). Second, using empirical data from 26,205 participants across 11 longitudinal studies, we provide a tutorial estimating each parameterization by investigating prospective meta-analytic and sample-specific associations between the Big Five personality traits and crystallized abilities along with four moderators of these associations. Finally, we compare convergence and divergence of findings across methods. We found that Openness is a robust predictor of crystallized abilities across samples and methods and that there were few moderators of personality trait-crystallized ability associations. Across methods, we largely see convergence in model estimates, with some exceptions. We conclude by making recommendations and providing a flow chart for choosing the most appropriate parameterization of data synthesis given a particular team’s research goals, questions, data availability, and model features.
Objective:
Conscientiousness is associated with positive health behaviors and outcomes and has been shown to increase as individuals age. Both age and Conscientiousness affect pain, a highly prevalent correlate of aging. This study investigated the effect of Conscientiousness on the relationship between pain and pain interference and vice versa among older adults, who experience pain and functional limitations disproportionately compared with younger adults.
Methods:
196 community-dwelling older adults (Mage=73) provided pain and interference ratings semiannually for up to 10 years. Conscientiousness was assessed at the first visit and, on average, 7.6 years later. Multi-level models tested the effect of Conscientiousness on the relationship between pain and interference. Hierarchical regression modeled changes in Conscientiousness.
Results:
Across all pain levels, higher Conscientiousness was associated with less pain interference (γ02= -0.126, SE= 0.048, p< .01, 95% CI [-0.22, -0.03]). This effect was more pronounced at higher levels of pain and older age. Conscientiousness increased slightly over time, but older baseline age (b= -0.01, 95% CI [-0.03, -0.001], R2= 0.02) and more mean pain interference over the study period (b= -0.17, 95% CI [-0.30, -.03], R2= 0.03) were associated with less increase in Conscientiousness at follow-up.
Discussion:
Higher pain and older age are associated with more pain interference, and Conscientiousness provided the most protection for these same individuals - those with higher pain and older age. Conscientiousness facilitated reduced interference, which may feed forward into higher Conscientiousness, potentially shaping a cycle between personality and health that extends through older adulthood.
The interpersonal circumplex describes two major axes of personality that guide much of social behavior. Agency, one half of the interpersonal circumplex, refers to relatively stable behavioral patterns that center on self-focused dominance and assertiveness. Past empirical work on agency tends to treat the dimension as a characteristic adaptation, rather than a basic component of personality, in part due to the relatively large gender difference in agency with masculine individuals tending to behave more agentic. However, the psychometric overlap between agency and the most closely linked big five dimension, extraversion, is not well-established, and no behavior genetic work has documented evidence concerning the role of genetic and environmental influences. It is unclear whether agency is more similar to a personality trait, with no evidence of shared environmental influence and moderate heritability, or a characteristic adaptation, with some evidence for shared environmental influence and possibly lower heritability. We used the Midlife Development in the United States study to examine agency, big five, and generativity with replication and robustness check (Nnon-twins = 5,194; Ntwins = 1,914; NMilwaukee = 592). Results indicated that agency was higher in men (d = -.24), moderately heritable (44.4%), strongly correlated with extraversion (r = .51), moderately correlated with generativity (r = .36), and that approximately 40% of the variance in agency was shared with the big five. Agency also changed strongly with extraversion and openness, but less so generativity. Altogether, these results indicate that agency functions similar to other basic personality dimensions but is not clearly a dispositional trait.
Previous longitudinal studies of personality in adulthood have been limited in the range of traits examined, have chiefly made use of self-reports, and have frequently included only men. In this study, self-reports (N = 983) and spouse ratings (N = 167) were gathered on the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985b), which measures all five of the major dimensions of normal personality. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses on data from men and women aged 21 to 96 years showed evidence of small declines in Activity, Positive Emotions, and openness to Actions that might be attributed to maturation, but none of these effects was replicated in sequential analyses. The 20 other scales examined showed no consistent pattern of maturational effects. In contrast, retest stability was quite high for all five dimensions in self-reports and for the three dimensions measured at both times in spouse ratings. Comparable levels of stability were seen for men and women and for younger and older subjects. The data support the position that personality is stable after age 30.
A majority of research by personality psychologists examining health has utilized publicly available datasets, for good reason. These resources are often the only available datasets large enough to detect expected effect sizes and may contain biological or genetic data that is difficult to obtain. However, researchers tend to examine only one large dataset at a time. Given recent meta-research on the robustness and replicability of "established" findings, all researchers should take greater care to evaluate the evidentiary value of their findings and seek methods to increase their robustness. Personality and aging psychologists who use publicly available datasets have a unique tool at their disposal in order to achieve this goal, namely, more publicly available datasets. More specifically, psychologists may use coordinated analysis (Hofer and Piccinin, 2009; Piccinin and Hofer, 2008) to examine relationships across several large datasets and, using the tools of meta-analysis, identify generalizable effect sizes and examine heterogeneity across countries and methods. This chapter describes the motivation for coordinated analysis, the process of using this method, and details several examples.
Growing research on personality–relationship dynamics demonstrates that people's personality and their (enjoyment of) social relationships are closely intertwined. Using experience sampling data from 136 adults (aged 18–89 years) who reported on more than 50 000 social interactions, we zoom into everyday real‐world social interactions to examine how Big Five personality traits and social context characteristics shape people's happiness in social encounters across the adult lifespan. Results revealed that interactions that were social (vs. task‐oriented) and with close (vs. less close) others were associated with higher momentary happiness as were higher levels of the target person's extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and lower neuroticism. Of the 10 personality × situation interactions tested, only one reached significance (with p = .041): Individuals with higher levels of neuroticism benefitted more from interactions with friends than did individuals low in neuroticism. The role of social context characteristics for momentary happiness changed with age, but the role of personality or personality × social context did not, suggesting that personality effects on happiness in social context manifest in similar ways across the adult lifespan. We discuss implications for personality–situation research and the understanding of affective dynamics in everyday social interactions. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology
This longitudinal study over a 23-year time span examined predictive associations between self-control development in adolescence and love and work outcomes in adulthood. Participants were 1,527 adults aged 35 years (48.3% female). The predictor variable self-control was measured yearly at the ages of 12 to 16 years. Adult outcome variables were measured at the age of 35 years. Three important results stand out. First, the measure of adolescent self-control functioned equivalently across the adolescent years. Second, adolescents showed a mean-level increase in self-control across the adolescent years and significant individual differences in level and change of self-control. Finally, individual differences in change in adolescent self-control predicted better intimate relationships in terms of higher relationship satisfaction and lower conflict; and more satisfaction and engagement in work-life in adulthood independent of the initial levels of self-control in early adolescence. These findings demonstrate that developmental self-regulatory processes reveal long-term consequences in important life domains beyond the adolescent years.
Trait stability and maturation are fundamental principles of contemporary personality psychology and have been shown to hold across many cultures. However, it has proven difficult to move beyond these general findings to a detailed account of trait development. There are pervasive and unexplained inconsistencies across studies that may be due to (a) insufficient attention to measurement error, (b) subtle but age-sensitive differences in alternative measures of the same trait, or (c) different perspectives reflected in self-reports and observer ratings. Multiscale, multimethod-and ideally multinational-studies are needed. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for trait stability and change, but supporting evidence is currently weak or indirect; trait development is a fertile if sometimes frustrating field for theory and research. Beyond traits, there are approaches to personality development that are of interest to students of adult development, and these may be fruitfully addressed from a trait perspective. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 70 is January 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
When we speak about heterogeneity in a meta-analysis, our intent is usually to understand the substantive implications of the heterogeneity. If an intervention yields a mean effect size of 50 points, we want to know if the effect size in different populations varies from 40 to 60, or from 10 to 90, because this speaks to the potential utility of the intervention. While there is a common belief that the I(2) statistic provides this information, it actually does not. In this example, if we are told that I(2) is 50%, we have no way of knowing if the effects range from 40 to 60, or from 10 to 90, or across some other range. Rather, if we want to communicate the predicted range of effects, then we should simply report this range. This gives readers the information they think is being captured by I(2) and does so in a way that is concise and unambiguous. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Who are we and who do we become before we die? The last years of life are typically marked by pronounced decrements in multiple domains of individual functioning – a phenomenon referred to as terminal decline. To date, we know surprisingly little about how personality traits might shape and be shaped by the often multifaceted loss experiences in late life. In this chapter we review and discuss theoretical notions and initial empirical evidence suggesting that on the one hand, personality operates as antecedent condition for and buffer against late-life declines in the health domain via its influence on health behaviors, stress-related processes, and social resources. On the other hand, pervasive health declines in late life challenge older individuals' ability to maintain an acquired lifestyle and to successfully interact with the social and physical environment, often resulting in substantial changes in personality. Based on lifespan theory, we argue that such health-related personality changes reflect processes of adaptation involving the adjustment to changing developmental opportunities and constraints through the selection of age-appropriate goals and activities.
We examine how late-life personality development relates to overall morbidity as well as specific performance-based indicators of physical and cognitive functioning in 1,232 older adults in the Berlin Aging Study II (aged 65-88 years). Latent growth models indicated that, on average, neuroticism and conscientiousness decline over time, whereas extraversion and openness increase and agreeableness remains stable. Higher morbidity and worse grip strength were associated with higher neuroticism. Lower grip strength was further associated with lower openness, attenuated increases in extraversion, decreases in agreeableness and accelerated decline in conscientiousness. Moreover, those with poor perceptual speed reported higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness. We also found age- and gender-differential associations between physical health and cognitive performance with levels of and changes in personality.
Empirical evidence over the past 20 years has documented that key aspects of personality traits change during adulthood. However, it is essentially an open question whether and how traits change at the very end of life and what role health, cognitive performance, perceived control, and social factors play in those changes. To examine these questions, we applied growth models to 13-year longitudinal data obtained from now-deceased participants in the Berlin Aging Study (N = 463; age at baseline M = 85.9 years, SD = 8.4; 51% men). Results revealed that neuroticism, on average, increases (about 0.3 SD in the last 10 years) and that this increase becomes even steeper at the end of life. In contrast, extraversion and openness decline rather steadily at the end of life (about -0.5 SD in the last 10 years). Additionally, poor health manifested as a risk factor for declines in extraversion and openness late in life but not neuroticism. Similar to earlier phases of life, better cognitive performance related to more openness. More loneliness was associated with higher neuroticism, whereas more social activity was associated with higher levels of extraversion and openness. Intriguing additional insights indicated that more personal control was associated with higher levels of extraversion and openness, whereas the feeling that one's life is controlled by others was associated with higher neuroticism but also with higher openness closer to death. We discuss potential pathways by which health, cognitive performance, control, and social inclusion resources and risk factors affect personality development late in life. (PsycINFO Database Record
This study investigated long-term correlated change between personality traits and perceived social support in middle adulthood. Two measurement occasions with an 8-year time interval from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development (ILSE) were used. The sample consisted of 346 middle-aged adults (46-50 years at T1). Four different types of perceived social support were assessed. Personality traits were assessed with the NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Longitudinal measurement invariance (MI) was established for both measures. The mean rank-order stabilities were .79 and .62 for personality traits and for perceived social support, respectively. The results demonstrated a mean-level increase for neuroticism and a decrease for extraversion and significant change variances for all constructs. The results of latent change models showed significant initial level correlations and correlated changes between personality traits and social support, implying that changes in these constructs show commonality. The results can expand our current thinking about correlated change in personality.
© 2015 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Despite abundant evidence that personality development continues in adulthood, little is known about the patterns and sources of personality development in old age. We thus investigated mean-level trends and individual differences in change as well as the genetic and environmental sources of rank-order continuity and change in several personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, perceived control, and affect intensity) and well-being. In addition, we analyzed the interrelation between perceived control and change in other personality traits as well as between change in personality traits and change in well-being. We analyzed data from older adult twins, aged 64-85 at time 1 (N = 410; 135 males and 275 females; 134 monozygotic and 63 dizygotic twin pairs), collected at 2 different time points about five years apart. On average, neuroticism increased, whereas extraversion, conscientiousness, and perceived control significantly decreased over time. Change in perceived control was associated with change in neuroticism and conscientiousness pointing to particular adaptation mechanisms specific to old age. Whereas individual differences in personality traits were fairly stable due to both genetic and environmental sources, individual differences in change were primarily due to environmental sources (beyond random error) indicating plasticity in old age. Even though the average level of well-being did not significantly change over time, individual well-being tended to decrease with strongly increasing levels of neuroticism as well as decreasing extraversion, conscientiousness, and perceived control indicating that personality traits predict well-being but not vice versa. We discuss implications for theory on personality development across the life span.
Maximum likelihood or restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates of the
parameters in linear mixed-effects models can be determined using the lmer
function in the lme4 package for R. As for most model-fitting functions in R,
the model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including
both fixed- and random-effects terms. The formula and data together determine a
numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the
profiled REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of the model
parameters. The appropriate criterion is optimized, using one of the
constrained optimization functions in R, to provide the parameter estimates. We
describe the structure of the model, the steps in evaluating the profiled
deviance or REML criterion, and the structure of classes or types that
represents such a model. Sufficient detail is included to allow specialization
of these structures by users who wish to write functions to fit specialized
linear mixed models, such as models incorporating pedigrees or smoothing
splines, that are not easily expressible in the formula language used by lmer.
The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of more than 37 000 individuals over
age 50 in 23 000 households in the USA. The survey, which has been fielded every 2 years since 1992, was established to provide
a national resource for data on the changing health and economic circumstances associated with ageing at both individual and
population levels. Its multidisciplinary approach is focused on four broad topics—income and wealth; health, cognition and
use of healthcare services; work and retirement; and family connections. HRS data are also linked at the individual level
to administrative records from Social Security and Medicare, Veteran’s Administration, the National Death Index and employer-provided
pension plan information. Since 2006, data collection has expanded to include biomarkers and genetics as well as much greater
depth in psychology and social context. This blend of economic, health and psychosocial information provides unprecedented
potential to study increasingly complex questions about ageing and retirement. The HRS has been a leading force for rapid
release of data while simultaneously protecting the confidentiality of respondents. Three categories of data—public, sensitive
and restricted—can be accessed through procedures described on the HRS website (hrsonline.isr.umich.edu).
The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a longitudinal study of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and one of their randomly selected siblings. Wisconsin is located in the upper midwest of the United States and had a population of approximately 14 000 000 in 1957, making it the 14th most populous state at that time. Data spanning almost 60 years allow researchers to link family background, adolescent characteristics, educational experiences, employment experiences, income, wealth, family formation and social and religious engagement to midlife and late-life physical health, mental health, psychological well-being, cognition, end of life planning and mortality. The WLS is one of the few longitudinal data sets that include an administrative measure of cognition from childhood. Further, recently collected saliva samples allow researchers to explore the inter-relationships among genes, behaviours and environment, including genetic determinants of behaviours (e.g. educational attainment); the interactions between genes and environment; and how these interactions predict behaviours. Most panel members were born in 1939, and the sample is broadly representative of White, non-Hispanic American men and women who have completed at least a high school education. Siblings cover several adjoining cohorts: they were born primarily between 1930 and 1948. At each interview, about two-thirds of the sample lived in Wisconsin, and about one-third lived elsewhere in the United States or abroad. The data, along with documentation, are publicly accessible and can be accessed at . http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/. Requests for protected data or assistance should be sent to . [email protected]
/* */ Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association.
Previous studies revealed that low self-esteem is prospectively associated with depression. However, self-esteem has been shown to change over time. We thus hypothesized that not only level but also change in self-esteem affect depression. Using data from a 23-year longitudinal study (N = 1,527), we therefore examined the prospective effects of global and domain-specific self-esteem (physical attractiveness, academic competence) level and change on depressive symptoms 2 decades later. Self-esteem was assessed annually from age 12 to 16, and depression was assessed at age 16 and 35. Results from latent growth curve analyses demonstrated that both level and change in self-esteem served as predictors for adult depression. Individuals who entered adolescence with low self-esteem, and/or whose self-esteem declined further during the adolescent years, were more likely to exhibit symptoms of depression 2 decades later as adults; this pattern held both for global and domain-specific self-esteem. These findings highlight the importance of adolescent self-esteem development for mental health outcomes in adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
During early adulthood, individuals from different cultures across the world tend to become more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic. Two leading theories offer different explanations for these pervasive age trends: Five-factor theory proposes that personality maturation is largely determined by genetic factors, whereas social-investment theory proposes that personality maturation in early adulthood is largely the result of normative life transitions to adult roles. In the research reported here, we conducted the first systematic cross-cultural test of these theories using data from a large Internet-based sample of young adults from 62 nations (N = 884,328). We found strong evidence for universal personality maturation from early to middle adulthood, yet there were significant cultural differences in age effects on personality traits. Consistent with social-investment theory, results showed that cultures with an earlier onset of adult-role responsibilities were marked by earlier personality maturation.
The present study aims to investigate gender differences in the mean-level change of the Big Five from late adolescence to emerging adulthood. We analyzed longitudinal self-report data from 192 males and 211 females, using multigroup Latent Growth Modeling. Gender differences were found in the shape of the trajectory, as well as in the mean and in the variance of the growth curve parameters (i.e. the initial level and the rate of change). At time 1 (Age 16), females scored significantly higher on measures of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Males, in contrast, scored higher than females on a measure of Emotional stability. In both males and females, Conscientiousness and Openness increased linearly from age 16 to age 20, whereas Energy/Extraversion remained stable. Emotional stability slightly increased in males and remained stable in females. Agreeableness increased linearly in males and showed a quadratic trend in females, first increasing and then declining over time. Finally, females showed higher interindividual variability than males on the trajectories of Conscientiousness and Emotional stability.
Objective:
Diabetes is an increasingly important public health concern, but little is known about the contribution of psychological factors on diabetes risk. We examined whether personality is associated with risk of incident diabetes and diabetes-related mortality.
Method:
An individual-participant meta-analysis of 34,913 adults free of diabetes at baseline (average age 53.7 years, 57% women) from 5 prospective cohort studies from the United States and United Kingdom. Personality dimensions included extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience based on the Five Factor Model.
Results:
During an average follow-up of 5.7 years, 1845 participants became diabetic. Of the 5 personality dimensions, only low conscientiousness was associated with an elevated diabetes risk (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.82-0.91 per 1 standard deviation increment in conscientiousness). This association attenuated by 60% after adjustment for obesity and by 25% after adjustment for physical inactivity. Low conscientiousness was also associated with elevated risk of diabetes mortality (HR = 0.72, CI = 0.53-0.98 per 1 standard deviation increment in conscientiousness). Other personality traits were not consistently associated with diabetes incidence or mortality.
Conclusions:
Low conscientiousness-a cognitive-behavioral disposition reflecting careless behavior and a lack of self-control and planning-is associated with elevated risk of diabetes and diabetes-related mortality. The underlying mechanisms are likely to involve health behaviors, such as poor weight management, physical inactivity, and adherence to medical management recommendations.
The seeds of Healthy Aging are sown much earlier in life, through the health choices we make in younger adulthood and midlife. Cumulative effects of good health behaviors throughout one's life often pay off in older adulthood, in the form of healthy aging (optimal physical, cognitive, and psychological functioning), whereas poorer choices earlier in life can lead to suboptimal or even pathological aging. Personality characteristics are important predictors of health behaviors and thus influence the course of healthy aging. Personality also impacts other precursors to healthy aging, such as educational attainment, work and career choices, financial success, relationship and family outcomes, and attitudes toward engagement and involvement in later life. Through multiple pathways, not only health and health behavior, personality predicts positive aging-related outcomes.
Background
Substantial research is dedicated to understanding the aging-related dynamics among individual differences in level, change, and variation across physical and cognitive abilities. Evaluating replicability and synthesizing these findings has been limited by differences in measurements and samples, and by study design and statistical analyses confounding between-person differences with within-person changes. In this paper, we conducted a coordinated analysis and summary meta-analysis of new results on the aging-related dynamics linking pulmonary function and cognitive performance.
Methods
We performed coordinated analysis of bivariate growth models in data from 20,586 participants across eight longitudinal studies to examine individual differences in baseline level, rate of change, and occasion-specific variability in pulmonary and cognitive functioning. Results were summarized using meta-analysis.
Results
We found consistent but weak baseline and longitudinal associations in levels of pulmonary and cognitive functioning, but no associations in occasion-specific variability.
Conclusions
Results provide limited evidence for a consistent link between simultaneous changes in pulmonary and cognitive function in a normal aging population. Further research is required to understand patterns of onset of decline and differences in rates of change within and across physical and cognitive functioning domains, both within-individuals and across countries and birth cohorts. Coordinated analysis provides an efficient and rigorous approach for replicating and comparing results across independent longitudinal studies.
The credibility revolution (sometimes referred to as the “replicability crisis”) in psychology has brought about many changes in the standards by which psychological science is evaluated. These changes include (a) greater emphasis on transparency and openness, (b) a move toward preregistration of research, (c) more direct-replication studies, and (d) higher standards for the quality and quantity of evidence needed to make strong scientific claims. What are the implications of these changes for productivity, creativity, and progress in psychological science? These questions can and should be studied empirically, and I present my predictions here. The productivity of individual researchers is likely to decline, although some changes (e.g., greater collaboration, data sharing) may mitigate this effect. The effects of these changes on creativity are likely to be mixed: Researchers will be less likely to pursue risky questions; more likely to use a broad range of methods, designs, and populations; and less free to define their own best practices and standards of evidence. Finally, the rate of scientific progress—the most important shared goal of scientists—is likely to increase as a result of these changes, although one’s subjective experience of making progress will likely become rarer.
The ability to reproduce an effect — whether through natural observation or a carefully controlled experiment — is generally viewed by scientists as a prerequisite for declaring the effect’s existence. Replication research focuses on the extent to which previously observed effects can be reproduced. This type of research ranges in scope from identical reproduction of reported results using the exact same methods, equipment, conditions, or data to more nuanced explorations of the ways an effect is altered by the use of different methods (sensitivity analyses) or is conditional upon the presence of specific circumstances (generalizability). Though replication research has often failed to proceed smoothly in psychology for several important reasons, the availability of many new resources for replication research bodes well for a more promising future than the recent past.
Personality Development across the Lifespan examines the development of personality characteristics from childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood, and old age. It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives, methods, and empirical findings of personality and developmental psychology, also detailing insights on how individuals differ from each other, how they change during life, and how these changes relate to biological and environmental factors, including major life events, social relationships, and health. The book begins with chapters on personality development in different life phases before moving on to theoretical perspectives, the development of specific personality characteristics, and personality development in relation to different contexts, like close others, health, and culture. Final sections cover methods in research on the topic and the future directions of research in personality development. Introduces and reviews the most important personality characteristics Examines personality in relation to different contexts and how it is related to important life outcomes Discusses patterns and sources of personality development.
In 2010–2012, a few largely coincidental events led experimental psychologists to realize that their approach to collecting, analyzing, and reporting data made it too easy to publish false-positive findings. This sparked a period of methodological reflection that we review here and call Psychology’s Renaissance. We begin by describing how psychologists’ concerns with publication bias shifted from worrying about file-drawered studies to worrying about p-hacked analyses. We then review the methodological changes that psychologists have proposed and, in some cases, embraced. In describing how the renaissance has unfolded, we attempt to describe different points of view fairly but not neutrally, so as to identify the most promising paths forward. In so doing, we champion disclosure and preregistration, express skepticism about most statistical solutions to publication bias, take positions on the analysis and interpretation of replication failures, and contend that meta-analytical thinking increases the prevalence of false positives. Our general thesis is that the scientific practices of experimental psychologists have improved dramatically. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 69 is January 4, 2018. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This study examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of mortality risk, and smoking as a mediator of that association. Replication was built into the fabric of our design: we used a Coordinated Analysis with 15 international datasets, representing 44,094 participants. We found that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were consistent predictors of mortality across studies. Smoking had a small mediating effect for neuroticism. Country and baseline age explained variation in effects: studies with older baseline age showed a pattern of protective effects (HR<1.00) for openness, and U.S. studies showed a pattern of protective effects for extraversion. This study demonstrated coordinated analysis as a powerful approach to enhance replicability and reproducibility, especially for aging-related longitudinal research.
development occur in old age. Here, we provide an overview of the study, note commonalities between BASE-II and earlier studies, and highlight some of its unique qualities. Heterogeneity in virtually each and every aspect of life is one of the hallmarks of aging [1, 2]. Some people do reach old and very old age in good physical health, remain cognitively fit and socially integrated, and live autonomous and satisfying lives. In contrast, other older adults are confronted with severe health decrements and functional limitations, experience considerable losses in cog-nitive functioning, live socially and emotionally isolated lives, and are faced with elevated mortality hazards. Many different distinct constellations lying between these two extremes are characteristic of the lives of older adults [3, 4]. A myriad of factors is known to contribute to these individual differences, including genetic and immuno-logical, somatic and medical, cognitive and behavioral, psychosocial and experiential, as well as socioeconomic and geospatial variables. Following in the footsteps of the seminal Berlin Aging Study launched in the early 1990s Abstract Human aging is characterized by large differences between and within older adults. Numerous factors are known to contribute to these differences, including genetic and immuno-logical, somatic and medical, cognitive and behavioral, psy-chosocial and experiential, as well as socioeconomic and geospatial conditions. Continuing and expanding the scientific objectives of the Berlin Aging Study, the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) seeks to comprehensively describe phenomena associated with aging and old age and to better understand the multiple different underlying factors and their interactions. To this end, BASE-II was established as a multi-institutional project combining and integrating interdisci-plinary perspectives ranging from molecular genetics and immunology, geriatric medicine and psychology, to sociology and economics. In this Special Issue, we have compiled seven empirical analyses that feature examples of interdisci-plinary insights that BASE-II provides by linking data across multiple levels of analyses at which human functioning and
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 enduring nature of personality, particularly in adulthood, has been demonstrated in numerous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies where high stability has been observed even with decades between testing intervals. Biometrical studies, reporting genetic effects as the primary cause of familial resemblance, have been interpreted as lending further support to theories concerning an inherent stability of personality. Heterogeneity in heritability estimates across age cohorts may, however, alter this notion. Furthermore, recent phenotypic studies report some evidence for change over the life course for characteristics such as 'outgoingness'. The purpose of the present analysis was to examine longitudinal stability and change in the sources of variation in personality in the latter half of the life-span using a twin/adoption design with up to four times of measurement. Data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA) are used both to demonstrate how genetic and environmental effects can contribute to phenotypic stability, and to estimate the extent to which these influences are, themselves, stable. Particularly intriguing are findings of increasing variability in rate of change despite relative mean level stability as well as genetic stability. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Life-span developmental psychology involves the study of constancy and change in behavior throughout the life course. One aspect of life-span research has been the advancement of a more general, metatheoretical view on the nature of development. The family of theoretical perspectives associated with this metatheoretical view of life-span developmental psychology includes the recognition of multidirectionality in ontogenetic change, consideration of both age-connected and disconnected developmental factors, a focus on the dynamic and continuous interplay between growth (gain) and decline (loss), emphasis on historical embeddedness and other structural contextual factors, and the study of the range of plasticity in development. Application of the family of perspectives associated with life-span developmental psychology is illustrated for the domain of intellectual development. Two recently emerging perspectives of the family of beliefs are given particular attention. The first proposition is methodological and suggests that plasticity can best be studied with a research strategy called testing-the-limits. The second proposition is theoretical and proffers that any developmental change includes the joint occurrence of gain (growth) and loss (decline) in adaptive capacity. To assess the pattern of positive (gains) and negative (losses) consequences resulting from development, it is necessary to know the criterion demands posed by the individual and the environment during the lifelong process of adaptation.
The enduring nature of personality, particularly in adulthood, has been demonstrated in numerous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies where high stability has been observed even with decades between testing intervals. Biometrical studies, reporting genetic effects as the primary cause of familial resemblance, have been interpreted as lending further support to theories concerning an inherent stability of personality. Heterogeneity in heritability estimates across age cohorts may, however, alter this notion. Furthermore, recent phenotypic studies report some evidence for change over the life course for characteristics such as 'outgoingness'. The purpose of the present analysis was to examine longitudinal stability and change in the sources of variation in personality in the latter half of the life-span using a twin/adoption design with up to four times of measurement. Data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA) are used both to demonstrate how genetic and environmental effects can contribute to phenotypic stability, and to estimate the extent to which these influences are, themselves, stable. Particularly intriguing are findings of increasing variability in rate of change despite relative mean level stability as well as genetic stability.
In this article, we present an integrative perspective on temperament and personality development. Personality and temperament are conceptualized as regulatory systems that start as physiological reactivity to environmental features early in life, but are increasingly supplemented by regulation efforts oriented toward reference values such as personal goals and social norms. These reference values change during development as society expects increasingly mature behaviors, but it takes regulatory resources and incremental practice before people can conform to these higher standards. Consistent with this view, a meta-analysis of mean-level development of personality traits in adolescence revealed a decrease in conscientiousness and openness during early adolescence. Negative discrepancies between reference values and actual behavior are apparently responsible for decreases in perceived maturity, but more direct evidence is needed to support this claim.
Change is constant in everyday life. Infants crawl and then walk, children learn to read and write, teenagers mature in myriad ways, and the elderly become frail and forgetful. Beyond these natural processes and events, external forces and interventions instigate and disrupt change: test scores may rise after a coaching course, drug abusers may remain abstinent after residential treatment. By charting changes over time and investigating whether and when events occur, researchers reveal the temporal rhythms of our lives. This book is concerned with behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences. It offers a presentation of two of today's most popular statistical methods: multilevel models for individual change and hazard/survival models for event occurrence (in both discrete- and continuous-time). Using data sets from published studies, the book takes you step by step through complete analyses, from simple exploratory displays that reveal underlying patterns through sophisticated specifications of complex statistical models.
We tested the associations between individual differences in the Big Five personality traits and their changes over the ninth decade of life and levels of and changes in cognitive functioning, physical fitness, and everyday functioning. Besides mean-level changes in personality traits, there were significant individual differences in their rates of change between ages 81 and 87. The changes in the Big Five traits were not strongly intercorrelated, suggesting little common influence on personality change. Lower IQ at age 79 predicted lower Intellect and higher Extraversion, and more decline in Conscientiousness from ages 81 to 87. Also, decreases in physical fitness were associated with declines in Conscientiousness.
This paper examines the scientific, public policy, and organizational background out of which the Health and Retirement Study emerged. It describes the evolution of the major parameters of the survey and the unique planning structure designed to ensure that the substantive insights of the research community were fully reflected in the content of the database, highlights key survey innovations contained in the HRS, and provides a preliminary assessment of the quality of the data as reflected by sample size, sample composition, response rate, and survey content. The paper also describes the several types of administrative data that are expected to be added to the HRS data: earnings and benefits from Social Security files, and health insurance and pension data from the employers of survey respondents.