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Personality Stability and Change: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

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Abstract

Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout the life span. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods using measures that were only loosely related to contemporary trait models such as the Big Five. Since then, hundreds of new studies have emerged allowing for more precise estimates of personality trait stability and change across the life span. Here, we updated and extended previous research syntheses on personality trait development by synthesizing novel longitudinal data on rank-order stability (total k = 189, total N = 178,503) and mean-level change (total k = 276, N = 242,542) from studies published after January 1, 2005. Consistent with earlier meta-analytic findings, the rank-order stability of personality traits increased significantly throughout early life before reaching a plateau in young adulthood. These increases in stability coincide with mean-level changes in the direction of greater maturity. In contrast to previous findings, we found little evidence for increasing rank-order stabilities after Age 25. Moreover, cumulative mean-level trait changes across the life span were slightly smaller than previously estimated. Emotional stability, however, increased consistently and more substantially across the life span than previously found. Moderator analyses indicated that narrow facet-level and maladaptive trait measures were less stable than broader domain and adaptive trait measures. Overall, the present findings draw a more precise picture of the life span development of personality traits and highlight important gaps in the personality development literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Personality Stability and Change: A Meta-Analysis of
Longitudinal Studies
Wiebke Bleidorn
1
, Ted Schwaba
2
, Anqing Zheng
3
, Christopher J. Hopwood
1
,
Susana S. Sosa
4
, Brent W. Roberts
3
, and D. A. Briley
3
1
Department of Psychology, University of Zürich
2
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin
3
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
4
Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago
Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout
the life span. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of
longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods
using measures that were only loosely related to contemporary trait models such as the Big Five. Since then,
hundreds of new studies have emerged allowing for more precise estimates of personality trait stability and
change across the life span. Here, we updated and extended previous research syntheses on personality trait
development by synthesizing novel longitudinal data on rank-order stability (total k=189, total N=
178,503) and mean-level change (total k=276, N=242,542) from studies published after January 1, 2005.
Consistent with earlier meta-analytic ndings, the rank-order stability of personality traits increased
signicantly throughout early life before reaching a plateau in young adulthood. These increases in
stability coincide with mean-level changes in the direction of greater maturity. In contrast to previous
ndings, we found little evidence for increasing rank-order stabilities after Age 25. Moreover, cumulative
mean-level trait changes across the life span were slightly smaller than previously estimated. Emotional
stability, however, increased consistently and more substantially across the life span than previously found.
Moderator analyses indicated that narrow facet-level and maladaptive trait measures were less stable than
broader domain and adaptive trait measures. Overall, the present ndings draw a more precise picture of the
life span development of personality traits and highlight important gaps in the personality development
literature.
Public Signicance Statement
This study summarized data from hundreds of longitudinal studies to conrm that (a) personality trait
differences are fairly stable among adults, (b) these differences tend to stabilize during adolescence and
young adulthood, and (c) personality tends to change in the direction of greater maturity as people age.
These patterns hold across gender, nation, and ethnicity, although research from Western countries was
overrepresented.
Keywords: personality development, Big Five, longitudinal, traits, meta-analysis
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000365.supp
Over the past two decades, personality science has witnessed a
major paradigm shift. Traditionally, traits have been viewed as
highly stable and unlikely to change in adulthood (James, 1890/
1950;McCrae et al., 2000). In the 2000s, a handful of meta-
analyses challenged this perspective by showing that personality
traits are both enduring and open to change throughout the life span
(Ardelt, 2000;Ferguson, 2010;Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;
Roberts et al., 2006). The goal of the present preregistered meta-
analysis was to update and extend these works.
It would be appropriate to ask why, with such extensive prior
meta-analytic work, there is a value in updating these studies. First,
while prior meta-analyses reviewed a fairly large number of studies,
the breadth of the existing literature, features of the data, and the
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First July 14, 2022.
Wiebke Bleidorn https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3795-8143
Ted Schwaba https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5491-5386
Anqing Zheng https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0238-8275
Christopher J. Hopwood https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6645-8645
Susana S. Sosa https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2945-667X
Brent W. Roberts https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3244-1164
D. A. Briley https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6344-597X
The authors thank Madeline Lenhausen for helping us code the personality
measures.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Wiebke
Bleidorn, Department of Psychology, University of Zürich,
Binzmühlestrasse 14/7, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland. Email: wiebke
bleidorn@gmail.com
Psychological Bulletin
© 2022 American Psychological Association 2022, Vol. 148, Nos. 78, 588619
ISSN: 0033-2909 https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000365
588
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... The Big Five personality traitsextraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and opennessare most measured through self or other reports; see Kajonius and Johnson (2019) for psychometrics and content-analysis. Personality traits are stable enough (Bleidorn et al., 2022) to carry predictive validity throughout the lifespan for a host of life outcomes such as mortality, divorce, educational, and occupational attainment, based on longitudinal meta-analytic studies (e.g., Roberts et al., 2007). The Big Five has a relatively high heritability of approximately 50 % and a notable low influence of shared environment effects (i.e., family, school, or socioeconomic class), according to the largest meta-analysis of 15 million twin pairs to date (Polderman et al., 2015). ...
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