Change and Stability of Personality Flashcards
Personality throughout the life span. How do people change in personality through different stages of life? To what extent are personality characteristics relatively stable?
Change and Stability
In adults
In children
From childhood to adulthood
How does the average person CHANGE in his or her levels of personality traits across the lifetime?
How STABLE are the difference between people in their levels of personality traits?
How do we know?
Cross sectional research
Longitudinal research
Cross sectional research
Can compare different population groups at a single point in time
Allows researchers to compare many different variables at the same time
Longitudinal research
Observations of the same subjects over a period of time, sometimes lasting many years
Change: Adult personality
Changes in mean levels of traits over the life course
Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer (2006): Meta-analysis of 92 samples
- Changes in mean levels of traits over the life course
Emotional stability (N): especially large changes from teens to college then remain stable
Extraversion (Social dominance facet - power): increase, and no large changes beyond 40
Extraversion (social vitality facet - active): Only slight decreases
Openness to experience (O): No change after 30
Agreeableness (A): Slight changes, only small increase from 50 to 60
Conscientiousness (C): Clear positive slope – increases over time
All six trait domains show significant changes past the age of 30
Personality traits change most during young adulthood (age 20 to 40), not adolescence
Mean-level changes reveal a more complicated pattern than analyses of stability
What’s a meta-analysis?
Statistical technique for combining findings from independent research studies
Helps see overall trends
Helps analyse where differences between studies come from
Helps overcome the “file drawer problem” of unpublished studies
Change across cultures between 18-50+ (McCrae et al., 1999)
O: mean-level decrease E: mean-level decreases C: mean-level increase A: mean-level increase N: no significance changes
Why do we change?
Five Factor Theory (McCrae & Costa, 1999)
Social Investment Hypothesis (Roberts, Wood, & Smith, 2005)
Five Factor Theory
McCrae & Costa, 1999
Humans have a species-wide genetic predisposition to develop in certain directions
Hard-wired to become more socially dominant, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and less open to experience
Social Investment Hypothesis (Roberts, Wood, & Smith, 2005)
Investment in universal tasks of social living (e.g., getting a job, being married)
Similar tasks supported in most cultures
Normative experiences associated with increases in personality traits of social dominance, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.
Generational changes: Trzesniewski et al. (2008) Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI)
Sample Items (forced choice between two responses): e.g. I am an extraordinary person vs. I am much like everybody else
Mean Full-Scale and Subscale Scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) by Year of Data Collection:
Superiority: people have more superiority than the past 1982
Self-sufficiency: higher than before
Differences in personality changes studies
bias/differences may due to self-selected
Stability of traits in adults
Multiple studies have used different samples
Found similar results from time 1 and time 2, showed stable pattern
6 years apart: r = .70
Few weeks apart: r = .80
6 years apart: r = .70
24 years apart: r = .65
regardless of the trait that is considered
Stability of traits in adolescence and young adulthood
Lower correlations
4 years in college: r = .60
Between age 18 and 26: r = .55
Between age 12 and 16: r = .40 (.50 for C)
There is no much stability in personality between age 12-16
Self-esteem across life-span in women and men
Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005
Mean-level changes, but high stability
Self-esteem: Can relationships change personality?
Neyer & Lehnart, 2007
Looked at German over 8 years period for 3 times
Remain single: increases then stable
Single-single-partner: stable then increase
Single-partner-partner: increases and remain
Remain partner: remain stable
-> Being in a relationship helps to develop self-esteem, because the sense of security
Personality in infancy and childhood
How to measure Personality structure in kids?
Observer reports
Similar personality factor structure
Infants “temperament” traits (Caspi et al. 2005)
Similar personality factor structure:
Digman et al. (1981) 5-factors from teacher ratings of Cattell’s traits
Openness is not always clearly found (Halverson et al., 2003)
Ditto Honesty-humility (Farrell et al., 2014)
Infants “temperament” traits (Caspi et al. 2005)
Activity level, fearfulness, soothability, positive emotions
Similarity with factors, others do not emerge until adulthood
Personality structure in children
Lamb et al., 2002
Internal reliability for Openness to experience was very low
Suggest the measures might not be measuring what the researchers think they were measuring (tend to measure)
Developmental change in children
Lamb et al., 2002
E: decreases
A: increases
C: increases
N: increases when school starts
From childhood to adulthood
The “Hawaiian Studies”
(Goldberg, 2001; Hampson & Goldberg, 2006)
longitudinal study, comparing interviewer ratings and self-reports in adulthood with teachers’ assessments in childhood
Show a weak stability between childhood to adulthood, especially in N
