Lecture 4 - Personality: Development and Change Flashcards
What is rank order stability?
Rank order stability in regards to personality traits refers to whether people stay at the same relevant levels compared to other people.
Did the results of the infamous marsh mellow test have correlations with outcomes later in life? If so, what are some of the examples of this?
Yes.
Children who were able to wait longer performed better on their SATs and had lower aggression.
Later in life they also had lower rates of drug use.
According to Costa & McCrae (1994) is there evidence for rank order stability for personality traits across time?
Yes.
They have found rank-order stability with a correlation of about 0.65.
What are some of the insights from the literature about rank order stability? We spoke about four main findings.
- Rank-order stability is relatively high (>0.30).
- Rank-order stability increases across the lifespan
- Rank-order stability decreases as the tes-retest interval increases.
- Rank-order stability is trait general - there is no significant difference in rank-order stability across time for different traits. It is also not affected by assessment method or gender.
What influences rank order stability? We discussed three main factors that influence rank order stability.
- Genetics
- Environmental Channeling
- Environmental Selection
eWhat are the two factors that we discussed that are considered to play the biggest role on the rank order stability of personality traits?
Genetics and environment.
With regard to the Big Five, what were Costa & McCrae (1994) findings about these traits over time?
O, E, and N decrease over adulthood.
A and C increase across adulthood.
What were the findings of the meta-analysis done by Roberts et al. (2006) on personality trait change across time and was this similar or different to what Costa & McCrae found in 1994? Note: these studies were looking at the mean-level personality change.
In terms of psychosocial maturity, what have researches proposed about the mean-level personality change seen across the lifespan?
What did Haslam et al. (2007) find about the accuracy of lay people’s beliefs about personality change?
Generally quite accurate.
What are some of the influences discussed about the mean-level change of personality change across the lifespan?
Genetics (developmental tasks) and environmental influences (major life transitions - wat, COVID, living by oneself).
In the study done by McCrae et al. (1999) that looked at mean-level PT change across different age groups and different cultures (mainly european and also South Korea) what did they find about the patterns of change compared to those seen in the US?
They found similar patterns of PT change, except for N, which was only similar between US, Germany and South Korea.
Is there evidence for mean-level personality change across species?
Yes, in chimpanzees there is.
This can be interpreted (loosely) as this change being associated with an evolutionarily conserved adaptation and pattern of change.
What is environmental selection in regards to studying mean-level personality change?
Environmental selection when it comes to personality trait change refers to how we select certain environments based on our personality traits and these then go on to re-enforce those personality traits.
What is an example of “cohort effects” on personality change/typicality for different generations? What was the name of the researcher who made the infamous claim about personality trait typicality across generations?
Twenge claimed that Gen X and Millenials had higher levels of self-worth and egotism compared to prior generations. This was based on data that incited some criticism for the validity of these proposals.
The samples were of WEIRD university students and the way the data was analysed washed out the variation in the data making it seem or consistent than it actually was.
In a study done by Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010), what did their results suggest about personality trait change across generations?
In their study they looked at personality changes from 1970s to 2006. They did not find much difference between personality traits for people across these different generations.
This was done in light of criticisms of Twenge’s work on ‘generation me’.
The Big Five Personality trait change seen across individuals, in both rate and direction of change, can be considered being due to…?
Unique (major) life experiences.
Why is it important to make sure that we still study individual level change in personality traits?
The problem with looking at means is that the variance in individuals is missed or minimized, however, this data may provide important insights into what actually drives personality trait change.
What are some of the important practical implications of individual personality change?
Health.
Mortality - higher levels of N are associated with earlier mortality
In regards to changes in personality traits what are selection effects and change effects?
Even though we all go through some similar life transitions, we all have different experiences during these transitions and these different experiences may lead to PT change.
What were some of the findings by Roberts et al. (2017) around the change observed in neuroticism for those who attended some kind of psychotherapy?
They lasting decrease in Neuroticism.
Magnitude of change was not that different between different modalities of clinical intervention.
