Lecture 4 - Personality: Development and Change

Question 1

What is rank order stability?

Answer 1

Rank order stability in regards to personality traits refers to whether people stay at the same relevant levels compared to other people.

Question 2

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?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

According to Costa & McCrae (1994) is there evidence for rank order stability for personality traits across time?

Answer 3

Yes.

They have found rank-order stability with a correlation of about 0.65.

Question 4

What are some of the insights from the literature about rank order stability? We spoke about four main findings.

Answer 4

1. Rank-order stability is relatively high (>0.30).
2. Rank-order stability increases across the lifespan
3. Rank-order stability decreases as the tes-retest interval increases.
4. 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.

Question 5

What influences rank order stability? We discussed three main factors that influence rank order stability.

Answer 5

1. Genetics
2. Environmental Channeling
3. Environmental Selection

Question 6

eWhat are the two factors that we discussed that are considered to play the biggest role on the rank order stability of personality traits?

Answer 6

Genetics and environment.

Question 7

With regard to the Big Five, what were Costa & McCrae (1994) findings about these traits over time?

Answer 7

O, E, and N decrease over adulthood.
A and C increase across adulthood.

Question 8

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.

Question 9

In terms of psychosocial maturity, what have researches proposed about the mean-level personality change seen across the lifespan?

Question 10

What did Haslam et al. (2007) find about the accuracy of lay people’s beliefs about personality change?

Answer 10

Generally quite accurate.

Question 11

What are some of the influences discussed about the mean-level change of personality change across the lifespan?

Answer 11

Genetics (developmental tasks) and environmental influences (major life transitions - wat, COVID, living by oneself).

Question 13

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?

Answer 13

They found similar patterns of PT change, except for N, which was only similar between US, Germany and South Korea.

Question 14

Is there evidence for mean-level personality change across species?

Answer 14

Yes, in chimpanzees there is.
This can be interpreted (loosely) as this change being associated with an evolutionarily conserved adaptation and pattern of change.

Question 16

What is environmental selection in regards to studying mean-level personality change?

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

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?

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

In a study done by Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010), what did their results suggest about personality trait change across generations?

Answer 18

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’.

Question 19

The Big Five Personality trait change seen across individuals, in both rate and direction of change, can be considered being due to…?

Answer 19

Unique (major) life experiences.

Question 20

Why is it important to make sure that we still study individual level change in personality traits?

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

What are some of the important practical implications of individual personality change?

Answer 21

Health.
Mortality - higher levels of N are associated with earlier mortality

Question 22

In regards to changes in personality traits what are selection effects and change effects?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

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?

Answer 23

They lasting decrease in Neuroticism.
Magnitude of change was not that different between different modalities of clinical intervention.

Question 24

What was the main finding from the study by Denissen et al. (2017)?

Answer 24

They wanted to look at whether PT change after a major life event or before, thus leading to a major transition.
They found that for many life transitions personality trait changes occurred before the life transition, as oppossed to as a reslt of the transition.

Question 25

Can we choose to change our personality traits?

Answer 25

Yes.

Question 26

What were the findings of McCabe & Fleeson (2012 and 2016) around whether we can choose to change our personality traits/states?

Answer 26

Based on goals we can change the levels of PTs we express.

Question 27

In regards to Individual Change of personality traits what are “socialisation effects”?

Answer 27

Socialisation Effects refer to the influence of unique life experiences that lead to trait change.

Question 28

Did William James think that personality is set by age 30?

Answer 28

Yes.

Question 29

What are the three ways we can measure personality trait change/stability across time?

Answer 29

1. Rank-order stability
2. Mean-level stability (of a population)
3. Individual stability

Question 30

What were the findings of Damian et al. (2019) that looked at rank-order stability across 50 years?

Answer 30

They found that there was a correlation of about 0.30 for rank-order stability of personality traits.

Question 31

What is the difference between ENVIRONMENTAL CHANNELING AND ENVIRONMENTAL SELECTION?

Answer 31

Environmental channeling refers to this idea that as we age our environments start to settle and become less variable - this includes family, friends, jobs, homes etc.

Environment selection refers to the idea that we select our environments that actively reinforce our traits.

Question 32

There is compelling evidence that genetics contribute to rank-order stability, but there is less evidence that environment change/consistency leads to personality change/consistency.
True?

Answer 32

True,

Question 33

According to Costa and McCrae (1994), what pattern of change for the 5 Personality Traits do we see across the lifespan?

Answer 33

We become higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.
We go down on Openness, Etraversion, and Neuroticism.

Question 34

Do the patterns of personality trait change show a tendency toward psychosocial maturation, and are considered to be adaptive and desirable?

Answer 34

Yes.
Increased A and C, decreased E, N, and O. Although, I don’t think decreased O is necessarily a sign of psychological maturation.

Question 35

Are people’s beliefs about patterns of mean level PT change generally quite accurate?

Answer 35

Yes.

Question 36

What are some of the sources of environmental influences on mean-level change of personality traits?

Answer 36

Major-life transitions, such moving into the work-force, having children.

Question 37

Individual change in PTs decreases across the lifespan for all PTs except which one?

Answer 37

Neuroticism.

Question 38

According to Roberts et al. (200.6), what were the patterns of change for their domains of Extraversion Social Vitality and Social Dominance?

Answer 38

They found that the mean level change observed for social vitality decreased across the lifespan and the mean level of social dominance increased across the lifespan.

Question 39

In Roberts et a. l(2003). they looked at the effect of positive and negative work experiences on personality trait change across 10 years.
For Extraversion and Neuroticism what did they find?

Answer 39

They found that those who had better work experiences increased in extraversion and those who had negative work experiences decreased in extraversion.
They found that all those who transitioned into work experienced a decrease in trait neuroticism, however, those who had better work experiences showed the greatest decrease in extraversion.