Lecture 8: How much do personality traits change over time?

Question 1

Which paper could have as alternative title Your Personality? You’re stuck with it!

Answer 1

• Paper by Paul Costa and McCrae
• Called: Longitudinal Stability of Adult Personality
• In this paper, they measured the Big 5 trait over 6 years. Concluded that traits didn’t change that much.

Question 2

What does Rank Order mean?

Answer 2

It means that if someone scores high or low (their rank) in a given trait, they will still be high or low over time.

Question 3

What’s one hypothesis for the results that McCrae and Costa had in their longitudinal study?

Answer 3

The average age of the participants was 49 years old. Young adulthood is highly plastic when it comes to personality.

Question 4

Which paper supports that young people can still change their personalities?

Answer 4

Finn 1987, created a longitudinal experiment where they looked at two groups: 25 and 45 years old. They followed the participants over 30 years.

They found that the group that went from 25 to 45 years old, had r=0.47 thus they could still change

Question 5

What is Normative Change?

Answer 5

This is change that is independent of your Rank Order.

Question 6

What did Brent Roberts did?

Answer 6

• He went over 92 studies and reorganized them to frame them as the Big 5 traits.
• He standardizes the studies
• Results:
  
  • N:
    
    • starts to plateau after 30 years old
    • Less neurotic, more emotionally stable
  • E:
    
    • Social vitality:
      
      • No big change
    • Social dominance:
      
      • Goes up and plateau after 30
  • O:
    
    • Goes up really fast during teenage years but then it stays flat
  • A:
    
    • Steady trend throughout life
    • Boost at 25 and then 50
  • C:
    
    • Continous trend
    • Boost at 30 and 60

NOTE:
This is for American culture. This might change depending on the culture.

Ex) Asian are higher on C at a younger age

Question 7

Costa and McCrae vs Roberts

Answer 7

• Cost and McCrae didn’t think you could change much across time
• Roberts says that you become more mature as you take on more important roles.

Question 8

Why did Roberts think affect our personalities changes while we grow up?

Answer 8

• At 18 years old, parents are not a big influence anymore
• New roles:
  
  • more socially mature
  • Less N more C
  • more confident
  • More A

Question 9

What can you conclude from Roberts’ compilation?

Answer 9

• People become more confident, warm, responsible and clam with age
  
  • socially mature

Question 10

Why are we more likely to change between 20 and 30 years old?

Answer 10

• Separated from family
  
  • no constraints (or not as much)
• Romantic relationship
• Career track

Question 11

What does going to university affects in your personality traits?

Answer 11

• Agreeableness increases for people who go to university while Consciensousness increases for people who start working right away.

Question 12

What specific events can impact our Big 5 traits?

Answer 12

• Career track (C)
• Romantic relationship
• Stressful life events
• Success
• Substance abuse (C drops, A drops)
• Psychotherapy

Question 13

What are the effects of having a romantic relationship?

Answer 13

• Study by Neyer and Lenhart
• Assessed Big 5 trait
• Asked if they were on a stable romantic relationship? and then 8 years later they would do the same.

Question 14

Do psychological interventions have an impact on our personality traits?

Answer 14

• Study by Roberts
• Meta-analysis of 207 studies of per-post intervention
• Concluded:
  
  • interventions have an impact on personality trait over an average of 24 weeks r=0.19
  • Largest effect on N
  • Second largest effect on E
  • No meaningful differences between types of treatment

Question 15

How do the Big 5 generally change across life course?

Answer 15

Less N, more C and A