Personality Change Flashcards
Two key concepts regarding personality change
- Rank order stability
- Mean level shifts
What is rank order stability?
High rank order stability results in high correlation from time point 1 to time point 2
Example of rank order stability?
- E.g. neuroticism
- Does rank order sustain over time?
- Such as being high scoring at 20, will it be the same at 30?
- r = .75 high rank order stability, how stable the group is over time
- High correlation, association
- Rank order plasticity – e.g. how attracted you are to someone when you are 20 vs 30, no rank order stability
What is mean level shift?
- Very different from rank order
- Population average rises or falls in a trait
- Before it was an individual, whereas this is to do with groups of people
- Mean level of a group, whether mean changes as a group overtime
- Rank order is completely persevered and stable, mean level can drop/rise
What did Roberts & DelVecchio (2000) find about rank order consistency?
- Meta-analysis of all rank order studies looking at the big 5
- Longitudinal studies
- N = 152 (amount of studies)
- Findings: linear trend, as people get older they get more stable over time, Rank order stability increases as a function of age
- Only specifically looked at the big 5, not other traits
What did Moffit and Caspi et al find about temperament?
– famous people working in the field
- Cohort in New Zealand
- Measure people from birth about under controlled temperament and whether it can predict gambling behaviour at age 32
What did Roberts and Mroezek find when looking at longitudinal studies?
- 92 longitudinal studies
- N > 50,000
- Age range: age 10 to 101
- Conscientiousness, agreeableness, social dominance and emotional stability rise with age
- Openness goes up in teen years, but drops in older adulthood
What did Srivastava et al find about sex differences?
- Age 21 to 60
- Men are less conscientious than women (both going up with age)
- Women go up in agreeableness at a steeper rate
- Women drop in neuroticism, whereas men stay the same throughout life
What did Jackson et al look at about those who went into the military?
- Does the army make more people aggressive
- Large German panel sample of late adolescence/early adulthood
- Compulsory military service
- 1,261 male participants: 245 performed military service, 1,016 performed civilian community service. Conscientious objectors
- NEO-FFI: Time points 1-4
Who chooses military service?
-Individuals who were:
– less agreeable (d = −0.29, p < .05)
– less open (d = −0.15, p < .05)
– less neurotic (d = −0.14, p < .05)
What did Jackson et al find about those who went into the military?
- Differences between military service group and civilians
- Civilians become more agreeable over time
- Example of mean level
Can negative life events effect the future?
- Work on personality change in response to serious life events is rare – Hard to systematically study such events
- Often serious and non-serious events lumped into same category
What happened when looking at low SES communities after hurricane Isabel hit?
- Low SES; high urban crime; Hurricane Isabel – N=458
- Life events – Structured interview in 2004 – An event that was “extremely horrifying or frightening” - coded: yes/no (if in past 2 years) - 25% said yes
- NEO-PI-R (Five factor model) – Administered in 1993; 2004
can events predict life events?
- No!
- This is arguably surprising - Quite a lot of work suggests personality leads to positive/negative life outcomes
- Might simply reflect the randomness of life?
Can events predict personality change?
-Yes!
– increases in the tendency to experience negative affect (neuroticism)
– especially anger and frustration (N2: angry hostility)
– less likely to cooperate and deescalate in situations of interpersonal conflict (A4: compliance)
-Consistent with the “scar” perspective – i.e. personality scarred by negative events
