Personality stability and change (Gabrielle's lecture) Flashcards
By definition, traits are stable dispositions across:
1)Time:test-retest reliability
2)Situations
Plaster hypothesis
personality traits become stable by age 30
Contextualist perspective
personality emerges from multiple sources;person-environment interactions
Two metrics for stability/change
Mean-level change: in a population, compare the avg level of a trait at different ages
Mean level change across lifespan(Soto(2011):life span personality study)
Extraversion: starts off high in childhood;gradually decreases and stabilizes over time
Agreeableness: declines in adolescence but rapidly increases from young adulthood onwards
Conscientiousness: similar pattern to agreeableness with more pronounced increase in adolescence
Neuroticism: general decreases over time from young adulthood
Openness to experience:shows modest increase over time, most pronounced in young adulthood and in middle adulthood
Personality change in college(university study)
Measured at beginning of 1st year vs end of 4th year
*Extraversion remains stable
*Agreeableness, consciousness and openness increase
*neuroticism decreases
Maturity principle(from uni study):
people tend to increase on traits that promote optimal behavior in adults social roles, and decrease in roles that dont
Based on mean-level shifts, we see support for which perspective?
Contextualist perspective
Two types of change
mean level change: significant average shifts in personality over time in tandem with changes in social roles
rank order stability:relative personality levels remain generally stable, and increasingly with age
rank order stability
consistency of individual differences on traits(ie:travis vs taylor)
stability at different ages meta analysis
general trend:greater rank order stability with increase of age
Why does personality change/stay stable”
Environmental influences
*person environment transactions(people select situations based on personality)
ie: high conscientiousness
->choosing to enroll in honors
*situations in turn influence people’s personality
ie:honors student becomes even more conscientisouness
studying abroad and personality change
Half studied abroad and half at home
who studies abroad? extraverts
how does studying abroad change personality
~increases in openness and agreeableness
~decrease in neuroticism
~importance of internal support relationships
Personality->
shapes life events(who we are leads us to take on certain roles, our roles in turn shape who we are)
