Research consistently shows that personality development is a lifelong phenomenon, with mean-level and rank-order changes occurring in all life phases. What happens during specific life phases that can explain these developmental patterns? In the present paper, we review literature linking personality development in different phases of adulthood to developmental tasks associated with these phases. Building on previous work, we describe several categories of developmental tasks that are present in all phases of adulthood. However, the specific tasks within these categories change across adulthood from establishing new social roles in early adulthood to maintaining them in middle adulthood and preventing losses in old age. This trajectory is reflected in mean-level changes in personality, which indicates development towards greater maturity (increases in social dominance, conscientiousness, and emotional stability) in early and middle adulthood, but less so at the end of life. Importantly, developmental tasks are not only associated with mean-level changes, but the way in which people deal with these tasks is also related to rank-order changes in personality. We provide an outlook for future research on how the influence of historical time on the normativeness of developmental tasks might be reflected in personality development. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology Key words: personality development; developmental tasks; adulthood; old age Personality has consistently been found to change across the entire lifespan (e.g. Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). This is reflected in several theoretical notions on personality development, which consider personality development as a lifelong phenomenon (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006;Fraley & Roberts, 2005;Lerner, 1984;Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008). Previous research shows that lifelong personality development is affected by environmental influences, such as work experiences (Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003) and social relationships (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001). However, these studies commonly focus on one specific phase of adult life, leaving it unclear whether similar environmental influences play a role in triggering personality development across different life phases.The aim of the present paper is to describe sources of personality development across the adult lifespan 1 using developmental tasks as a framework. Developmental tasks are defined as age-graded normative tasks based on societal expectations about the developmental milestones that should be reached in specific life phases (Havighurst, 1972; also McCormick, Kuo, & Masten, 2011). We first provide a general overview of personality development across adult life and then introduce a new categorization of developmental tasks that might guide personality development across different life phases. Subsequently, we provide an overview of empirical research in different life phases (early, middle, and old adulthood 2 ). We then link personali...

Increasing numbers of empirical studies provide compelling evidence that personality traits change across the entire lifespan. What initiates this continuing personality development and how does this development proceed? In this paper, we compare six theoretical perspectives that offer testable predictions about why personality develops the way it does and identify limitations and potentials of these perspectives by reviewing how they hold up against the empirical evidence. While all of these perspectives have received some empirical support, there is only little direct evidence for propositions put forward by the five‐factor theory of personality and the theory of genotype → environment effects. In contrast, the neo‐socioanalytic theory appears to offer a comprehensive framework that fits the empirical findings and allows the integration of other, more specialized, perspectives that focus on specific aspects of personality development like the role of time, systematic differences between categories of social roles or the active partake of the person himself or herself. We draw conclusions on the likely driving factors for adult personality development and identify avenues for future research. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology

Peers are a pervasive aspect of people's lives, but their role in personality development has rarely been considered. This is surprising, given that peers are promising candidates to explain personality development over the entire lifespan. Owing to the lack of clear‐cut definitions of peers, we first elaborate on their defining criteria and functions in different life phases. We then discuss the role of peers in personality development across the lifespan. We advocate that an integration of social group perspectives and social relationship perspectives is essential to understand peer effects on personality development. Group socialization theory is particularly suited to explain developmental differences between groups as a result of group norms. However, it is blind towards differences in development within peer groups. In contrast, the PERSOC framework is particularly suited to explain individual differences in development within groups as a result of specific dyadic peer‐relationship experiences. We propose that a conjunct consideration of peer‐group effects and dyadic peer‐relationship effects can advance the general understanding of personality development. We discuss examples for a cross‐fertilization of the two frameworks that suggest avenues for future research. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology