ObjectiveDespite a narrative of post‐traumatic growth and resilience, research reliably demonstrating positive character development following adversity has proved elusive. In the current study, we examined changes in character strengths in Army soldiers deploying for the first time.MethodThe sample was comprised of 212,386 Army soldiers (Mage = 26.5 years old, SD = 7.13; 70.8% White) who were deploying for the first time. Character strengths were assessed once before and up to three times following soldiers' return from deployment.ResultsWe found evidence for two classes of change—a resilient class (“stable high”) and a declining class (“persistent low”). Most soldiers were resilient—they had high levels of character strengths prior to deployment and changed very little across the deployment cycle. Approximately 40% of soldiers started with lower character and experienced initial declines post‐deployment, from which they experienced no more than small gains over time.ConclusionsCharacter strengths were highly stable across the deployment transition but some soldiers experienced initial declines from which they never fully rebounded. The findings are discussed in the context of the mechanisms that drive character development.

Although individuals vary in how optimistic they are about the future, one assumption that researchers make is that optimism is sensitive to changes in life events and circumstances. We examined how optimism and pessimism changed across the lifespan and in response to life events in three large panel studies (combined N = 74,886). In the American and Dutch samples, we found that optimism increased across younger adulthood, plateaued in midlife, and then decreased in older adulthood. In the German sample, there were inconsistent results with respect to age differences and mean level changes in optimism. Associations between life events and changes in optimism/pessimism were inconsistent across samples. We discuss our results in the context of life events and lifespan development.

The development of empathy is a hotly debated topic. Some studies find declines and others an inverse U-shaped pattern in empathy across the life span. Yet other studies find no age-related changes. Most of this research is cross sectional, and the few longitudinal studies have their limitations. The current study addresses these limitations by examining changes in empathy in six longitudinal samples (total N = 740, age 13–72). In a preliminary study ( N = 784), we created and validated a measure of empathy out of the California Adult Q-Sort. The samples were combined for multilevel analyses in a variant of an accelerated longitudinal design. We found that empathy increased across the life span, particularly after age 40, and more recent cohorts were higher in empathy.

Despite constituting a large portion of society, single people—and their satisfaction with singlehood and life—are rarely examined in their own right. How happy are single people and does their happiness change over time? In 3,439 people followed over 10 years, we found that people reported being more satisfied than not, but both singlehood satisfaction and life satisfaction declined over time. Older adults, men, and highly educated people, and people with worse health reported lower singlehood satisfaction. Constrained random-intercept cross-lagged panel models suggested that singlehood and life satisfaction had lagged bidirectional influences with each other. Results are discussed in the context of the origins of singlehood satisfaction and life satisfaction.

Marriage has been linked to higher well-being. However, previous research has generally examined marital status at one point in time or over a relatively short window of time. In order to determine if different marital histories have unique impacts on well-being in later life, we conducted a marital sequence analysis of 7,532 participants from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (54.2% women; Mage = 66.68, SD = 8.50; 68.7% White/Caucasian). Three different marital sequence types emerged: a "consistently-married" group (79%), a "consistently-single" group (8%), and a "varied histories" group (13%), in which individuals had moved in and out of various relationships throughout life. The consistently-married group was slightly higher in wellbeing at the end of life than the consistently-single and varied histories groups; the latter two groups did not differ in their well-being. The results are discussed in the context of why marriage is linked to well-being across the lifespan.