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

Recently, researchers interested in personality development have begun to acknowledge the roles of motivation and self‐regulation for why traits change across adulthood. We propose three preconditions under which individuals may change their own levels of a personality trait through self‐directed efforts. Firstly, individuals need to desire changing their trait‐related behaviours either as an end in itself or in order to achieve other goals. Secondly, they need to consider behavioural changes feasible and be able to implement the desired changes. Thirdly, behavioural changes need to become habitual in order to constitute a stable trait. After elaborating on these three conditions, we review evidence attesting to the importance of motivation and self‐regulation for trait development. We conclude with a discussion of the mutual interdependence of traits and goals, as well as the limits of self‐regulated personality change. From our framework, we derive why personality changes across adulthood tend to be small to medium only, namely because they may require that all three preconditions for self‐regulated personality change are fulfilled. We provide reasons for why people might not view change as desirable, feasible or fail to maintain it over time. Finally, we propose ideas for potential study designs to research self‐regulated personality change. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology

The importance of personality for predicting life outcomes in the domains of love, work, and health is well established, as is evidence that personality traits, while relatively stable, can change. However, little is known about the sources and processes that drive changes in personality traits and how such changes might impact important life outcomes. In this paper, we make the case that the research paradigms and methodological approaches commonly used in personality psychology need to be revised to advance our understanding of the sources and processes of personality change. We propose Longitudinal Experience‐Wide Association Studies as a framework for studying personality change that can address the limitations of current methods, and we discuss strategies for overcoming some of the challenges associated with Longitudinal Experience‐Wide Association Studies. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

We investigated the self-regulatory strategies people spontaneously use in their everyday lives to regulate their persistence during aversive activities. In pilot studies (pooled N = 794), we identified self-regulatory strategies from self-reports and generated hypotheses about individual differences in trait self-control predicting their use. Next, deploying ambulatory assessment (N = 264, 1940 reports of aversive/challenging activities), we investigated predictors of the strategies' self-reported use and effectiveness (trait self-control and demand types). The popularity of strategies varied across demands. In addition, people higher in trait self-control were more likely to focus on the positive consequences of a given activity, set goals, and use emotion regulation. Focusing on positive consequences, focusing on negative consequences (of not performing the activity), thinking of the near finish, and emotion regulation increased perceived self-regulatory success across demands, whereas distracting oneself from the aversive activity decreased it. None of these strategies, however, accounted for the beneficial effects of trait self-control on perceived self-regulatory success. Hence, trait self-control and strategy use appear to represent separate routes to good self-regulation. By considering trait-and process-approaches these findings promote a more comprehensive understanding of self-regulatory success and failure during people's daily attempts to regulate their persistence.