The present research assesses adolescent personality maturation by examining 3 measures of change and stability (i.e., mean-level change, rank-order stability, and profile similarity) of Big Five personality traits, employing data from a 5-annual-wave study with overlapping early to middle (n = 923) and middle to late (n = 390) adolescent cohorts. Results indicated that mean levels of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability increased during adolescence. There was mixed evidence for increases in Extraversion and Openness. Additionally, rank-order stability and profile similarity of adolescent personality traits clearly increased from early to late adolescence. For all change facets, the authors found evidence for gender differences in the timing of adolescent personality maturation, as girls were found to mature earlier than boys.

The aim of this five-wave longitudinal study of 923 early to middle adolescents (50.7% boys; 49.3% girls) and 390 middle to late adolescents (43.3% boys and 56.7% girls) is to provide a comprehensive view on change and stability in identity formation from ages 12 to 20. Several types of change and stability (i.e., mean-level change, rank-order stability, and profile similarity) were assessed for three dimensions of identity formation (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration), using adolescent self-report questionnaires. Results revealed changes in identity dimensions towards maturity, indicated by a decreasing tendency for reconsideration, increasingly more in-depth exploration, and increasingly more stable identity dimension profiles. Mean levels of commitment remained stable, and rank-order stability of commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration did not change with age. Overall, girls were more mature with regard to identity formation in early adolescence, but boys had caught up with them by late adolescence. Taken together, our findings indicate that adolescent identity formation is guided by progressive changes in the way adolescents deal with commitments, rather than by changes in the commitments themselves.

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In this article we wanted to shed light on the intergenerational transmission and the formation of cultural orientations in adolescence. The intergenerational transmission was analyzed in different age groups in a longitudinal design (orientations of parents and their adolescent children were measured twice, with a time lapse of 3 years). Results clearly revealed that late adolescence is the “formative phase” for the establishment of cultural orientations and suggested that psychological processes such as internalization are guiding this formation. This internalization was found for all investigated orientations. In addition, as adolescents grew older, their susceptibility to parental orientations diminished, but, in contrast, parents did not become more susceptible to their children's orientations. No age effects in sociocultural influences were found. It was concluded that the investigated sociocultural influences should be seen as providing a structural context within which the formation of orientations in adolescence takes place.