As time goes by: Change and stability in personality over fifty years.

274

148

This report provides some initial findings from an investigation of the relations between childhood Big Five personality traits assessed by elementary-school teachers and similar traits assessed 40 years later by self-reports at midlife. Our analyses are based on data from a relatively large and culturally diverse sample (N = 799) that was first assessed between 1959 and 1967 when the participants were children in Hawaii. Short-term (1-3 years) test retest reliabilities were lower (.22 -.53) within childhood when personality is developing than within adulthood (.70 -.79) when personality stability may be at its peak. Stability coefficients across the 40-year interval between the childhood assessment and two measures of adulthood personality were higher for Extraversion (e.g., .29) and Conscientiousness (e.g., .25) than for Openness (e.g., .16), Agreeableness (e.g., .08) and Neuroticism (e.g., .00). Construct continuity between childhood and adulthood was evaluated by canonical analysis and by structural-equation modeling and indicated continuity at both a broad, twodimensional level and at the level of the Big Five. The findings are discussed in relation to Caspi, Roberts, and Shiner's (2005) principles of rank-order personality stability.Keywords personality stability; Big Five; construct continuity; longitudinal study The extent to which child personality is predictive of adult personality has long been a fundamental scientific, philosophical, and even poetic question. Wordsworth's "The child is father of the man" and Milton's "The child shows the man, as morning shows the day" are not unambiguous. Neither poet was necessarily suggesting perfect correspondence and complete predictability from youth to maturity. Similarly, the stability of personality characteristics over the life course remains a controversial empirical issue. Proponents of stability debate the findings with advocates of transformation and change (McCrae et al., 2000;Lewis, 2001).In this report, we provide some initial findings from an investigation of the relations between childhood personality traits assessed by elementary-school teachers and similar traits assessed by self-reports at mid-life. Our analyses are based on data from the Hawaii Personality and Health Cohort, a relatively large and culturally diverse sample that was first assessed between 1959 and 1967 when the participants were children in Hawaii. The childhood assessments were designed and supervised by the late John M. Digman, and formed the basis for some of the pioneering work on the five-factor structure of personality (e.g., Digman, 1989 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript assessments were undertaken over a four-year period (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002) after an interval of 35 -43 years (Hampson et al., 2001). Consequently, these data offer an extraordinary opportunity to examine the question of personality stability from childhood to midlife with measures of the five-factor model of personality at each time point. We have be...

Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 44%

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confidence: 99%

A first large cohort study of personality trait stability over the 40 years between elementary school and midlife.

Hampson¹,

Goldberg²

2006

274

148

“…The Intergenerational Studies are considered landmark studies in human development; their history and sampling have been extensively documented elsewhere (Block, 1971;Eichorn et al, 1981;Haan et al, 1986).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal changes in attachment orientation over a 59-year period.

Chopik

Edelstein

Grimm

2019

Research on individual differences in attachment-and their links to emotion, cognition, and behavior in close relationships-has proliferated over the last several decades. However, the majority of this research has focused on children and young adults. Little is known about mean-level changes in attachment orientation beyond early life, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data on attachment across the life span. The current study used a Q-Sort-based measure of attachment to examine mean-level changes in attachment orientation from age 13 to 72 using data from the Block and Block Longitudinal Study, the Intergenerational Studies, and the Radcliffe College Class of 1964 Sample (total N ϭ 628). Multilevel modeling was employed to estimate growth curve trajectories across the combined samples. We found that attachment anxiety declined on average with age, particularly during middle age and older adulthood. Attachment avoidance decreased in a linear fashion across the life span. Being in a relationship predicted lower levels of anxiety and avoidance across adulthood. Men were higher in attachment avoidance at each point in the life span. Taken together, these findings provide much-needed insight into how attachment orientations change over long stretches of time. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges of studying attachment dynamics across the life course and across specific transitions.

“…Social roles, life events, and social environments change during the life course, and such factors have been suggested as important influences on basic personality traits (Haan et al, 1986;Hogan, 1996). A number of researchers have focused on the transactions between individuals' personalities and experiences.…”

Section: Personality Changes As Person-environment Transactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…McCrae and Costa's (1996) five-factor theory asserts that personality traits arise exclusively from biological causes (i.e., genes) and that they reach full maturity in early adulthood; thus, this theory predicts little or no change on any personality dimension after early adulthood. By contrast, contextualist perspectives argue that traits are multiply determined, and that one important influence on traits is the individual's social environment (Haan, Millsap, & Hartka, 1986;Helson, Jones, & Kwan, 2002). Contextualist perspectives thus predict plasticity: Change is complex and ongoing, owing to the many factors that can affect personality traits.…”

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confidence: 99%

Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: Set like plaster or persistent change?

Srivastava¹,

John²,

Gosling³

et al. 2003

967

756

Different theories make different predictions about how mean levels of personality traits change in adulthood. The biological view of the Five-factor theory proposes the plaster hypothesis: All personality traits stop changing by age 30. In contrast, contextualist perspectives propose that changes should be more varied and should persist throughout adulthood. This study compared these perspectives in a large (N ϭ 132,515) sample of adults aged 21-60 who completed a Big Five personality measure on the Internet. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased throughout early and middle adulthood at varying rates; Neuroticism declined among women but did not change among men. The variety in patterns of change suggests that the Big Five traits are complex phenomena subject to a variety of developmental influences.