Mean-level personality development across childhood and adolescence: A temporary defiance of the maturity principle and bidirectional associations with parenting.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated mean-level personality development in children from 6 to 20 years of age. Additionally, we investigated longitudinal, bidirectional associations between child personality and maternal overreactive and warm parenting. In this 5-wave study, mothers reported on their child's personality from Time 1 (T1) through Time 4 (T4), and children provided self-reports from Time 2 (T2) through Time 5 (T5). Mothers reported on their levels of overreactive and warm parenting from T2 through T4. Using cohort-sequential latent growth curve modeling, we investigated mother reported child personality from 6 to 17 years of age and child reported personality from 9 to 20 years of age. Extraversion decreased linearly across the entire study. Benevolence and conscientiousness increased from middle to late childhood, temporarily declined from late childhood to mid-adolescence, and increased again thereafter. Imagination decreased from middle childhood to mid-adolescence and also increased thereafter. Mothers reported a temporary decline in emotional stability with an increase thereafter, whereas children did not. Boys and girls differed in mean-levels of the personality dimensions and, to a lesser extent, in the degree and direction of changes. Latent difference score modeling showed that child personality predicted changes in parenting and that, to a lesser extent, parenting predicted changes in child traits. Additionally, changes in child personality were associated with changes in maternal parenting. Results of the present study show that personality change is not directed at increasing maturity from childhood to mid-adolescence and that it elicits and is shaped by both positive and negative parenting.

Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Personality Trait Stability and Change Across Adolescence: Results From a Japanese Twin Sample

“…The differences in mean levels of Ascendance, and Social Extroversion over time implied declines in Extraversion across adolescence. These results are roughly comparable with studies by Soto et al (2011) and Van den Akker (2014). However, it should be noted that these phenotypic results were Note: A = additive genetic effect, E = non-shared environmental effect, rg = genetic correlation between two time points, re = environmental correlation between two time points, 95% confidence intervals are shown in parentheses.…”

Developmental pathways of childhood dark traits.

“…Second, the shared growth factor among childhood dark traits shows an overall declining trend over time, underscoring established evidence on maturation effects of traits Van den Akker, et al, 2014) and more general externalizing psychopathology (Bongers, Koot, Van der Ende, & Verhulst, 2004), presumably resulting from an improvement in social and communication skills, self-regulation and impulse control (Hammond, et al, Eisenberg et al, 2006). Of note here is, that growth in Resistance is largely captured by the common growth factor, because this trait showed almost no evolution over time, nor did it demonstrate interindividual variability in growth patterns.…”

Interactive Effects of Parental Personality and Child Temperament with Parenting and Family Cohesion

“…Parenting is expected to influence children's temperamental development, and those same child behaviors appear to elicit differential parental responses (Lengua & Kovacs, 2005; Van den Akker, Deković, Asscher, & Prinzie, 2014). For the present purposes, there was concern with the evocation of differential parental behavior due to child temperament.…”