Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Change, and Coherence PDF

Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Change, and 1 Coherence © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 2 Learning Objectives 1. Name and define key conceptu...

Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Change, and 1 Coherence © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 2 Learning Objectives 1. Name and define key conceptual issues in personality development, including stability, coherence, and change. 2. Identify the three levels of analysis at which personality stability and change can be studied. 3. Examine the research on personality stability over time. 4. Examine the research on personality change over time. 5. Explain and provide examples of personality coherence. © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 3 Conceptual Issues  Personality Development  Rank Order stability  Mean Level Stability  Personality Coherence  Personality Change The manifestation of disagreeableness may differ across the lifespan, ranging from temper tantrums in infancy to being argumentative and having a short temper in adulthood. Even though the behaviours are different at © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited the different ages, they nevertheless express the same underlying trait. This kind of consistency is called  4 What Is Personality Development?  Personality development:  Continuities, consistencies, stabilities in people over time, and the way in which people change over time Even though people change and develop as they age, each person still has a © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited sense of self as the same person from year to year. 5 Three Key Forms of Stability 1. Rank order stability:  Maintenance of individual position within a group 2. Mean level stability:  Constancy of level 3. Personality coherence:  Maintaining rank order relative to others but changing in the manifestations of trait © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  A Closer Look 6  Mahatma Gandhi  Case of Personality Stability  Mahatma Gandhi lived in a tumultuous period and led one of the largest social revolutions in © Dinodia Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images human history  Despite the changing conditions of his life, his personality remained remarkably stable © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Change: Two Defining 7 Qualities 1. Internal:  Changes are internal to a person, not changes in the external surrounding 2. Enduring:  Changes are enduring over time, not temporary © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  8 Three Levels of Analysis 1. Population level:  Changes or constancies that apply more or less to everyone 2. Group differences level:  Changes or constancies that affect different groups differently 3. Individual difference level:  E.g., Can we predict who is at risk for psychological Some changes affect different disturbance later in life based on groups of people differently. For earlier measures of personality? example, European Canadian children tend to be, as a group, much higher in their levels of extraversion and antagonism than © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited are Asian Canadian children. Consequently, European Canadian children have a higher risk for Personality Stability Over Time: Infancy 9  Temperament:  Individual differences that emerge very early in life, are heritable, and involved behaviours are linked with emotionality  As assessed by caregivers, temperament factors include activity level, smiling and laughter, fear, distress to limitations, soothability, and the duration of orienting © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Stability Over Time: Infancy 10 2  Stability of Temperaments During Infancy (continued)  Research points to the following conclusions  Stability of temperament is higher over short intervals of time than over long intervals of time  Level of stability of temperament increases as infants mature  Stable individual differences emerge early in life, where they can be assessed by observers  For most temperament variables, there are moderate levels of stability over time during the first year of life © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Stability Over Time: Childhood 11  Stability During Childhood  Longitudinal study:  Investigation of same group of individuals over time  Measures taken early in life can predict personality later in life, but the predictability decreases over time © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Stability Over Time: Childhood 12 2 Figure 5.1: The figure shows the stability of aggression in males over different time intervals. Aggression shows the highest levels of stability over short time intervals such as from one year to the next. As the time interval between testings increases, however, the correlation coefficients decline, © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited suggesting that aggressiveness changes more over long time intervals than over short time intervals. Personality Stability Over Time: Childhood 13 3  Stability of childhood aggression  Individual differences in aggression emerge early in life, by three years of age  Individuals retain rank order stability on aggression over many years  Stability coefficients decline as interval between two times of measurement increases © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Stability Over Time: Adulthood 14  Rank Order Stability in Adulthood  Across different self-report measures of personality, conducted by different investigators, over differing time intervals (3 to 30 years), broad personality traits show moderate to high levels of stability  Average correlations across traits, scales, and time intervals is about +.65  Stability also found using spouse-report and peer- report  Personality consistency tends to increase in stepwise fashion with increasing age—personality appears to become more and more “set in plaster” with age © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Stability Over Time: 15 Adulthood 2  Mean Level Stability in Adulthood  “Big five” personality factors show a consistent mean level stability over time  Especially after 50, very little change in the average level  Small but consistent changes, especially the during 20s  Openness, extraversion, neuroticism decline with age until 50  Conscientiousness and agreeableness show gradual increase with time © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 16 Personality Change  Changes in Self-Esteem from Adolescence to Adulthood  Transition from early adolescence to early adulthood appears to be harder on women than on men, in terms of the criterion of self-esteem  Females tend to decrease in self-esteem, males tend to increase in self-esteem  Appears to be a coherent set of personality variables linked with changes in self-esteem over time for females and males © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 17 Personality Change 2  A Closer Look: Day-to-Day Changes in Self-Esteem  Self-esteem variability:  Magnitude of short-term changes in ongoing self-esteem  Self-esteem variability is an indicator of vulnerability to stressful life events  Self-esteem variability is related to the extent to which one’s self-view can be influenced by events, particularly social events © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 18 Personality Change 3  Autonomy, Dominance, Leadership, and Ambition  Longitudinal study of male managerial candidates  Began in their 20s — followed periodically over a 20-year span, until their 40s  Steep decline in ambition — steepest during first eight years; drop continued over next 12 years  Supplementary interviews revealed:  Became more realistic about limited possibilities for promotion in a company  Autonomy, leadership motivation, achievement, and dominance increased over time © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  19 Personality Change 4  Autonomy, Dominance, Leadership, and Ambition Figure 5.3 shows change with age in autonomy scores of male managerial candidates. Both participants with and without postsecondary education tend to become more autonomous or independent as they © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited grow older. 20 Personality Change 5  Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity  Sensation Seeking  Increases with age from childhood to adolescence  Peaks in late adolescence, around ages 18–20  Falls more or less continuously with age after the 20s © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  21 Personality Change 6  Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity  Impulsivity  Is distinct traits with divergent patterns of age-related change compared to sensation seeking  Harden and Tucker-Drob’s study defined  Impulsivity as the tendency to act on behavioural impulses without planning or consideration of consequences  Declined from late adolescence to early adulthood  The decline in impulsivity was much steeper and began earlier than the decline in sensation seeking © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited Personality Change 7 22  Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 23 Personality Change: Increasing Openness and Creativity  Some evidence suggests that openness to experience may change with age  Most findings point to a slight decrease at the mean level as people get older  Mindfulness-based Meditation  A form of meditation aimed at increasing attention to present experiences, may also increase openness to experience and creativity specifically © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Changes Across 24 Cohorts: Assertiveness and Narcissism  Cohort effects:  Changes over time that are attributable to living in different social time periods rather than to “true” change  Twenge’s research found women’s assertiveness rose and fell depending on the cohort in which they were raised © Image Source/Getty Images  Men showed no change  Research inconclusive if there is an increase in narcissism Women’s assertiveness scores rose from 1968 to © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 1993 Volitional Personality Change: Is it Possible? 25  Many people strive to actively change their personalities but can they actually do it?  Research has shown that practical intentions for implementation can allow individuals to increase their level of traits  Area of research is still in its infancy  How much change and where it is lasting are important questions © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 26 Time  Marital Stability, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce (Kelly & Conley, 1987)  Longitudinal study of 300 couples from engagements in 1930s to 1980s  During first testing session in 1930s, friends rated each participant’s personality on many dimensions © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 27 Time 2  Marital Stability, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce (continued)  Three aspects of personality © Ariel Skelley/Blend Images LLC; (bottom): © Ingram Publishing strongly predicted marital dissatisfaction and divorce 1. Husband’s neuroticism 2. Husband’s impulsivity 3. Wife’s neuroticism © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 28 Time 3  Alcoholism, Drug Use, and Emotional Disturbance  In a longitudinal study of men, high neuroticism predicted the later development of alcoholism and emotional disturbance  Alcoholic men had lower impulse control scores than men with emotional disturbance © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 29 Time 4  Education, Academic Achievement, and Dropping Out  Impulsivity at 18 predicted less progress and lower financial security at age 26  Conscientiousness is the best predictor of school and work achievement  Work experiences can have an effect on personality change © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 30 Time 5  Health and Longevity  Personality predicts how long you are likely to live  The most important traits conducive to living a long life are: 1. High conscientiousness 2. Positive emotionality (extraversion) 3. Low levels of hostility, and low levels of neuroticism © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited  Personality Coherence Over 31 Time 6  Prediction of Personality Change  Can we predict who is likely to change in personality and who is likely to remain the same?  Caspi and Herbener (1990) studied middle-aged couples over an 11-year period, in 1970 and again in 1981  Researchers asked: Is the choice of marriage partner a cause of personality stability or change?  People married to a spouse highly similar to themselves showed most personality stability  People married to a spouse least similar to themselves showed most personality change © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited 32 Summary and Evaluation  Personality development is the study of both the continuities and changes in personality over time  Strong evidence for personality rank order stability over time  Personality also changes in predictable ways, sometimes in different ways for men and women  Can be affected by social cohort  Personality also shows evidence for coherence over time © 2023 McGraw Hill Limited