Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Change, and Coherence Chapter 5 Personality Dispositions Over Time: Stability, Change, and Coherence

Conceptual Issues Personality Development Stability (& Coherence) Change

What Is Personality Development? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Focus on stability and change

Three Key Forms of Stability Rank order stability _____________________________________________________ e.g., people tend to maintain their positions on dominance or extraversion relative to others over time Mean level stability e.g., the average level of liberalism or conservatism in a group remains the same over time Personality coherence __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ e.g., an 8-year-old may manifest his dominance by showing toughness in rough-and-tumble play, but at age 20 he dominance is manifested by persuading others to accept his views in political discussions

Personality Change: Two Defining Qualities Internal Changes are internal to a person, ______________________ _______________________________________________________ Enduring Changes are enduring over time, ______________________

Three Levels of Analysis Population level __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ e.g., almost everyone in the population tends to increase in sexual motivation at puberty e.g., there is a general decrease in impulsive and risk-taking behaviors as people get older Group differences level e.g., men and women develop differently in their average levels of risk taking and degree in expressing empathy Individual difference level e.g., Can we predict who is at risk for psychological disturbance later in life based on earlier measures of personality?

Personality Coherence Over Time: The Prediction of Socially Relevant Outcomes _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Personality Coherence Over Time Marital Stability, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce 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 Three aspects of personality strongly predicted marital dissatisfaction and divorce (accounted for more than half of the predictable variance) Husband’s neuroticism Husband’s impulsivity Wife’s neuroticism

Personality Coherence Over Time Alcoholism and Emotional Disturbance In a longitudinal study of 233 men, high neuroticism predicted the later development of alcoholism and/or emotional disturbance Alcoholic men had lower impulse control scores than men with emotional disturbance *People that score high on sensation seeking and impulsivity, and low on agreeableness and conscientiousness, tend to use and abuse substances more than their peers

Personality Coherence Over Time Religiousness and Spirituality Adolescents who scored high on conscientiousness and agreeableness were more likely to score high on religiousness later in life Openness to experience predicted spirituality seeking in late life

Personality Coherence Over Time Education, Academic Achievement, and Dropping Out Among low SAT scorers, there is no link between impulsivity and subsequent GPA Among high SAT scorers, high impulsive people had consistently lower GPAs than low impulsive people High impulsive people are more likely than low impulsive people to flunk out of college Conscientiousness is the most powerful longitudinal predictor of success in school and work Conscientiousness of children assessed between the ages of 8 and 12 predicts academic attainment two decades later!

Personality Coherence Over Time Health and Longevity Our personality predicts how long we are likely to live This will be discussed more in Chapter 18 – Stress, Coping, Adjustment, and Health The most important traits conducive to living a long life are high conscientiousness, positive emotionality (extraversion), low levels of hostility, and low levels of neuroticism See p. 149 for more extensive explanation

Personality Coherence Over Time 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

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 Personality also shows evidence for coherence over time