WRAPPING IT UP

SUMMARY

• People change over time, and are also the same persons over time. The paradox between these two facts lies at the core of the study of personality development, which addresses both change and stability.

Personality Stability

• Extensive and impressive evidence demonstrates the stability of personality over long periods of time. Patterns of behavior seen in children are also visible when they are adults, and traits identified early in life have important associations with long-term life outcomes, including academic achievement, occupational success, and satisfying interpersonal relationships.
• Personality is stable over time because the environment that surrounds a person itself tends to be stable, because early experiences can have long-lasting consequences, because people will seek out environments that are compatible with and magnify their personality traits, and because people actively change the environments they enter.
• Personality tends to become more stable over time, an effect known as the cumulative continuity principle.

Personality Development

• Although individual differences in personality tend to remain consistent over long periods of time, several traits change, on average, as people get older. In particular, conscientiousness tends to increase while neuroticism declines.
• The tendency of socially adaptive traits to increase with age is called the maturity principle. However, some adaptive traits may decline late in life.
• Personality changes over the life span because of physical changes to the body, because of the impact of particular events, and because of the different demands that are made on a person at different stages of life.
• The social clock describes the accomplishments conventionally expected of people at certain ages. For women, following either the stereotypical feminine or masculine social clocks can lead to long-term life satisfaction, but following neither can lead to problems.
• An important development task for everyone is to develop a life story, or narrative identity.
• Goals tend to change over the life span. Younger people look to explore new possibilities and develop skills; older people focus more on maintaining emotional well-being and enjoying relationships.

Personality Change

• Most people would like to change at least one of their Big Five personality traits to at least some degree.
• Increasing evidence indicates that personality can be changed, though it is not easy to do.
• Personality change can potentially be accomplished through psychotherapy, general intervention programs, targeted interventions, or behaviors and life experiences.
• Negative life experiences can lead to increases in neuroticism, but people higher in neuroticism also encounter more negative life experiences.
• People may resist significantly changing their personalities, but it is possible to do if they strongly desire to change and believe change is possible.

Principles of Personality Continuity and Change

• Seven basic principles summarize the bases of personality development and change: the cumulative continuity principle, the maturity principle, the plasticity principle, the role continuity principle, the identity development principle, the social investment principle, and the corresponsive principle.

Is Personality Change Good or Bad?

• In general, erratic and unstable personality change has negative consequences. But increases in traits such as conscientiousness and decreases in traits such as neuroticism can be beneficial.
• Self-change begins with identifying how one wishes to be different, and beginning to steadily do the small behaviors that can eventually bring about the desired change.

KEY TERMS

rank-order consistency, p. 228

temperament, p. 229

heterotypic continuity, p. 229

person-environment transactions, p. 232

active person-environment transaction, p. 232

reactive person-environment transaction, p. 233

evocative person-environment transaction, p. 233

cumulative continuity principle, p. 233

personality development, p. 235

cross-sectional study, p. 235

cohort effect, p. 237

longitudinal study, p. 237

maturity principle, p. 238

social clock, p. 240

narrative identity, p. 242

THINK ABOUT IT

1. How is your personality different than it was five years ago? Has it changed for the better or for the worse? Why?
2. Do you think people can accurately judge whether their own personality has changed? Why might this be difficult to do?
3. Do you expect your personality to change in the next five years? Do you want it to?
4. What kinds of situations do you seek out? What kinds of situations do you tend to avoid? Why? Does the answer have anything to do with your personality?
5. What kind of situations do you tend to avoid? What would happen if you went there anyway? Do you think you might enjoy yourself, or would you be miserable?
6. Psychologists generally define “psychological maturity” as increased conscientiousness and decreased neuroticism. Do you agree with this definition? Does it leave anything out?
7. A major study cited in this chapter (Sutin, Luchetti, Stephan, Robins, & Terracciano, 2017) found that the children of better-educated parents grew up to be more open, extraverted, and emotionally stable. Why do you think this is?
8. Do you have goals for what you want to accomplish at certain ages in the future? Does this plan at all resemble Helson’s idea of the “social clock”? How will you feel if you don’t accomplish these goals on schedule? How will other people (e.g., your parents) feel?
9. If you told the story of your life, what would be its theme?
10. Why do you think people high in neuroticism seem to encounter more negative life experiences?
11. Do you know anyone whose personality would be better if it could somehow be changed? If you told that to this person (which I don’t recommend), would they agree? Why not?
12. According to the survey cited in the text (Hudson & Roberts, 2014) almost everybody would like to change at least one of their Big Five traits at least somewhat. Does this include you?
13. What would it take for someone to want truly to change her own personality? Is a profound event (e.g., a spectacular failure of some kind) necessary, or is vague dissatisfaction with how things are going enough to motivate change?
14. If you wanted to become more conscientious, what could you do today to make that start to happen?

SUGGESTED RESOURCES

Roberts, B. W., Donnellan, M. B., & Hill, P. L. (2012). Personality trait development in adulthood. In I. B. Weiner (Ed.), Handbook of psychology, 5, 183–196.

This chapter provides a superb overview of the major issues in the study of personality development. It includes a clear presentation of some key methodological points that are necessary to understand and properly interpret the research literature.

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