The aim of the current study was to compare changes in divorcees' life satisfaction to changes in a control sample of nondivorcees. Prospective longitudinal data came from 33 waves of the German ...Socio-Economic Panel Study. Divorcees (n = 787) were propensity-score matched to nondivorcees (n = 1,629) in the year of marriage. In this way, we created a clear starting point and time scale related to different phases of the divorce process. Piecewise growth models indicated gradual declines in the years before divorce, a sudden decline in the year of divorce, and gradual increases in the years after. The matched control sample of people who remained married throughout the study period showed gradual declines in life satisfaction, suggesting that some but not all of the declines found in divorcees were associated with the divorce process. In the year of divorce and the years after divorce, divorcees showed larger individual differences in change as compared with nondivorcees. Time-invariant moderators explained a small amount of variance in divorcees' life satisfaction trajectories. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for theory and research on hedonic adaptation during major life transitions.
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The transition to parenthood introduces changes in various life domains. In this paper, we examined whether and to what degree the transition to parenthood is related to changes in the importance of ...major life goals. To do this, we examined the rank-order stability, ipsative stability, and mean-level change in six life goal domains (achievement, power, variation, affiliation, altruism, and intimacy) in a sample of 248 parents and 294 individuals in a romantic relationship without children across two time points. Overall, we found high rank-order (variable-oriented) and ipsative (person-oriented) stability, and little evidence for mean-level changes in the importance of life goals across the transition to parenthood. However, we found several selection effects suggesting that women without children tended to endorse agentic life goals (variation and achievement) more than mothers did. Generally, our findings underline the overall stability of life goals and their role as guiding principles in life.
Objective
Why personality changes in young adulthood remains a critical theoretical and empirical question. We studied personality change during the education‐to‐work transition, including mean‐level ...personality change and its specific timing, the degree of individual variability in change, and the link between sense of mastery and personality change.
Methods
We used two intensive longitudinal studies. Study 1 included 5 waves of data across 2 years during the university‐to‐work transition (N = 309; mean‐aged 25). Study 2 included 3 waves of data across 8 months during an internship‐heavy teacher education program (N = 317; mean‐aged 22). We measured personality traits and work‐related mastery with questionnaires and personality states and general mastery with the experience sampling method.
Results
First, we found no evidence for mean‐level personality maturation but decreases in trait Conscientiousness. Second, young adults differed significantly in personality trait and state change. Third, young adults with higher levels of work‐related sense of mastery showed more positive changes in trait Conscientiousness. Decreases in general sense of mastery predicted later decreases in state Emotional Stability and vice versa. Change in general sense of mastery correlated with personality state change.
Conclusions
Sense of mastery seems to be part of a dynamic short‐term process underlying personality change in young adulthood.
The desire to change one's personality traits has been shown to be stronger if people are dissatisfied with associated aspects of their life. While evidence for the effects of interventions on ...personality trait change is increasing, it is unclear whether these lead to subsequent improvements in the satisfaction with various domains of life. In this study, we examined the effects of a 3-month digital-coaching personality change intervention study on 10 domains of satisfaction. We focused on the three largest intervention groups of the study (N = 418), which included participants who wanted to increase their Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, or Extraversion. Bivariate latent change score models were used to examine correlated change between the targeted personality traits and satisfaction domains. We found that global life satisfaction and satisfaction with oneself as a person increased in all three intervention groups. In addition, increases in specific satisfaction domains were reported for the Conscientiousness (e.g., work/school, health, friendships) and Emotional Stability (e.g., family, sexual relationships, emotions) group. Increases were stable up to the 3-month follow-up. In contrast, the waitlist control group did not report any changes in global or domain-specific life satisfaction. Changes in the satisfaction domains were positively correlated with self-reported personality trait change to a similar degree as the cross-sectional associations, but not to observer-reported personality trait change. The personality intervention thus seemed to have a positive effect on satisfaction with various domains of life, which was associated with the degree of self-reported personality trait change.
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Meta-analytic evidence has shown that personality is one of the strongest correlates of global and domain-specific satisfaction. The main goal of the present study was to examine whether the ...associations between personality traits and satisfaction differ across the adult lifespan. We used bivariate latent growth curve models and local structural equation modeling to study correlations between levels and change of Big Five personality traits and satisfaction with life, satisfaction with work, and satisfaction with social contacts. Data came from a large representative longitudinal Dutch sample (N = 9,110; age range 16-95). Across age, emotional stability showed the strongest associations with both global and domain-specific satisfaction. After emotional stability, conscientiousness was the strongest correlate of work satisfaction (WS), and extraversion and agreeableness were the strongest correlates of social satisfaction (SS). Longitudinal changes in personality and satisfaction across the 11 years covered in this study were moderately correlated, suggesting codevelopment between these constructs. Most correlational patterns were stable across the lifespan, indicating that personality traits are similarly relevant for satisfaction across different phases in adult life. We discuss the theoretical implications for the foundations that may underlie the link between personality and satisfaction in various life phases.
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Self‐control is associated with a variety of positive life outcomes, including relationship satisfaction, health, educational achievement, and avoiding criminal behaviour. A largely unanswered ...question concerns the extent to which self‐control changes across the lifespan and in response to major life events. The present research used prospective four‐wave data from 539 Dutch individuals to examine the self‐control trajectory of first‐time parents (n = 246) as compared with individuals who did not have children during the research period (n = 293). New parents (especially mothers) reported higher levels of self‐control before birth (i.e. during pregnancy) than did nonparents. New mothers showed significant non‐linear decreases in self‐control, which were especially strong from pregnancy until 6 months after childbirth. New fathers' self‐control remained largely stable. Furthermore, pregnancy‐related stress was associated with lower self‐control levels during pregnancy in both first‐time mothers and fathers. Higher levels of work–family conflict and family‐related stress were associated with lower self‐control after childbirth in new fathers, but not in new mothers. These results indicate that major life transitions may be linked to changes in adult self‐control. Discussion focuses on the implications of the results for theory and research on the development of self‐control in adulthood.
A large body of evidence indicates that personality traits show high rank-order stability and substantial mean-level changes across the lifespan. However, the majority of longitudinal research on ...personality development has relied on repeated assessments of self-reports, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. Here, we (1) tested whether self- and informant-reports provided by couples show similar patterns of rank-order stability and mean-level change and (2) assessed self–other agreement in personality development. We charted the Big Five personality trajectories of 255 couples (N = 510; M age = 27.01 years) who provided both self- and partner-reports at four assessments across 1.5 years. Results indicated similar rank-order stabilities in self- and partner-report data. Latent growth curve models indicated no significant differences between self- and partner-reported personality trajectories, with exceptions to extraversion and agreeableness. We further found strong cross-sectional agreement across all Big Five traits and assessment waves as well as moderate self–other agreement in personality change in emotional stability and agreeableness. These findings highlight the relevance of multi-method assessments in personality development, while providing information about personality stability and change. Discussion focuses on the theoretical implications and future directions for multi-method assessments in longitudinal personality research.
In the current study, we used 5 waves of longitudinal data from a large representative sample of Norwegian mothers (N = 84,711) to examine the association between romantic relationship satisfaction ...and self-esteem before and after childbirth in subgroups of first-, second-, third-, and fourth-time mothers. Maternal self-esteem showed a highly similar change pattern across subgroups. Specifically, self-esteem decreased during pregnancy, increased until the child was 6 months old, and then gradually decreased over the following years. The replication of this trajectory across subgroups and pregnancies suggests that this is a normative change pattern. For relationship satisfaction, the birth of the first child seemed to have the strongest impact compared with the birth of subsequent children. In first-time mothers, relationship satisfaction was high during pregnancy, sharply decreased around childbirth, and then gradually decreased in the following years. In second-, third-, and fourth-time mothers, the decrease in relationship satisfaction after childbirth was more gradual and linear compared with the sharp decrease found in first-time mothers. Moderate positive correlated changes between self-esteem and relationship satisfaction indicated that these constructs were linked over time. Discussion focuses on the implications of the results for theory and future research on self-esteem, relationship satisfaction, and personality-relationship transactions.
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The current study aimed to conceptually replicate previous studies on the effects of actor personality, partner personality, and personality similarity on general and relational well-being by using ...response surface analyses and a longitudinal sample of 4,464 romantic couples. Similar to previous studies using difference scores and profile correlations, results from response surface analyses indicated that personality similarity explained a small amount of variance in well-being as compared with the amount of variance explained by linear actor and partner effects. However, response surface analyses also revealed that second-order terms (i.e., the interaction term and quadratic terms of actor and partner personality) were systematically linked to couples' well-being for all traits except neuroticism. In particular, most response surfaces showed a complex pattern in which the effect of similarity and dissimilarity on well-being depended on the level and combination of actor and partner personality. In addition, one small but robust similarity effect was found, indicating that similarity in agreeableness was related to women's experience of support across the eight years of the study. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for theory and research on personality similarity in romantic relationships.
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Intergenerational relations have received close attention in the context of population aging and increased childcare provision by grandparents. However, few studies have investigated the ...psychological consequences of becoming a grandparent. In a preregistered test of grandparenthood as a developmental task in middle and older adulthood, we used representative panel data from the Netherlands (N = 563) and the United States (N = 2210) to analyze first-time grandparents’ personality and life satisfaction development. We tested gender, employment, and grandchild care as moderators. To address confounding, we employed propensity score matching using two procedures: matching grandparents with parents and nonparents to achieve balance in different sets of carefully selected covariates. Multilevel models demonstrated mean-level stability of the Big Five personality traits and life satisfaction over the transition to grandparenthood, and no consistent moderation effects—contrary to the social investment principle. The few small effects of grandparenthood on personality development did not replicate across samples. We found no evidence of larger inter-individual differences in change in grandparents compared to the controls or of lower rank-order stability. Our findings add to recent critical re-examinations of the social investment principle and are discussed in light of characteristics that might moderate grandparents’ personality development.
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