Personality Across the Life Span Costa, Paul T; McCrae, Robert R; Löckenhoff, Corinna E
Annual review of psychology,
01/2019, Letnik:
70, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Trait stability and maturation are fundamental principles of contemporary personality psychology and have been shown to hold across many cultures. However, it has proven difficult to move beyond ...these general findings to a detailed account of trait development. There are pervasive and unexplained inconsistencies across studies that may be due to (
a
) insufficient attention to measurement error, (
b
) subtle but age-sensitive differences in alternative measures of the same trait, or (
c
) different perspectives reflected in self-reports and observer ratings. Multiscale, multimethod-and ideally multinational-studies are needed. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for trait stability and change, but supporting evidence is currently weak or indirect; trait development is a fertile if sometimes frustrating field for theory and research. Beyond traits, there are approaches to personality development that are of interest to students of adult development, and these may be fruitfully addressed from a trait perspective.
Personality Plasticity After Age 30 Terracciano, Antonio; Costa, Paul T.; McCrae, Robert R.
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
08/2006, Letnik:
32, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Rank-order consistency of personality traits increases from childhood to age 30. After that, different summaries of the literature predict a plateau at age 30, or at age 50, or a curvilinear peak in ...consistency at age 50. These predictions were evaluated at group and individual levels using longitudinal data from the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory for periods of up to 42 years. Consistency declined toward a nonzero asymptote with increasing time interval. Although some scales showed increasing stability after age 30, the rank-order consistencies of the major dimensions and most facets of the Five-Factor Model were unrelated to age. Ipsative stability, assessed with the California Adult Q-Set, also was unrelated to age. These data strengthen claims of predominant personality stability after age 30.
OBJECTIVES: To test the main and interactive effects of activities derived from the Need‐Driven Dementia‐Compromised Behavior model for responding to behavioral symptoms in nursing home residents.
...DESIGN: Randomized double‐blind clinical trial.
SETTING: Nine community‐based nursing homes.
PARTICIPANTS: One hundred twenty‐eight cognitively impaired residents randomly assigned to activities adjusted to functional level (FL) (n=32), personality style of interest (PSI) (n=33), functional level and personality style of interest (FL+PSI) (n=31), or active control (AC) (n=32).
INTERVENTION: Three weeks of activities provided twice daily.
MEASUREMENTS: Agitation, passivity, engagement, affect, and mood assessed from video recordings and real‐time observations during baseline, intervention, random times outside of intervention, and 1 week after intervention.
RESULTS: All treatments improved outcomes during intervention except mood, which worsened under AC. During intervention the PSI group demonstrated greater engagement, alertness, and attention than the other groups; the FL+PSI group demonstrated greater pleasure. During random times, engagement returned to baseline levels except in the FL group in which it decreased. There was also less agitation and passivity in groups with a component adjusted to PSI. One week after the intervention, mood, anxiety, and passivity improved over baseline; significantly less pleasure was displayed after withdrawal of treatment.
CONCLUSION: The hypothesis that activities adjusted to FL+PSI would improve behavioral outcomes to a greater extent than partially adjusted or nonadjusted activities was partially supported. PSI is a critical component of individualized activity prescription.
ABSTRACT
Aims Investigating the association between personality traits and smoking status using a comprehensive model of personality, the Five‐Factor Model (FFM).
Design Cross‐sectional survey.
...Setting Baltimore, MD, USA.
Participants Adult elderly Americans (n = 1638).
Measurements A self‐administered survey on cigarette smoking and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R).
Findings Current smokers scored higher than never smokers on neuroticism and lower on agreeableness and conscientiousness; former smokers scored intermediate on these higher‐order dimensions. Neuroticism was related to smoking particularly among individuals with low conscientiousness, as indicated by an interaction effect between the two factors. There were no differences on extraversion and openness to experience. At the lower‐order facet level, smokers were characterized by inability to resist cravings (high impulsiveness), search for stimulation (high excitement‐seeking), lack of perseverance (low self‐discipline) and lack of careful consideration of the consequences of their actions (low deliberation).
Conclusions At the higher‐order factor level, this study replicates and extends previous studies using a comprehensive model of personality (FFM). The greater specificity provided by the facet‐level analysis appears to explain some of the conflicting results in the literature, and the use of an older sample provides insight especially into the former smokers group. Personality research may lead to a deeper understanding of cigarette smoking and can potentially contribute to policies and programs of smoking prevention and cessation.
It is evident that the conceptualization, diagnosis, and classification of personality disorder (PD) is shifting toward a dimensional model. The purpose of this special issue of Journal of ...Personality is to indicate how the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) can provide a useful and meaningful basis for an integration of the description and classification of both normal and abnormal personality functioning. This introductory article discusses its empirical support and the potential advantages of understanding personality disorders, including those included within the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and likely future PDs from the dimensional perspective of the FFM.
ABSTRACT
The present research uses an economically diverse, middle‐aged sample to examine the concurrent and longitudinal interplay between personality and occupational experiences. Using the ...Five‐Factor Model of personality and the Demand‐Control Model of the occupational environment as guiding frameworks, participants (N=722) reported on their personality, job characteristics, and occupational history; a subset (n=297) made the same ratings approximately 10 years later. Measured concurrently, emotionally stable, extraverted, open, and conscientious participants reported jobs with greater decision‐making latitude, whereas disagreeable participants had more physically demanding and dangerous jobs. Longitudinal cross‐lagged analyses revealed that personality was associated with changes in decision latitude, hazardous working conditions, and physical demands. None of the job characteristics predicted change in personality at the factor level. Thus, personality shaped occupational experiences, but occupational experiences had minimal impact on personality. Support for the Five‐Factor Theory perspective and implications for environmental approaches to personality development are discussed.
Use of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) in adolescent samples has shown that a few respondents have difficulty with a subset of items. We identified 30 items ...that were not understood by at least 2% of adolescent respondents and 18 additional items with low item-total correlations, and we wrote 2 trial replacement items for each. We used self-report and observer rating data from 500 respondents aged 14 to 20 to select replacement items. The modified instrument retained the intended factor structure and showed slightly better internal consistency, cross-observer agreement, and readability (Flesch-Kincaid grade level = 5.3). The NEO-PI-3 appears to be useful in high school and college samples and may have wider applicability to adults as well.
The stability of individual differences in personality traits is typically examined at the group level with test–retest correlations across two assessments. For 684 subjects (age range 17–76) we ...computed individual coefficients from three sequential assessments to evaluate intra-individual (i.e., within-person) change in stability over time. For both trait and profile (ipsative) stability, results indicate that intra-individual stability increases up to age 30 and then plateaus. Neither demographic variables (sex, ethnicity, education, and secular trends), nor the standing on the five major dimensions of personality, were predictors of change in trait stability. Contrary to results from studies of adolescents, personality “maturity” was unrelated to personality stability in adulthood. These findings support the notion that personality stability plateaus early in adulthood.
Our objectives were to test whether Conscientiousness, the other 4 domains of the Five-Factor Model, and their facets predicted mortality in older, frail individuals.
Controlling for demographic and ...health measures, we used Cox regression to test whether the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness domains predicted all-cause mortality over 5 years in 1076 65- to 100-year-old participants who took part in a Medicare Demonstration study. Supplementary analyses on 597 participants aged 66 to 102 who were reassessed 2 years later were conducted to determine whether any of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) facets were related to mortality.
When personality domains were treated as continuous variables, NEO-FFI Neuroticism and Agreeableness were significant protective factors. When personality domains were trichotomized, NEO-FFI Conscientiousness was a protective factor. In a third analysis, Agreeableness was not a significant predictor in a model that included the continuous Neuroticism and trichotomized Conscientiousness variables. Analysis of the NEO-PI-R Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness factors showed that Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were protective and that there was a trend for a similar effect of Neuroticism. Facet-level analyses revealed that the Impulsiveness, Straightforwardness, and Self-Discipline facets of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, respectively, were prospectively related to greater survival over a 3-year interval.
The effects of Neuroticism and Agreeableness on mortality are inconsistent across previous studies. This study indicates that, in a sample of older, frail participants, high Neuroticism and Agreeableness scores are protective and that more specific effects are primarily the result of the Impulsiveness and Straightforwardness facet scales. The Conscientiousness findings are consistent with those in earlier studies and demonstrate the importance of the Self-Discipline facet.
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