Personality Plasticity After Age 30

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.

[1]  P. Costa,et al.  Trait theories of personality. , 1998 .

[2]  Paul T. Costa,et al.  Set like plaster? Evidence for the stability of adult personality. , 1994 .

[3]  P. Costa,et al.  Personality in adulthood , 1990 .

[4]  P. Costa,et al.  Trait psychology comes of age. , 1991, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation.

[5]  H. Gough.  CPI, California Psychological Inventory : administrator's guide , 1987 .

[6]  J. Conley,et al.  The hierarchy of consistency: A review and model of longitudinal findings on adult individual differences in intelligence, personality and self-opinion , 1984 .

[7]  Samuel J. Beck,et al.  The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research. , 1962 .

[8]  W. Raub.  From the National Institutes of Health. , 1990, JAMA.

[9]  R. McCrae.  Traits Through Time , 2001 .

[10]  土居 隆,et al.  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory , 2020 .

[11]  P. Britton,et al.  CHAPTER 10 – The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory , 1966 .

[12]  Avshalom Caspi,et al.  Personality development across the life course. , 1998 .

[13]  D. Ozer,et al.  Patterns of personality consistency and change from childhood through adolescence. , 1989, Journal of personality.

[14]  W. James.  The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I , 2008 .

[15]  Jack Block,et al.  The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric research , 1964 .

[16]  P. Costa,et al.  Constancy of adult personality structure in males: longitudinal, cross-sectional and times-of-measurement analyses. , 1980, Journal of gerontology.

[17]  Robert Plomin,et al.  Development, genetics, and psychology , 1986 .

[18]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[19]  P. Costa,et al.  Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) , 1992 .

[20]  P. Costa,et al.  Multiple uses for longitudinal personality data , 1992 .

[21]  Paul T. Costa,et al.  Continuity and change over the adult life cycle: Personality and personality disorders. , 1999 .

[22]  W. James,et al.  The Principles of Psychology. , 1983 .

[23]  Monika Ardelt,et al.  Still stable after all these years? Personality stability theory revisited. , 2000 .

[24]  D. R. Heise.  Separating reliability and stability in test-retest correlation. , 1969 .

[25]  T. Spector,et al.  Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[26]  David Arenberg,et al.  Normal Human Aging: The Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging , 1984 .

[27]  A. Caspi,et al.  Personality Development Across the Life Course:The Argument for Change and Continuity , 2001 .

[28]  Antonio Terracciano,et al.  Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the NEO-PI-R scales in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. , 2005, Psychology and aging.

[29]  W. S. Zimmerman,et al.  The Guilford-Zimmerman temperament survey handbook : twenty-five years of research and application , 1976 .

[30]  David Arenberg,et al.  Enduring dispositions in adult males , 1980 .

[31]  S. Hathaway,et al.  The Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory, Rev. ed., 2nd printing , 1943 .

[32]  B. Roberts,et al.  Patterns of continuity: a dynamic model for conceptualizing the stability of individual differences in psychological constructs across the life course. , 2005, Psychological review.

[33]  I. Rossman,et al.  Normal Human Aging: The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging , 1986 .

[34]  S. Finn.  Stability of personality self-ratings over 30 years: evidence for an age/cohort interaction. , 1986, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[35]  P. Costa,et al.  Longitudinal trajectories in Guilford-Zimmerman temperament survey data: results from the Baltimore longitudinal study of aging. , 2006, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[36]  J. Asendorpf.  Beyond stability: Predicting inter‐individual differences in intra‐individual change , 1992 .

[37]  K. Lanning.  Dimensionality of observer ratings on the California Adult Q-Set , 1994 .

[38]  Paul T. Costa,et al.  Evaluating comprehensiveness in personality systems: The California Q‐Set and the five‐factor model , 1986 .

[39]  S. Resnick,et al.  Longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Older Adults: A Shrinking Brain , 2003, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[40]  P. Costa,et al.  Personality self-reports are concurrently reliable and valid during acute depressive episodes. , 2005, Journal of affective disorders.

[41]  Robert R. McCrae,et al.  Consensual validation of personality traits: Evidence from self-reports and ratings. , 1982 .

[42]  R. Helson,et al.  Personality change in women from the early 40s to the early 50s. , 1992, Psychology and aging.

[43]  D L Paulhus,et al.  Interpreting personality profiles across cultures: bilingual, acculturation, and peer rating studies of Chinese undergraduates. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[44]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[45]  Antonio Terracciano,et al.  Person‐factors in the California Adult Q‐Set: closing the door on personality trait types? , 2006 .

[46]  P. Costa,et al.  Personality in adulthood: a six-year longitudinal study of self-reports and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[47]  C. Clark,et al.  Ratings of Personality Change in Patients Being Evaluated for Memory Disorders , 1991, Alzheimer disease and associated disorders.

[48]  David C. Funder,et al.  Predicting more of the people more of the time: Assessing the personality of situations. , 1978 .

[49]  B. Roberts,et al.  The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies. , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[50]  Jack Block,et al.  Lives Through Time , 1983 .