How are common major life events perceived? Exploring differences between and variability of different typical event profiles and raters

Research on major life events and personality change often focuses on the occurrence of specific life events such as childbirth, unemployment, or divorce. However, this typical approach has three important limitations: (1) Life events are typically measured categorically, (2) it is often assumed that people experience and change from the same event in the same way, and (3) external ratings of life events have unknown levels of validity. To address these limitations, we examined how common life events are typically perceived, how much perceptions of life events vary within events, and how well external ratings of events correspond to subjective ratings from people who experienced the events. We analyzed ratings of nine psychologically relevant characteristics of 10 common major life events from three different types of raters (N = 2,210). Each life event had a distinct subjectively rated profile that corresponded well to external ratings. Collectively, this study demonstrates that life events can be meaningfully described and differentiated with event characteristics. However, people’s individual perceptions of life events varied considerably even within events. Therefore, research on major life events and their associations with personality change should incorporate individual perceptions of the events to advance the understanding of these associations.