Change in personality over a lifetime

Researchers believe that personality changes as an individual ages, but it depends on the definition of change. There are two very specific types of change that researchers tend to focus on: rank-order change and mean-level change. There are different factors and mechanisms that lead to change in personality. There are also many different ways to measure personality, and some traits tend to change while some traits tend to stay stable.

Influences

The opposite of change in personality would be consistency in personality. There are various things that influence whether or not an individual's personality changes. Time is a factor in personality change. There is an increase in consistency of a trait as age increases. However, personality does not stop changing at a specific age. Biological and social transitions in life may also be a factor for change. Biological transitions are stages like puberty or a woman giving birth to her first child. Social transitions might be changes in social roles like becoming a parent or working at a first job. These life transitions do not necessarily cause change, but they may be reasons for change. One theory says that whether or not these life transitions cause personality change is based on whether the transition was expected based on age or was unforeseen. The events that are expected will cause personality change because those events have common scripts. However, events that are unexpected will give prominence to the traits that already exist for the individual. Historical context also effects personality change. Major life events can lead to changes in personality that can persist for more than a decade. A longitudinal study followed women over 30 years and found that they showed increases in individualism. This may have been due to the changes that were occurring in the country at the time.

Emergence

There are multiple ways for an individual's personality to change. Individuals will change their behavior based on the ideas in their environment that emit rewards and punishments. Some of these ideas might be implicit, like social roles. The individual changes his or her personality to fit into a social role if it is favorable. Other ideas might be more explicit like a parent trying to change a child's behavior. An individual may decide to actively try to change his or her own behavior after thinking about his or her own actions. Therapy involves the same type of introspection. The individual along with the therapist identifies the behaviors that are inappropriate, and then self-monitors in order to change them. Eventually the individual internalizes the behavior they want to attain, and that trait will generalize to other areas of the individual's life. Personality change also occurs when individuals observe the actions of others. Individuals may mimic the behaviors of others and then internalize those behaviors. Once the individual internalizes those behaviors they are said to be a part of that person's personality. Individuals also receive feedback from other individuals or groups about their own personality. This is a driving force of change because the individual has social motivations to change his or her personality. It has also been shown that major positive and negative life events can predict changes in personality.

Two types of change

There are two different ways of classifying personality changes over a lifetime:

• A rank-order change refers to a change in an individual's personality trait relative to other individuals. Researchers measure if the rankings change at different time points. In terms of personality, a rank-order change does not occur very often.
• A mean-level change refers to an absolute change in the individual's level of a certain trait over time. Longitudinal research shows that mean-level change does occur.

Change in the Big Five

The Big Five personality traits are often used to measure change in personality. There is a mean-level change in the Big Five traits from age 10 to 65. The trends seen in adulthood are different from trends seen in childhood and adolescence. Some research suggests that during adolescence rank-order change does occur and therefore personality is highly unstable. Gender differences are also shown before adulthood. Conscientiousness drops from late childhood to adolescence, but then picks back up from adolescence into adulthood. Agreeableness also drops from late childhood to adolescence, but then picks back up from adolescence into adulthood. Neuroticism shows a different trend for males and females in childhood and adolescence. For females, Neuroticism increases from childhood to adolescence. Then Neuroticism levels from adolescence into adulthood and continues the adult trend of decreasing. Males however, tend to gradually decrease in Neuroticism from childhood to adolescence into adulthood. Extraversion drops from childhood to adolescence and then does not really change that much. Openness to experience also shows a different trend for different genders. Females tend to decrease in Openness to experience from childhood to early adulthood and then gradually increases all throughout adulthood. Males tend to decrease in Openness to experience from childhood to adolescence, then it tends to increase through adulthood. In adulthood, Neuroticism tends to decrease, while Conscientiousness and Agreeableness tend to increase. Extraversion and Openness to experience do not seem to change much during adulthood. These trends seen in adulthood are different from trends seen in childhood and adolescence. Cross-cultural research shows that German, British, Czech, and Turkish people show similar trends of these personality traits.

The Big Five personality traits can also be broken down into facets. Different facets of each personality trait are often correlated with different behavioral outcomes. Breaking down the personality traits into facets is difficult and not yet at a consensus. However, it is important to look at change in facets over a lifetime separate from just the change in traits because different facets of the same trait show different trends. Neuroticism can be broken into the two facets of anxiety and depression. Anxiety has the same trend as Neuroticism for both males and females. For females, anxiety increases from childhood to adolescence, at emerging adulthood it levels out, and then starts to decrease into and throughout middle age. Anxiety in males tends to decrease from late childhood through adulthood. Depression (not clinical depression, but rather susceptibility to negative affect) shows two peaks in females. Females tend to have higher levels of this kind of depression in adolescence and then again in early adulthood. Depression does, however, have a negative trend through adulthood. For males, depression tends to show an increase from childhood to early adulthood and then shows a slight decrease through middle age.