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Intra-individual Change in Personality Stability and Age
Antonio Terracciano1, Robert R McCrae, Paul T Costa
1Laboratory of Personality & Cognition, National Institute on Aging, NIH, DHHS.
Personality stability increases until age 30, then plateaus. Individual differences in personality traits show increasing stability in early adulthood, with no predictors found for changes in trait stability.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Personality Psychology
Background:
- Individual differences in personality traits are typically assessed at the group level using test-retest correlations.
- Intra-individual (within-person) stability of personality traits has been less explored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate intra-individual change in personality trait stability over time.
- To examine the trajectory of personality stability from adolescence to adulthood.
Main Methods:
- Calculated individual coefficients from three sequential assessments for 684 subjects (aged 17-76).
- Assessed both trait and profile (ipsative) stability.
- Investigated demographic variables and personality dimensions as predictors of stability changes.
Main Results:
- Intra-individual personality stability, for both trait and profile, increases up to age 30 and subsequently plateaus.
- Demographic variables (sex, ethnicity, education, secular trends) did not predict changes in trait stability.
- Personality maturity was unrelated to personality stability in adulthood, unlike in adolescent studies.
Conclusions:
- Personality stability plateaus early in adulthood.
- Findings suggest that personality development regarding stability is largely complete by age 30.
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