This is the Chapter 12 of the book The Individual (de Bruin, E., 1st Edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 4 (The Individual) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands

Chapter 12:

Personality dispositions over time: Stability and Change

Conceptual issues:

• Personality development: continuities/consistencies/stabilities over time and the ways in which people change over time

• Rank order stability: maintenance of a relative individual position within a group (if people tend to maintain positions on dominance relative to other members of group, this is a high rank order stability to that personality characteristic)
• Mean level stability: mean values of a trait, do not change much over time

• Mean level change: people tend to get increasingly conservative (political orientation) as they get older

• Personality change:

• Internal: changes internal to the person, not external surroundings
• Enduring: rather than being temporary

Personality Stability over time:

• Temperament: individual differences, emerge early in life, like to have heritable traits, involved with emotionality/arousability

• Mary Rothbart’s 6 factors of temperament:

• Activity level: motor activities infant
• Smiling & laughter: how much does the child smile?
• Fear: distress and reluctance to approach novel stimuli
• Distress to limitations: distress at being refused food
• Soothability: degree child calms down, as result of being soothed
• Duration of orienting: degree child sustains attention to objects in the absence of sudden changes

• 4 important points from Mary Rothbart’s 6 factors of temperament:

• Stable individual differences emerge early in life
• Moderate levels of stability during 1^st year of life
• Stability temperament highest over short intervals of time
• Level stability of temperament increases as infant matures

• Stability during childhood:

• Actigraphs: small motion recorders for children --> frequency/magnitude of limb movement at set intervals
• Stability coefficients: correlations between the same measures obtained at 2 different points in time
• Validity coefficients: correlation different measures of same trait at same time
• Longitudinal studies: same group of individuals over time --> childhood personality good predictor of adult personality, but predictability decreases as distance with original testing increases
• Child/parent: tango where dancers influence each other’s movements at the same time

• Positive affectivity of child, predicts parental extraversion
• Negative affectivity of child, when parents rate themselves high on Neuroticism
• Effortful control of child, when parents rate themselves high on Extraversion

• Rank order stability in adulthood:

• Moderate levels of rank order stability of the Big Five found, and findings replicable across different populations/investigations --> exeption is stability of Conscientiousness, increases over time
• Moderate rank order stability over personality disposition in adulthood

• Mean level stability adulthood:

• Personality relatively stable during adulthood, however It depends trait being studied --> decrease with age in emotional volatileness, anxiety, neurotic

• Maturity principle: adolescents become more controlled, socially more confident and less angry and alienated

Personality Change:

• Adolescence --> adulthood: evident personality change, marked by need to negotiate new, emerging social roles within society
• Five-factor theory: genetic-biological account of personality maturation, diminishes role of environmental influences
• Social-investment theory (SIT): environment-driven model of personality: entering new phases in life --> adopt new social roles (society/environment expects other behaviours from you)

• Both biological/environment influences determine personality maturation

• Conditions personality change:

• Relative influence heritability (specially adolescence/early adulthood)
• Environment influences (specially early adulthood)
• Stability/change personality caused by complex interplay genetic/environmental influences

• Sensation seeking: described mostly biological point of view

• Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS):

• Thrill/adventure seeking: I would try parachute jumping
• Experience seeking: I like to have new/exiting experiences/sensations even if frightening/unconventional/illegal
• Disinhibition: I like wild, uninhibited parties
• Boredom susceptibility: I get bored seeing the same old faces

• California Psychological Inventory (CPI): changes in personality in 40s and early 50s --> four distinct groups measured against 2 facets of personality --> illustrates utility examining subgroups within population (personality changes may be revealed in specific subgroups, but obscured when entire group is examined)
• Cohort effects: social times in which they lived effects
• Caspi and Herbener: potential source of personality stability and change --> selection of spouses (men/women married to someone similar --> show high levels of personality stability)
• Fluctuating: something is too stable to call it “changing”, but too unstable to call it “stable”

• Density distributions of states: when examining manifestations of given personality trait, take into account manifestations vary across kinds of different situations encountered daily life --> moment-to-moment within person variability in personality states

• Personality traits: moment-to-moment variability/behavioural stability --> fluctuates around a relatively fixed point that is different for each individual