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Personality trait development in midlife: exploring the impact of psychological turning points

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Abstract

This study examined long-term personality trait development in midlife and explored the impact of psychological turning points on personality change. Self-defined psychological turning points reflect major changes in the ways people think or feel about an important part of their life, such as work, family, and beliefs about themselves and about the world. This study used longitudinal data from the Midlife in the US survey to examine personality trait development in adults aged 40–60 years. The Big Five traits were assessed in 1995 and 2005 by means of self-descriptive adjectives. Seven types of self-identified psychological turning points were obtained in 1995. Results indicated relatively high stability with respect to rank-orders and mean-levels of personality traits, and at the same time reliable individual differences in change. This implies that despite the relative stability of personality traits in the overall sample, some individuals show systematic deviations from the sample mean-levels. Psychological turning points in general showed very little influence on personality trait change, although some effects were found for specific types of turning points that warrant further research, such as discovering that a close friend or relative was a much better person than one thought they were.

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Notes

  1. The correlations between personality traits and age and gender (1 = men, 2 = women), respectively, were at T1 and T2 (in brackets): Neuroticism: −.11, .15, (−.17, .16); Extraversion: .10, .02, (.12, .03); Openness to experience: .06, −.08, (.04, −.07); Agreeableness: .14, .24, (.13, .27); and Conscientiousness: .03, .08, (.02, .08). Values ≥ |.07| are statistically significant at p < .05.

  2. Controlling for age and gender by means of partial correlations did not significantly reduce or enhance the rank-order stability coefficients: Neuroticism: .64; Extraversion: .69; Openness to experience: .70; Agreeableness: .64; and Conscientiousness: .62.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the MIDUS Pilot Grant Competition, National Institute on Aging, USA, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF-100014-120625) to the first author. This publication is based on data from the MIDUS Study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development and the National Institute on Aging (P01-AG020166).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14/24, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    Mathias Allemand

  2. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Veronica Gomez

  3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Joshua J. Jackson

Authors
  1. Mathias Allemand
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  2. Veronica Gomez
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  3. Joshua J. Jackson
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Correspondence to Mathias Allemand.

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Communicated by handling editors: M. Martin, S. L. Willis, C. Röcke, D. J. H. Deeg.

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Allemand, M., Gomez, V. & Jackson, J.J. Personality trait development in midlife: exploring the impact of psychological turning points. Eur J Ageing 7, 147–155 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-010-0158-0

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