Introduction:
“It was long thought that personality was set in childhood and adolescence, and was fully
developed by the age of 30” (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1994).
Keywords : personality, development, changes, evolution, parenthood, adolescence
This article entitled “Big Five Personality Development in Adolescence and Adulthood” was
written by Susan J.T Branje, Cornelis F.M Van Lieshout and Jan R.M Gerris in 2006 and
published in 2007 in the European Journal of Personality. The authors are professors of
developmental psychology in the Netherlands.
This article presents an experimental study about personality development in adolescence and
mid-adulthood according to the five personality dimensions of the BigFive model (Goldberg,
1992).
This study focuses on personality development and changes during adolescence (11 to 17 years)
and mid-adulthood (35 to 50 years) as well as on inter-individual differences in personality and
the factors that influence these differences. To do this, the authors constructed an experimental
study and collected data from two-parent families with at least two adolescents. Their study
demonstrated that personality evolves and can change throughout life, contrary to what McCrae
and Costa (1994) thought.
Summary :
In order to examine whether personality change during life, researchers collected data from 285
Dutch two-parent families with at least two adolescents. The families participated in three
annual waves of measurements. An interviewer visited each family’s home during each
measurement wave and asked each family member (father, mother, two adolescents) to
complete a questionnaire simultaneously. Each family member assessed his or her own
personality as well as that of the other three family members. In order to avoid experimental
abandonment, adolescents received a gift certificate at each measurement wave and each family
could win a lottery prize at the end of the three measurement waves.
The authors assessed four domains: the five personality dimensions according to the BigFive
model (Goldberg, 1992), perceived support, life events, and perception of the timing of puberty.
However, only the results on self-reported personality changes by age and gender will be
discussed here. To assess personality, the authors used a Dutch adaptation of 30 adjective
personality markers from Goldberg’s BigFive model (1992). The five dimensions of the BigFive
are Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Emotional Stability and Openness to
experience. Participants were asked to rate their own personality and that of the other three
family members using 30 adjectives on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from (1) “very false
about this person” to (7) “very true about this person”.
The objective of the authors was to examine personality development during adolescence and
a prolonged period of adulthood. From a global point of view, the results show that personality
development continues throughout life, with personality development occurring during
adolescence but also in adulthood. In addition, the results show that there are inter-individual
differences in personality development and changes. Furthermore, the results also show that
gender is an important characteristic influencing personality change for both adolescents and
adults. Indeed, there are more inter-individual differences in personality development in boys
and fathers than in girls and mothers.
Results :
Teenagers :
According to the results, the personality undergoes changes especially during adolescence
(from 11 to 17 years) and all the more so for girls. From an individual point of view, it’s
especially the agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness that change
during adolescence.
For girls, they report a linear increase in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.
Concerning self-reported extroversion, the results show that it evolves in a curvilinear way, it
increases at first and then decreases in a second time.
Contrary to the expected results, emotional stability does not change for the girls.
For boys, the results show a linear decrease for extroversion, openness and emotional stability.
As for consciousness, there are two cases: either there is no change, or it increases and then
decreases.
As for agreeableness, either there is no change or it decreases and then increases.
Adults :
In adulthood, only certain personality factors change.
For mothers, there is an increase in emotional stability and consciousness with age.
For fathers, emotional stability, agreeableness, and extroversion tend to decrease with age.
In addition, age-related personality development claims that individuals develop towards
increasing maturity and adaptation.
The critical evaluation :
Strength :
Contribution in the field :
Through this study, the authors showed that the personality evolves and changes throughout
life. This is therefore interesting for our practice insofar as it is not because we met a person at
a moment X that he or she always has the same personality at a moment Y. Moreover, it allows
us to understand that we should not categorize people according to a personality (for example,
he is introvert/timid) because personality is not fixed. It is therefore important to understand
this in order not to categorize people according to a personality style.
Weakness :
- Although this study takes into account different age groups in order to observe the evolution
and changes in personality during adolescence and adulthood, it would be interesting to broaden
the age range of adults to see if the results can be generalized or not. - Similarly, it would be interesting to have more participants per age group to make it more
representative. - It would be interesting to observe personality changes over an extended period of time in order
to understand personality development throughout life by measuring it longitudinally from
adolescence to late adulthood. - The results of the study do not show a contextual influence on personality change while it
seems logical that life events influence personality, so it would be important to measure this in
another study using other factors. - Conclusion :
From our point of view, this article is interesting and helps to understand that personality
develops and evolves over time. This is important and allows us not to label people as “shy” or
“introverted” for example.
However, we find that this is subjective because not everyone develops in the same way, each
person is unique. Indeed, each individual has his or her own life and different factors such as
the different events encountered during it and the style of education we receive can influence
our personality.
This leads to different questions:- How far does the personality develop? Does it evolve?
- Does the personality continue to change in old age? In which direction?
- Does personality develop differently in different cultures?
- Is personality development influenced by intra-individual (individual-specific) and/or interindividual (environmental) characteristics?
Vocabulary :
Endogenous (page 1 ; § 1) : Endogène
Later onset (page 2 ; § 1) : Arrivée tardive
Cross-sectionally (page 2 ; § 2) : Transversalement
Inconsistent (page 3 ; § 2) : Incohérent
Latent growth curve (page 7 ; § 1) : Courbe de croissance latente
Pubertal development (page 13 ; § 2) : Développement pubertaire
Elicit (page 13 ; § 2) : Susciter