Forty years on: teachers' assessments of children's personality traits predict self-reported health behaviors and outcomes at midlife.

A life span health-behavior model was investigated in this longitudinal study of personality influences on health. Teachers assessed 963 elementary schoolchildren on traits that formed scales assessing the dimensions of the five-factor (Big Five) model of personality. Smoking, alcohol use, body mass index (BMI), and self-rated health were assessed 40 years later in midlife. Childhood personality traits were significantly associated with all 4 outcomes, and the effects were consistently larger for women than men. For men and women, childhood Conscientiousness was associated with less adult smoking and better adult self-rated health and, for women only, with lower adult BMI. Mediation analyses suggested that the effects of Conscientiousness on self-rated health were partially mediated by smoking and BMI. These findings add to the growing evidence that childhood personality traits predict adult health outcomes and are discussed in terms of future testing of the life span health-behavior model.     

Mechanisms by which childhood personality traits influence adult health status: educational attainment and healthy behaviors.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to test a life span health behavior model in which educational attainment and health behaviors (eating habits, smoking, and physical activity) were hypothesized as mechanisms to account for relations between teacher ratings of childhood personality traits and self-reported health status at midlife. DESIGN: The model was tested on 1,054 members of the Hawaii Personality and Health cohort, which is a population-based cohort participating in a longitudinal study of personality and health spanning 40 years from childhood to midlife. OUTCOME: Childhood Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect-Imagination influenced adult health status indirectly through educational attainment, healthy eating habits, and smoking. Several direct effects of childhood traits on health behaviors and health status were also observed. CONCLUSION: The model extends past associations found between personality traits and health behaviors or health status by identifying a life-course pathway based on the health behavior model through which early childhood traits influence adult health status. The additional direct effects of personality traits indicate that health behavior mechanisms may not provide a complete account of relations between personality and health.     

Personality in middle childhood: A hierarchical structure and longitudinal connections with personality in late adolescence

Research on the structure of personality in middle childhood, while advancing, is still in the early stages of development. In this study, we employed a group of 1563 twins to elucidate the hierarchical structure of personality in middle childhood and provide connections to established personality traits in adult populations. Our results provide evidence for a higher-order structure of personality in middle childhood that maps on to recent findings in adult populations supporting hierarchical relationships among 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-factor models of personality. In addition, primary higher-order personality traits rated by parents at age 11 showed substantial predictive validity for analogous traits rated by self at age 17. We discuss our results within the context of developing a convergent hierarchical taxonomy of personality in middle childhood and the importance of multi-informant investigations.     

Childhood personality foreshadows adult personality and life outcomes two decades later

In a normative sample of 205 children ages 8-12, tracked into adulthood, we examined the predictive links between four childhood personality traits--Mastery Motivation, Academic Conscientiousness, Surgency, and Agreeableness--and adult personality and adaptation 20 years later. Personality demonstrated modest to moderate continuity over those two decades and showed significant predictive validity for success in adult life, including academic attainment, work competence, rule-abiding versus antisocial conduct, and romantic and friend relationships. Results indicated that personality shows coherent patterns over time in terms of both stability and linkages to adaptive behavior. Explicating the processes underlying such patterns is the next frontier for a truly developmental science of personality.     

Borderline personality disorder from the perspective of general personality functioning

The authors extended previous work on the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be understood as a maladaptive variant of personality traits included within the 5-factor model (FFM) of personality. In each of 3 samples, an empirically derived prototypic FFM borderline profile was correlated with individuals' FFM profiles to yield a similarity score, an FFM borderline index. Results across all samples indicated that the FFM borderline index correlated as highly with existing borderline measures as they correlated with one another, and the FFM borderline index correlated as highly with measures of dysfunction, history of childhood abuse, and parental psychopathology as did traditional measures of BPD. Findings support the hypothesis that BPD is a maladaptive variant of FFM personality traits.     

Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.     

A Big Five approach to self-regulation: personality traits and health trajectories in the Hawaii longitudinal study of personality and health

Self-regulatory processes influencing health outcomes may have their origins in childhood personality traits. The Big Five approach to personality was used here to investigate the associations between childhood traits, trait-related regulatory processes and changes in health across middle age. Participants (N = 1176) were members of the Hawaii longitudinal study of personality and health. Teacher assessments of the participants’ traits when they were in elementary school were related to trajectories of self-rated health measured on 6 occasions over 14 years in middle age. Five trajectories of self-rated health were identified by latent class growth analysis: Stable Excellent, Stable Very Good, Good, Decreasing and Poor. Childhood Conscientiousness was the only childhood trait to predict membership in the Decreasing class vs. the combined healthy classes (Stable Excellent, Stable Very Good and Good), even after controlling for adult Conscientiousness and the other adult Big Five traits. The Decreasing class had poorer objectively assessed clinical health measured on one occasion in middle age, was less well-educated, and had a history of more lifespan health-damaging behaviors compared to the combined healthy classes. These findings suggest that higher levels of childhood Conscientiousness (i.e. greater self-discipline and goal-directedness) may prevent subsequent health decline decades later through self-regulatory processes involving the acquisition of lifelong healthful behavior patterns and higher educational attainment.     

人格差异性的进化心理学解释

进化心理学一直热衷于人格共同性的探讨,但一些研究者也认为应该关注人格差异性,因为共同性和差异性是人格必不可分的两面。对人格差异性的进化解释比较成熟的有三种：生活历史理论、基因多样性理论和代价信号理论。生活历史理论认为是不同的环境(稳定和不稳定),造成了不同的生活历史策略(K策略和R策略),人格特质差异是这些策略的进化产物。基因多样性理论主要从基因突变和平衡选择的角度来解释人格差异性。前者强调突变基因的不可避免性引发了个性差异的存在和发展;后者强调概率的调节作用,解释了不同人格特质之所以能够并行存在的原因。代价信号理论则认为是个体拥有的先天禀赋或者资源差距导致其传递信号的能力差异,从而选择了不同的行为策略。未来研究需要加大遗传学、神经科学等方面的力度,以及研究范式的创新。     

Implicit policies about relations between personality traits and behavioral effectiveness in situational judgment items

This paper develops the concept of implicit trait policy (ITP), which is a variant of the accentuation effect described by Tajfel (1957). ITPs are implicit beliefs about causal relations between personality traits and behavioral effectiveness. Studies reported here tested the hypotheses (a) that personality traits affect ITPs so that agreeable people, for instance, believe the relation between agreeableness and effectiveness is more strongly positive than disagreeable people do and (b) that ITPs can predict behavior that expresses associated personality traits. Two studies with undergraduate research participants supported the first hypothesis for traits of agreeableness and extraversion (the average correlation between traits and associated ITPs was .31 for agreeableness and .37 for extraversion) but not for conscientiousness. A 3rd study with student participants found that individual differences in ITPs for agreeableness predicted agreeable behavior (the average correlation was .33) in simulated work settings. These results suggest that ITPs may be useful for predicting work behavior that expresses personality traits even though ITPs may not be strongly correlated with the personality traits themselves.     

The face of personality: Adaptive inferences from facial cues are moderated by perceiver personality and motives

Humans have historically been interested in understanding stable individual differences in behavioral tendencies, often referred to as personality traits. Recent work suggests that between‐person personality variability may be adaptive insofar as certain variations in personality constellations facilitate survival and reproduction across various types of groups and ecological niches. While past research has demonstrated that personality can be accurately inferred from self‐reports, other‐reports, and targets' past behavior, we discuss a more contemporary, yet understudied, means of personality inference: facial structure. We summarize research on personality traits that can be accurately inferred from facial structure, as well as how aspects of individuals' own personality, chronically accessible motives, and acutely activated goals lead to preferences for facially communicated personality that would aid in the satisfaction of these goals (e.g., higher need to belong predicts a stronger preference for faces whose structure communicates greater extraversion). We also discuss limitations of current approaches to understanding the relationship between perceiver personality and motives and their relation to perceptions of facially communicated personality as well as fruitful directions for future research.     

Divorce and personality development across middle adulthood

This study tested whether divorce helps explain individual differences in personality development in the years that follow a divorce. The sample consisted of 526 middle‐aged adults aged 42–46 years at the beginning. Personality traits were measured using the NEO‐Five‐Factor Inventory at three measurement occasions over 12 years. First, personality development was characterized by individual differences in change. Second, those individuals who experienced a divorce showed a decrease in extraversion and positive affect over time although nondivorced individuals did not change on these traits. Third, divorce was associated with a decrease in dependability. Fourth, divorce was associated with a decrease in orderliness for individuals who were remarried. The results of this study indicated that divorce had little influence on personality development.     

Temperament, personality, and developmental psychopathology as childhood antecedents of personality disorders

To contribute to the case for a dimensional conceptualization of psychopathology in general and maladaptive personality or personality disorders in particular, the present paper reviews the evidence for a dimensional representation of childhood temperament and personality. The review of temperament and variable-centered as well as person-centered approaches to childhood personality leads us to propose five broadband dimensions that capture individual differences in children and adolescents: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness/intellect. Our analysis of the CBCL (Achenbach, 1991) and the DIPSI (currently under development at Ghent University), two dimensional models for childhood psychopathology, suggests two common broadband factors, internalizing and externalizing. The relations between the dimensional representation of childhood temperament/personality and psychopathology are documented with data from general population and clinical samples of children and adolescents. The article concludes with a proposal on how the higher-order dimensions emerging from studies of adaptive and maladaptive individual differences in childhood could be integrated in a common dimensional model.     

Linking childhood personality with adaptation: evidence for continuity and change across time into late adolescence

Four personality traits--Mastery Motivation, Academic Conscientiousness, Surgent Engagement, and Agreeableness--were measured in a community sample of 205 children (ages 8-12), who were followed up 10 years later. Childhood personality was examined in relation to concurrent and longitudinal adaptation in 3 domains--academic achievement, rule-abiding versus antisocial conduct, and peer social competence. The childhood personality traits evidenced robust, conceptually coherent relationships with adaptation, both concurrently and across time. Childhood personality added to the prediction of later adaptation, beyond childhood IQ and earlier adaptation in the same domain. Few sex differences were obtained in the relationships between childhood personality and adaptation. The present results document both continuity and discontinuity in the links between childhood personality and adaptation across childhood into late adolescence.     

Transactional links between personality and adaptation from childhood through adulthood

Does childhood personality foreshadow later adaptation in the key developmental task domains of academic achievement, work, rule-abiding conduct, friendships, and romantic relationships? In this article we present a synopsis of recent findings from the Project Competence longitudinal study of 205 children who were assessed around ages 10, 20, and 30. Childhood personality differences predicted adaptation at all three time periods and also changes in adaptation over time. On the other hand, features of adult personality were presaged by childhood adaptation, and in some cases childhood adaptation predicted the course of personality development. To understand better the transactional processes that shape and link personality and adaptive success over the life course, longitudinal designs and more dynamic models of personality development will be needed.     

How our work influences who we are: Testing a theory of vocational and personality development over fifty years

This study examines the developmental influences of occupational environments on personality traits from childhood to adulthood. We test aspects of a theory of vocational and personality development, proposing that traits develop in response to work experience following corresponsive and noncorresponsive mechanisms. We describe these pathways in the context of situations of vocational gravitation and inhabitation. In a sample from the Hawaii personality and health cohort (N = 596), we examined associations of childhood and adulthood personality traits, with occupational environments profiled on the RIASEC model. Mediations tests confirmed that work influenced personality development from childhood to adulthood for Openness/Intellect. We observed multiple reactivity effects of occupation environments on adulthood traits that were not associated with corresponding selection effects.     

Psychopathology, childhood trauma, and personality traits in patients with borderline personality disorder and their sisters

The aim of this study was to document and compare adverse childhood experiences, and personality profiles in women with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and their sisters, and to determine how these factors impact current psychopathology. Fifty-six patients with BPD and their sisters were compared on measures assessing psychopathology, personality traits, and childhood adversities. Most sisters showed little evidence of psychopathology. Both groups reported dysfunctional parent-child relationships and a high prevalence of childhood trauma. Subjects with BPD reported experiencing more emotional abuse and intrafamilial sexual abuse, but more similarities than differences between probands and sisters were found. In multilevel analyses, personality traits of affective instability and impulsivity predicted DIB-R scores and SCL-90-R scores, above and beyond trauma. There were few relationships between childhood adversities and other measures of psychopathology. Sensitivity to adverse experiences, as reflected in the development of psychopathology, appears to be influenced by personality trait profiles.     

Goal and personality trait development in emerging adulthood

The present research examined continuity and change in the importance of major life goals and the relation between change in goals and change in personality traits over the course of college (N = 298). Participants rated the importance of their life goals 6 times over a 4-year period and completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits at the beginning and end of college. Like personality traits, life goals demonstrated high levels of rank-order stability. Unlike personality traits assessed during the same period and in the same sample, the mean importance of most life goals decreased over time. Moreover, each goal domain was marked by significant individual differences in change, and these individual differences were related to changes in personality traits. These findings provide insights into the relatively unstudied question of how life goals change during emerging adulthood.     

The growing evidence for personality change in adulthood: Findings from research with personality inventories

Theories of adult development all agree that adulthood is a time of important changes in goals, resources, and coping. Yet, impressed with the rank-order stability of individual differences in personality, many researchers interested in personality traits and personality assessment doubt that personality changes in meaningful and systematic ways during adulthood. This article reviews large studies of mean-level change in personality characteristics measured with broad-band personality inventories, and includes both cross-sectional and cross-cohort longitudinal research. The results show considerable generalizability across samples, cohorts, and studies. In particular, people score higher with age on characteristics such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and norm-adherence, and they score lower with age on social vitality. These findings provide evidence that personality does change during adulthood and that these changes are non-negligible in size, systematic, not necessarily linear, and theoretically important.