Stability and Change in Personality Disorder

ABSTRACT— The standard view of personality disorder is that it is a maladaptive expression of personality traits, which are relatively stable and unchanging. Thus, personality disorder has been considered to have its roots in childhood and adolescence, to persist in adulthood, and to be difficult to change. However, recent research has challenged this view, revealing that personality continues to change, albeit more slowly, well into adulthood, and that the maladaptive manifestations of personality disorder are much less stable than previously believed. These research findings are described, and factors that influence stability and change in personality disorder are discussed. The emerging view of personality disorder has important implications for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of personality pathology.     

Personality and Physical Health: An Introduction

This article provides a rationale for research on personality as a contributing factor in the development of physical disease. A brief history of major developments from the 1930s to the present is then provided. Special attention is given to shifts in conception regarding whether particular dispositions are related to specific physical disorders or whether these dispositions increase general illness susceptibility. The paper ends with a brief orientation to the other papers and commentaries in this special issue.     

Levels and Domains In Personality: An Introduction

ABSTRACT This special issue is centered around the problem of levels and domains in personality functioning. What kind of constructs—and at what levels and in what domains—are needed to understand what a person is like? To account for the complexity and scope of human lives, personality psychologists have traditionally put forth lists and taxonomies of factors, features, and variables that must be taken into consideration in formulating an adequate psychological portrait of the whole person. The five-factor model of personality traits has recently been offered as a comprehensive framework; however, critical analyses of the trait concept have revealed the limitations of a trait-based model of personality. Recognizing that the concept of trait is indispensable to a vital psychology of personality, this special issue aims to (a) communicate recent developments and organizational frameworks for understanding the person at multiple levels and in varied domains, and (b) articulate and elaborate units of analysis that, when combined with trait assessments, yield a psychology of personality that is commensurate with the complexity of individual functioning and that offers greater potential for the attainment of the original goals of the discipline.     

Personality Processes in Anger and Reactive Aggression: An Introduction

ABSTRACT The situational factors precipitating anger and reactive (i.e., emotional) aggression have been well documented in the social psychology literature. However, there are pronounced individual differences in reactivity to hostile cues that are equally important in understanding such outcomes. Indeed, in predicting tendencies toward anger and reactive aggression, it appears critical to simultaneously consider both individual difference and situational factors. This case is first made. Subsequently, the utility of this individual difference realm in understanding wider personality processes related to social cognition, reactivity, and self-regulation is highlighted. Individual difference frameworks of this type are scattered across multiple literatures. For this reason, the present special section of the Journal of Personality invited contributions from experts in developmental, social, cognitive, trait, and biological subdisciplines of psychology. The final section introduces the invited papers and makes a brief case for broader process-related conclusions that are generally apparent.     

Religion in the Psychology of Personality: An Introduction

This article presents an overview of this special issue of the Journal of Personality on religion in the psychology of personality. I begin with a brief historical overview in which I highlight the discrepancy between the vision of early personologists and how religion is handled today within the field of personality. I then consider how contemporary research and theory can profit by incorporating religious and spiritual constructs and processes. As personality psychologists purport to study the whole person, the relative neglect of religiousness in the current literature is a serious omission that precludes a comprehensive understanding of the person.     

A Longitudinal Family Study of Personality Change and Stability

The 19-year stability of personality from late adolescence to early adulthood was examined in a sample of 121 men and women who had participated in an earlier study of articulation and language development (Templin, 1966; Templin & Glaman, 1976). Personality was assessed using the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). At the time of retest, personality data were also collected from the participants' mothers. Modest stability of individual differences in personality was observed, consistent with the literature on longitudinal studies of personality during late adolescence and early adulthood. For the Extraversion and Neuroticism scales, offspring means decreased significantly over the 19-year period such that the offspring means were closer to the mean scores of their mothers when they were followed up in adulthood as compared to their first testing in adolescence. There was, however, no change in mother-offspring resemblance from the initial test to retest. Mother-offspring resemblance appears to be due largely to aspects of personality that were stable from adolescence to early adulthood. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to the findings of previous longitudinal studies of adult personality and recent behavioral genetic evidence regarding personality change and stability.     

Power Dynamics and Organisational Change: An Introduction

Cet article propose un cadre conceptuel pour appréhender les dynamiques de pouvoir lors de changements organisationnels. Weick et Quinn (1999) établissent une distinction entre le changement épisodique, discontinu et intermittent, et le changement continu, évolutif et progressif. Après avoir discuté cette distinction, nous analysons comment les processus de l'influence et du pouvoir social peuvent constituer la base du changement continu. Les bases du pouvoir des agents du changement sont ensuite décrites. Puis nous portons notre attention sur les relations de pouvoir dynamiques entre les agents du changement et les cibles, ainsi que sur les processus sociaux qui facilitent le changement continu. L'article se termine par un survol des contributions à cette édition spéciale.
This article offers a framework for understanding power dynamics in organisational change. Weick and Quinn (1999) make a distinction between change that is episodic, discontinuous, and intermittent, and change that is continuous, evolving, and incremental. After discussing this distinction, we analyse how processes of social power and influence can form the basis for continuous change. Subsequently, the power bases of change agents are described. Then we pay attention to the dynamic power relationships between change agents and targets as well as to the social processes that facilitate continuous change. The article ends with an overview of the contributions to this special issue.     

Introduction: Personality Psychology and the Case Study

ABSTRACT This article introduces the Journal of Personality's special issue on the life voyage of Dodge Morgan who, in 1986 at the age of 54, sailed solo around the world in 150 days. Before the voyage, Morgan agreed to participate in an intensive psychological case study, the data for which provide the focus for this special issue. William Nasby and Nancy W. Read have organized the vast array of psychological data obtained from Morgan and produced a complex and illuminating interpretation of his life, drawing liberally from the five-factor trait model of personality and the life-story model of adult identity. This introduction provides a historical and intellectual context for Nasby and Read's study by considering the various ways in which personality psychologists have employed the case study in research and examining the many conceptual and methodological problems and possibilities that arise in the psychological study of the single case.     

Religious Conversion and Personality Change

The question of whether religious conversion causes changes in someone's personality is examined in light of two bodies of literature—the research on personality change and the research on conversion. When the theory and research on personality change is applied to the question of whether conversion causes such change, the answer depends on what level of personality is of concern. Research on the relation between religious conversion and a variety of behavioral, attitudinal, emotional, and lifestyle variables is consistent with this conclusion. Although conversion seems to have minimal effect on elemental functions such as the Big Five traits or temperaments, it can result in profound, life transforming changes in mid-level functions such as goals, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, and in the more self-defining personality functions such as identity and life meaning. This seems to be so whether the process of conversion is sudden or gradual, active or passive, and to a traditional Western or Eastern religion or to a new religious movement. However, most of the research is retrospective and cross-sectional, and no systematic program of research has ever been sustained. Suggestions for the form of future research are made, and a model for integrating the many factors that must be taken into account and for guiding future research is sketched.     

Personality Trait Change in Adulthood

ABSTRACT— Recent longitudinal and cross-sectional aging research has shown that personality traits continue to change in adulthood. In this article, we review the evidence for mean-level change in personality traits, as well as for individual differences in change across the life span. In terms of mean-level change, people show increased self-confidence, warmth, self-control, and emotional stability with age. These changes predominate in young adulthood (age 20–40). Moreover, mean-level change in personality traits occurs in middle and old age, showing that personality traits can change at any age. In terms of individual differences in personality change, people demonstrate unique patterns of development at all stages of the life course, and these patterns appear to be the result of specific life experiences that pertain to a person's stage of life.     

Behavioral Genetics and Personality Change

Although research on personality and behavioral genetics has focused on the continuity of traits, both fields and their interface will profit from the consideration of trait change. In this article we review personality research on age differences in heritability and propose the counterintuitive hypothesis that, when developmental changes in heritability are found, heritability tends to increase. We also focus on behavioral genetic analyses of long-term developmental change. Research to date suggests that genetic involvement in adult personality change is slight whereas personality change in childhood is governed substantially be genetic factors. Finally, we consider a new topic, genetic influence on short-term change in personality.     

稳定性与可变性：西方儿童青少年“大五”人格发展研究概述

弄清儿童青少年人格发展特点,可为人格发展与教育工作提供参考。文章梳理了近30年西方儿童青少年“大五”人格发展的研究进展,区分了人格发展的两种主要表现形式,并分别从这两方面总结出儿童青少年“大五”人格结构的稳定性、人格特质平均水平的可变性。最后基于现有研究存在的问题,结合当前时代特点,提出未来研究方向。     

Stability and Change

SUMMARY

The author maintains the idea that the process of marital therapy must attend to stability (morphostasis) and change (morphogenesis) from both systemic-interpersonal and intrapersonal perspectives and argues from an attachment theory perspective that creating a secure base can provide the stability essential for allowing couples to identify, understand, and manage their experience of anxiety in creating therapeutic change.