Beyond Present-Day Personality Assessment: An Encouraging Exploration of the Measurement Properties and Predictive Power of Subjective Lifetime Personality

Life-span theory suggests that one possible extension to standard personality instruments would be to instruct subjects to respond to items with reference to specific time periods within their lives. Such extension we suggest labeling as subjective lifetime personality. Adding to previous research demonstrating mean-level differences in responses to such instructional lifetime variations, the present study explored two psychometric properties (measurement structure, predictive power) of such instructional variations. Using abbreviated versions of a standard assessment of the five-factor model of personality (NEO, Costa & McCrae, 1989) and of a personality instrument sensitive to adult-developmental change (Ryff, 1989), 398 adult women and men (age range: 26 to 64) described their personality or psychological well-being under three conditions: standard (present reports of present-day personality), retrospective (present reports of personality when 20–25 years old), and anticipative (present reports of personality when 65–70 years old). Results showed that measurement properties of personality scales were only minimally affected by instructional variation. Most importantly, present retrospections of past lifetime personality and anticipations of future lifetime personality predicted unique variance in a variety of current-day outcomes beyond that predicted by standard self-reports of present-day personality.