PSYC 2600 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Midlife Crisis, Extraversion And Introversion, Femininity
19 Jun 2018
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Week 3 Readings: Chapter 5: The Dispositional Domain
Conceptual Issues: Personality Development, Stability, Coherence, and Change
What is Personality Development?
Personality Development: the continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time and
the ways in which people change over time
Rank Order Stability
- The maintenance of individual position within a group
- If people maintain their positions of dominance, or extraversion relative to others over
time, then there is high rank order stability to those personality characteristics
- If the group changes it is displaying rank order change/instability
Mean Level Stability
- If the average of the group stays the same over time
- Mean level change: if the average of the group changes over time
Personality Coherence
- Maintaining rank order in relation to other individuals but changing the manifestation of
the trait
Group Differences Level
- Sex difference
Example: women go through puberty earlier than males
- Cultural differences
Example: European American women are more likely to develop eating disorders than
African women
Individual Differences Level
- Can we predict which individuals will go through a midlife crisis based on their
personalities?
Personality Stability Over Time
Stability of Temperament During Infancy
Temperament: the individual differences that emerge very early in life, and are likely to have
heritable basis and are often involved with emotionality or arousability
Six factors of temperament:
1. Activity level: overall motor activity
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2. Smiling and laughter: how much do they laugh?
3. Fear: the infant’s distress and reluctance to approach novel stimuli
4. Distress to limitations: the child’s distress at being refused food, being dressed
5. Soothability: the degree to which the child reduces stress when soothed
6. Duration of orientation: the degree to which the child sustains attention to objects in
the absence of sudden changes
- Stable, individual differences occur very early in life
- There are moderate levels of stability over time
- Level of stability increases with age
Stability During Childhood
Longitudinal Studies: examinations of the same group of individuals over time
- Costly, difficult to conduct
- Children’s activity levels were measured using an actometer: a recording device
attached to the wrists of the children during play periods
- Activity levels remain stable
Stability Coefficients: the correlations between the same measures obtained at two different
points in time
Validity Coefficients: the correlations between measures of the same trait obtained at the same
time
- Aggression emerges in early childhood and remains stable
- Bullies remain bullies in adulthood
- Bullies rank higher in extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
Rank Order Stability in Adulthood
- The big five traits all show stability (+0.65)
- High rank order stability for the big five traits
- Self-esteem is stable
- Personality consistency increases with age
- Personality becomes more set as we age
Mean Level of Stability in Adulthood
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