Personality Psych Chapter 6

Principles of personality continuity and change

Cumulative continuity, maturity, plasticity, role continuity, social investment, identity development, corresponsive.

Cumulative continuity

Rank order stability increases with age

Maturity

People become more mature with age

Plasticity

Personality can change at any time but it’s not easy

Role continuity

People who have “roles” change less

Social investment

Changing roles can cause personality to change

Identify development

I’m rookie seek a stable sense of self to feel and act like themselves over time

Corresponsive

Experiences magnify traits that already exist

The social clock

• places pressure on people to accomplish certain things by certain ages

• Social approval comes with being “on time”

• In the 1960s women who followed neither the traditional masculine nor feminine social clock felt depressed left out and bitter

Rank order consistency

• assessed by test retest correlations in longitudinal studies: same people over time.

• People tend to maintain how they are different from other people of the same age

Absolute (mean) level stability

Can assess with longitudinal or cross-section studies

• people of different ages at the same time

Cross sectional studies are valuable to cohort effects

Cohort effects

Occur when people of different ages differ because they grew up in different social / physical environments (Covid, Great Depression)

Longitudinal Study findings

Age increases the big five, honestly/humility, self-esteem, ego development, risk taking decreases

Instability Causes

Measurement error, variability in situational pressures. When people change, personality psychologists assume it’s internal and enduring

heterotypic continuity

Personality stays the same as people age, but behaviors change

Temperament

• most likely determined by genetics

3 aspects of temperament

• Positive emotionality → extroversion

• Negative emotionality → neuroticism

• Effort control → conscientiousness and agreeableness

Personality development

• change in the mean level of a personality trait over time.

• Rank-order stability and mean-level change can occur at the same time

Causes of personality development

Physical development, changing social roles, environmental factors

Person-environmental transactions

• people tend to respond to, seek out, and create environments that are compatible with, and may magnify their personality traits

3 types of Person-environment transactions

Active, reactive, evocative

The development of narrative identify

• a sense of who you are

• Requires that you develop:

• Social skills, traits, and roles (actor)

• A plan for the future, guided by goals and values (agent)

• A life story (author)

• Develops through life

• Varies by culture

• Redemption stories

4 ways to change personality

• psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs

• General interventions

• Targeted interventions

• Life experiences

Targeted interventions

• focus on certain personality traits for change

• Ex openness: can increase without drugs

• In older men, increased with inductive reasoning, solving crosswords, sudoku

• Across the lifespan, associated with cultural investment

Systematic desensitization

• behavior change through small, incremental steps

• Helps with phobias

Sociogenomic trait intervention model

• identify specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors a person wants to change

• Challenge people to act how they want to be, with family encouragement

Person-environment transactions

• personality can also affect life events

• People who score higher on neuroticism are more likely to have bad life outcomes

• Too little stress may not be good

Steps for volitional personality change

• want change and think it’s possible

• Change behavior to change personality: create habits that become personality

How to make a change

pre conditioned 1: changing trait-related behaviors is considered desirable or necessary

Pre conditioned 2: changing trait-related behaviors is (considered feasible)

Self-regulated: behavioural changes

Preconditioned 3; self-regulated changes become habitual

Trait change