Download - The maturation of personality psychology: Adult personality development and psychological well-being

The maturation of personalitypsychology: Adult personality

development and psychological well-being

Robert R. McCrae

Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, Gerontology Research Center NIA, NIH,

Box No. 03, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224-6825, USA

Abstract

Personality psychology has made striking advances in the past two decades, dem-

onstrating the importance of individual differences in a wide variety of life domains.

Longitudinal studies of adult development contributed to these advances by reveal-

ing the stability of personality traits even in the face of changing life circumstances.

More recently, cross-culturally replicated patterns of adult age differences have sug-

gested that traits are endogenous dispositions with intrinsic paths of development.

The importance of personality traits was underscored by research linking dimensions

of personality to psychological well-being and mental health, and the rapidly matur-

ing science of personality psychology holds promise for understanding many other

social and psychological phenomena.

1. Introduction

Twenty-five years ago most personality psychologists knew next to noth-ing about adulthood, and researchers interested in morale and life satisfac-tion knew next to nothing about personality – they thought they would findall their answers by asking about income, housing conditions, and healthcare availability. For that matter, 25 years ago personality psychologistswho used the Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964)

Journal of Research in Personality 36 (2002) 307–317

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hardly spoke to personality psychologists who used the MMPI (Hathaway& McKinley, 1943).

There had by then been a good deal of first-rate personality research.There were longitudinal studies by Kelly (1955) and by Kagan and Moss(1962). Bradburn (1969) had done groundbreaking work on psychologicalwell-being. Factor-analysts had conducted hundreds of studies of personal-ity structure (e.g., Eysenck, White, & Soueif, 1969). But in some respectsthere was no real science of personality psychology – no organized bodyof knowledge. Today there is, in the form of a generally accepted modelof personality traits that are rooted in biology, that endure through adult-hood, and that influence an extraordinary range of psychological processesand outcomes. Personality psychology is much more than trait psychology,but traits form the core of our knowledge about who persons are and whyand how they act.

And as a result of this knowledge, there has begun to be a profound shiftin psychology’s center of gravity – or its locus of control – from outside toinside the person. During most of this century, the causes of behavior andexperience were sought in the environment. We presumed that personalitywas distally shaped by culture and proximally shaped by the child-rearingpractices of parents. We thought that psychopathology was the result of lifestress, and that events such as marriage, retirement, and loss of spousewould surely bring about major transformations of intraspychic and inter-personal styles. We thought we would be happy if we won the lottery.

We now know that these assumptions are na€ııve, just to the extent thatthey leave out of account the contributions of the individual (cf. Neyer& Asendorpf, 2001). The same structure of personality recurs in culturesas distinct as those of Portugal, Croatia, and South Korea (McCrae &Costa, 1997). Parent–child relations reflect the temperament of the childas well as the ideology of the parent (Halverson & Wampler, 1997). Reac-tions to stress say as much about the stressed as about the stressor (McCrae,1990). Personality traits remain largely unchanged despite the vicissitudes oflife experience (Costa & McCrae, 1997). And money, it turns out, cannotbuy happiness (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). In some veryprofound ways, personality traits transcend environmental influences, andgerontologists and social scientists from many fields need to include person-ality traits in their research, more often as independent than as dependentvariables.

2. Adult personality development: stability and change in individual differences

Contemporary trait psychology has been profoundly influenced by find-ings from a series of longitudinal studies (e.g., Helson & Kwan, 2000; Siegleret al., 1990) that have revealed the natural history of personality traits. The

308 R.R. McCrae / Journal of Research in Personality 36 (2002) 307–317

basic finding is simply stated: individual differences in personality traits areextremely stable in adults, even over periods of as long as three decades. Un-corrected retest correlations of .70 are not uncommon over that interval;corrected for unreliability, these values can approach unity. Research con-tinues on the details (e.g., when maximum rank-order stability is attained;Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000), but the overall conclusion of predominantstability is not in dispute (Costa & McCrae, 1997).

The demonstration of stability was important in the recent history of per-sonality psychology because it provided an effective answer to critics whoclaimed that personality traits were at best weak determinants of any specificinstance of behavior (Mischel, 1968). True; but because they endure for de-cades, the cumulative influence of traits on people’s lives can be very great,as a few researchers have documented (e.g., Soldz & Vaillant, 1999).

Longitudinal studies have also proven particularly informative by dem-onstrating the relative imperviousness of personality traits to life experi-ences. Over the course of three decades, most people will haveexperienced major life changes in their families, friendships, jobs, andhealth. That all five personality factors (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Open-ness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) nevertheless remain largely un-changed suggests that personality traits are not learned adaptations, butbiologically based endogenous dispositions (McCrae et al., 2000).

From that perspective it is not surprising that the most dramatic andbest-documented changes in personality are those associated with changesin the brain, attributable to Alzheimer’s disease or to traumatic brain injury(Costa & McCrae, 2000). In contrast, efforts to find moderators of stabilityassociated with normal life experience, or subgroups of people especiallyprone to change, have been generally disappointing (McCrae, 1993). Somepeople perceive that they have changed a great deal in the past few years,but those perceptions usually are not supported by longitudinal records(Costa & MacCrae, 1989). Again, people who have experienced majorchanges in physical health, such as heart disease or cancer, are just as stableas those who have not (Costa, Metter, & McCrae, 1994).

Of course, some researchers have reported personality changes associatedwith environmental influences (e.g., Costa, Herbst, McCrae, & Siegler, 2000;Helson & Picano, 1990; Roberts & Chapman, 2000). Intriguing as they are,it is difficult to assess these findings. The causal direction is often ambigu-ous. For example, Roberts and Chapman (2000) found that marital tensionat age 52 was associated with declines in effective functioning between age 21and age 52, but marital tension at age 27 was not. From such data one mightargue that changes in personality were the cause, not the effect, of rolestrain. Most reports of environmental effects are from small studies (Helson& Picano, 1990; Roberts & Chapman, 2000) or from small subsamples with-in larger studies (Costa et al., 2000), and few if any have been replicatedacross different samples.

R.R. McCrae / Journal of Research in Personality 36 (2002) 307–317 309

But consider another example, where small sample size is not an issue.Twenge (2000) conducted a meta-analysis of Neuroticism measures admin-istered between 1952 and 1993, and concluded that there were large birthcohort effects, with increasing anxiety among later-born cohorts. In partic-ular, studies using the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS; Taylor,1953) showed increases of d ¼ :41 for men and .52 (adjusted for type ofcollege) for women in the period from 1952 to 1967. Considering that thisanalysis combined 53 different samples, this would appear to be definitiveproof of a cohort effect on this personality trait. But most college studentsin 1952–1967 had been born between 1932 and 1947, and individuals fromthis same birth cohort had been the subjects of another large study. Costaet al. (1986) examined Neuroticism scores in a national probability sampleof 4969 men and women aged 34–54. On the basis of Twenge’s (2000) find-ings, one would hypothesize that the youngest participants would scoreabout one-half standard deviation higher than the oldest participants,but in fact there was no difference at all. It is possible to reconcile thesetwo studies by assuming that individuals showed a longitudinal increasein Neuroticism between ages 34 and 54 that just offset the cohort-related de-cline, but that would contradict a large body of longitudinal studies thatshow small decreases in Neuroticism in this portion of the lifespan (e.g.,Costa et al., 2000). At present, the reported birth cohort effects are amystery.

Also largely unresolved are claims of personality changes associated withenvironmental influences that are intense, sustained, or deliberately designedto induce change, including traumatic events (Engdahl, Harkness, Eberly, &Page, 1993), career opportunities and challenges (Kohn & Schooler, 1982),social movements (Agronick & Duncan, 1998), religious conversion(Paloutzian, Richardson, & Rambo, 1999), and, of course, psychotherapy(Lambert & Supplee, 1997; Santor, Bagby, & Joffe, 1997). It is not yet clearhow large such changes may be and how long they endure. However, evensmall or transient changes may be of great personal and social importance,so this remains an issue well worthy of continued attention.

3. Adult personality development: maturational trends

The second major question that can be addressed by longitudinalstudies – as well as by cross-sectional studies – concerns mean level changes,increases or decreases of a trait shared by a group as a whole, either becauseof common maturational trends or because everyone has encounteredthe same shaping experiences. This is perhaps the most basic question instudies of development: what changes with age? Do people becomemore rigid, or wiser, or more introverted? And if so, is this a natural andmore-or-less inevitable process, or is it due to features of our culture and


historical era that would not be widely generalizable to other places andtimes?

Psychologists and gerontologists have conducted hundreds of studies onthese issues, and the results are consistent and clear, at least descriptively.After age 18, Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness decline, and Agree-ableness and Conscientiousness increase (Costa & McCrae, 1994). But be-cause the research literature on this topic is overwhelmingly based onstudies of Americans conducted in the second half of the 20th century, itis debatable whether these mean level changes are intrinsic features of hu-man development, or whether they are responses to the particular condi-tions of one time and place. Researchers cannot choose the era in whichthey work, but they can vary the place, and cross-cultural research givesan entirely new perspective on personality development.

It is easy to see that studies conducted in other, especially non-Western,societies, speak to questions about cultural influences on development.For example, it would not be surprising if we found that Asian adoles-cents, raised in cultures that make great social and educational demandson their children, reached levels of Conscientiousness found in adults ata much earlier age than their American counterparts. It is perhaps lessobvious that cross-cultural studies can also speak, at least in part, tohistorical influences, and thus to cohort effects. This is true because dif-ferent countries have had different recent histories. Perhaps youngAmericans are low in Conscientiousness because they have been spoiledby living through a period of peace and affluence. Not so the teenagers ofCroatia and Russia: They have seen conflict and economic hardship, butalso the possibilities of personal and economic freedom. Perhaps as a resultCroatian and Russian adolescents are high in self-discipline and achieve-ment striving.

Only a few studies report cross-cultural comparisons of adult age differ-ences (e.g., McCrae et al., 1999; Helson & Kwan, 2000), but they cover morethan a dozen nations and yield very consistent results. In almost every cul-ture, there are cross-sectional decreases in Neuroticism, Extraversion, andOpenness, and increases in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. McCraeet al. (1999) concluded from such data that these cross-sectional age differ-ences are not due to cohort or secular effects, but to true maturation, as nat-ural to the human species as the graying of hair, and probably attributableto genetic mechanisms, as McGue, Bacon, and Lykken (1993) proposed.Other investigators are not yet persuaded of this interpretation. Certainlyit would be better to have nationally representative samples instead of thesamples of convenience available to date; to have data from less industrial-ized countries than those studied so far; and to corroborate self-reports withobserver ratings. Ultimately we ought to employ longitudinal designs in dif-ferent cultures to see if age differences are in fact paralleled by directly as-sessed age changes.


4. Psychological well-being

When trait psychology was just beginning to recover from the dark agesof the 1970s, it got a significant boost from the studies showing that person-ality traits were among the most potent predictors of psychological well-be-ing. Traits might not be very efficient at predicting specific behaviors inlaboratory settings, but they could predict a much more meaningful crite-rion years in advance: namely, whether people would feel happy or unhappyabout their lives as a whole. An article that appeared in the first issue of thenew Personality Processes and Individual Differences section of JPSP useddata from the Normative Aging Study to address several questions aboutpersonality and well-being (Costa & McCrae, 1980). It showed that:

(1) Alternative operationalizations of psychological well-being, includingmeasures of life satisfaction and affect balance, seemed to share a commoncore of meaning;

(2) This global happiness or well-being was related to chronic negative af-fect and chronic positive affect, which were themselves independent;

(3) Negative affect was associated with Neuroticism, whereas Positive af-fect was associated with Extraversion; and

(4) Although people rather quickly adapt to most events and life circum-stances, they do not adapt to their own personality traits; years of beingprone to anxiety or depression does not blunt the force of these propensities.As a result, personality trait scores predict well-being years in advance.

The 1980 study predated the consensus on the Five-Factor Model(FFM), and included no measures of Agreeableness or Conscientiousness.Perhaps the first study that did was by a gerontologist, Carp (1985), whofound that rated congeniality (or Agreeableness), but not Conscientious-ness, was related to self-reported happiness.

In 1991 McCrae and Costa used measures of the full FFM to postdictwell-being assessments gathered in 1979 from personality scales adminis-tered seven years later. That study replicated earlier findings on Neuroticismand Extraversion, but also suggested contributions from Agreeablenessand Conscientiousness. These findings were probably not due to sharedmethod variance, because most of the associations were replicated whenself-reported well-being was related to spouse-rated personality. Virtuallyall of the findings of the 1991 study, including the effect sizes, were subse-quently replicated in a meta-analysis conducted by DeNeve and Cooper(1998).

DeNeve and Cooper reached one arguable conclusion: They noted thatthe typical personality/well-being correlation is about .19, which makes itcomparable in magnitude to SES, income, or self-reported health; from thisthey concluded that personality is not the strongest predictor of well-being.But whereas SES and income are highly correlated, the five orthogonalpersonality factors are independent; the multiple correlations between


personality and well-being measures in McCrae and Costa’s, 1991 study ran-ged from .43 to .50, well beyond correlations with demographic predictors.

Because of these strong associations, one can make certain predictionsabout happiness based on our knowledge of personality. For example, Lyk-ken and Tellegen (1996) noted that happiness is strongly heritable, a factthat is probably due to its association with heritable personality traits. Weshould also be able to make predictions about what happens to happinesswith age, based on the known maturational patterns of associated personal-ity traits. Between college and middle adulthood, Neuroticism declines,which should increase well-being; but Extraversion also declines, whichshould decrease it. Fortunately, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness bothincrease, suggesting that adults should be a bit happier than college-age menand women. There is some evidence that this is so – for example, in measuresof life satisfaction (Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976). Certainly olderpeople do not become increasingly unhappy, as many stereotypes of agingsuggested (Slotterback & Saarnio, 1996). The long-term declines in bothNeuroticism and Extraversion are also consistent with some evidence thatthere is a general blunting of affect, both positive and negative, associatedwith aging (Schulz, 1985).

5. Other aspects of well-being

Psychological well-being is usually interpreted as referring to normal-range variation in subjective assessments of life – happiness or unhappiness.But some writers have argued that merely feeling good is not enough:Schmutte and Ryff (1997) have proposed that such features as environmen-tal mastery, personal growth, and positive relations with others might legit-imately be construed as aspects of psychological well-being. They have alsoshown that these characteristics are closely related to personality factors.Again, well-being might be thought to be the result of effective coping,and there has been increasing recognition that coping is strongly influencedby personality (Suls & Harvey, 1996). Individuals high in Neuroticism, forexample, often use ineffective coping mechanisms such as escapist fantasyand hostile reactions. It is noteworthy that use of those mechanisms declineswith age, just as Neuroticism itself does (McCrae, 1982).

Finally, the distinction between low psychological well-being and psycho-pathology is much more blurred than the old division of normal from ab-normal psychology suggested. It surely comes as no surprise that patientsdiagnosed with clinical anxiety or depression have elevated scores onmeasures of Neuroticism (Santor et al., 1997), but few psychiatrists had sus-pected that personality disorders (PDs) would be as closely related to per-sonality dimensions as they have proven to be (Costa & Widiger, 1994).McCrae, Yang, and Costa (1999) recently showed that ratings by Chinese


psychiatrists and psychologists on the Personality Disorder Interview-IV(Widiger, Mangine, Corbitt, Ellis, & Thomas, 1995) were meaningfully re-lated to self-reports on a Mandarin version of the Revised NEO PersonalityInventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). For example, Avoidant symptoms wererelated to Neuroticism and low Extraversion; Antisocial symptoms were re-lated to low Agreeableness. These cross-cultural, multi-method associationsconfirm that personality is relevant not only to the degree of psychologicalwell-being, but also to the form in which it is manifested. Disagreeable peo-ple are unhappy in anti-social ways; introverts are unhappy in isolation.

Patterns of personality development ought to have implications for per-sonality correlates. Borderline PD, for example, is related to high Neuroti-cism and to low Agreeableness and low Conscientiousness. As people agefrom 18 to 30, Neuroticism declines, whereas Agreeableness and Conscien-tiousness increase. Is it really very surprising, then, that DSM-IV (AmericanPsychiatric Association, 1994, pp. 652–653) notes that ‘‘the impairmentfrom the [Borderline] disorder and the risk of suicide are greatest in theyoung-adult years and gradually wane with advancing age?’’

That convergence nicely illustrates the emerging interconnectedness offacts from gerontology, cross-cultural psychology, and psychiatric epidemi-ology. Things are beginning to fall into place; personality psychology at longlast is beginning to be an organized body of knowledge – a true science.

These intellectual achievements have not yet been matched by disciplin-ary growth. Baumeister (1999) has recently depicted the field of personalitypsychology as small, underfunded, and relatively isolated from other fields.Small and underfunded it may well be, but its recent advances cannot be,and have not been, ignored by other disciplines. Child development(Halverson, Kohnstamm, & Martin, 1994), psychiatry (Cloninger, 1999),cross-cultural – (Church & Lonner, 1998) and industrial/organizationalpsychology (Mount & Barrick, 1998) are all being deeply affected. Onceagain, personality psychology may become ‘‘the intellectual center of allthe social sciences’’ (Baumeister, 1999, p. 371).

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