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Personality Development: Continuity and Change Over the Life Course ANRV398-PS61-20 ARI 28 October 2009 12:0 Personality Development: Continuity and Change Over the Life Course Dan P. McAdams1 and Bradley D. Olson2 1Department of Psychology, and School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208; email: [email protected] 2School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2010. 61:517–42 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on personality traits, temperament, motives and goals, narrative identity, June 17, 2009 lifespan development The Annual Review of Psychology is online at psych.annualreviews.org Abstract This article’s doi: The development of personality across the human life course may be 10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100507 observed from three different standpoints: the person as actor (behav- Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2010.61:517-542. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES on 11/27/10. For personal use only. Copyright c 2010 by Annual Reviews. ing), agent (striving), and author (narrating). Evident even in infancy, All rights reserved broad differences in social action patterns foreshadow the long-term de- 0066-4308/10/0110-0517$20.00 velopmental elaboration of early temperament into adult dispositional traits. Research on personal strivings and other motivational constructs provides a second perspective on personality, one that becomes psycho- logically salient in childhood with the consolidation of an agentic self and the articulation of more-or-less stable goals. Layered over traits and goals, internalized life stories begin to emerge in adolescence and young adulthood, as the person authors a narrative identity to make meaning out of life. The review traces the development of traits, goals, and life stories from infancy through late adulthood and ends by considering their interplay at five developmental milestones: age 2, the transition to adolescence, emerging adulthood, midlife, and old age. 517 ANRV398-PS61-20 ARI 28 October 2009 12:0 in social and emotional functioning that distin- Contents guish one whole person from the next. Every human life is a variation on a general evolu- INTRODUCTION: PERSONALITY tionary design, developing over time and in cul- PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ture (McAdams & Pals 2006). For a cognitively WHOLE PERSON ............... 518 gifted and exquisitely social species like ours, THE PERSON AS ACTOR: THE what are those broad psychological variations DISPOSITIONAL on the general design that are of most conse- PERSPECTIVE ................... 519 quence for adaptation to group life? And how From Temperament to Traits ....... 520 does the scientific exploration of those most Differential Continuity of Traits .... 521 consequential individual differences help us un- Developmental Trends for Traits derstand the whole life of an individual person Across the Life Course .......... 522 as that life develops over time? Whereas per- THE PERSON AS AGENT: THE sonality psychologists have historically strug- MOTIVATIONAL gled to reconcile the competing agendas of what PERSPECTIVE ................... 524 Allport called nomothetic research and the idio- The Agentic Self: Intentionality graphic case study, their efforts to measure and and the Articulation of Goals .... 524 validate the most socially consequential varia- Goals Over the Life Course ........ 525 tions in overall psychological functioning aim THE PERSON AS AUTHOR: THE ultimately to provide an overall framework for SELF-NARRATIVE understanding the individual human life. At the PERSPECTIVE ................... 526 end of the day, personality psychology must The Developmental Emergence provide a conception of the person that is full of Narrative Identity ............ 527 and rich enough to shed scientific light on the Self-Narrative Over the Life single case. Course ......................... 528 Over the past two decades, personality psy- PUTTING IT TOGETHER: chologists have made significant advances in DEVELOPMENTAL identifying many of the most socially conse- MILESTONES ................... 529 quential features of psychological individual- Age 2: Self and Other .............. 531 ity. A substantial scientific literature supports The Transition to Adolescence ..... 532 the construct validity of a wide range of per- Emerging Adulthood............... 533 sonality variables, from dispositional traits sub- Midlife Tipping Points ............. 534 sumed within the well-known Big Five tax- On Endings: The Incomplete onomy (McCrae & Costa 2008) to motives, Architecture of Personality goals, values, and the specific self-schemata fea- Development ................... 535 Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2010.61:517-542. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES on 11/27/10. For personal use only. tured in social-cognitive theories on personal- CONCLUSION ..................... 536 ity (Mischel 2004). It is now abundantly clear that personality variables are robust predictors of behavior, especially when behavior is aggre- gated across different situations and over time. Nomothetic INTRODUCTION: PERSONALITY Moreover, personality predicts important life research: the study of PSYCHOLOGY AND THE outcomes, such as the quality of personal rela- numerous individuals WHOLE PERSON in personality tionships, adaptation to life challenges, occupa- psychology, with the Ever since Allport (1937) and Murray (1938) tional success, societal involvement, happiness, goal of testing envisioned personality psychology as the scien- health, and mortality (Lodi-Smith & Roberts hypotheses and tific study of psychological individuality, per- 2007, Ozer & Benet-Martinez 2006). Illus- deriving laws about people in general sonality psychologists have focused their inves- trating the power of personality, a recent re- tigations on those most important differences view of longitudinal studies demonstrated that 518 McAdams · Olson ANRV398-PS61-20 ARI 28 October 2009 12:0 personality traits perform as well as measures concepts, the most popular trait taxonomy on of IQ and social class in predicting mortality, the scene today is the Big Five model of per- divorce, and occupational attainment (Roberts sonality traits (John et al. 2008a). Following Idiographic case et al. 2007). the program established by McCrae & Costa study: the study of In taking a life-course developmental per- (2008), the five factors have been named ex- the individual case in spective on personality, the current review traversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, consci- personality traces temporal continuity and change in a entiousness, and openness to experience. Each psychology, with the broad range of features comprising psychologi- of the five factors, furthermore, encompasses a goal of understanding a particular life in cal individuality, from the temperament traits range of more specific traits, or what McCrae depth that arise in the first months of life to the & Costa (2008) call facets. For example, their Dispositional traits: self-narratives that adults construct to make version of extraversion includes dimensions of broad internal meaning out of their lives. Building on an warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, dimensions of integrative framework that has gained con- excitement seeking, and positive emotionality. personality thought to siderable currency in personality psychology The first two factors in the five-factor scheme— account for general over the past decade (McAdams & Pals 2006, extraversion and neuroticism—roughly parallel consistencies in behavior, thought, and Sheldon 2004, Singer 2005), the review first the trait factors of positive emotionality and feeling observed across organizes recent research findings in terms of negative emotionality respectively, as articu- situations three developmental layers of psychological lated in what is now often called the Big Three Big Five: five broad individuality—dispositional traits (the person model (Clark & Watson 2008). The third di- factors repeatedly as actor), characteristic adaptations (the person mension of the Big Three is a factor of con- derived from factor- as agent), and integrative life narratives (the straint (versus disinhibition), or the tendency to analytic studies of person as author). Personality traits sketch a act in an overcontrolled versus undercontrolled traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness dispositional outline of psychological individ- manner. to experience, uality; adaptations fill in the motivational and Whether they subscribe to some variation agreeableness, and social-cognitive details; and life stories speak to of the Big Five, the Big Three, or none of the conscientiousness the full meaning of the individual life. Then, above, most personality psychologists today see Characteristic the review considers what these three kinds of the personality trait as the bedrock, basic unit of adaptations: goals, personality constructs—traits, adaptations, and psychological individuality. Dispositional traits plans, projects, values, narratives—look like in the individual life at are “basic” in at least two ways. First, traits possible selves, and other contextualized each of five developmental milestones—around like extraversion and agreeableness describe the features of personality age 2, the transition to adolescence, emerging most fundamental and least contingent differ- capturing individual adulthood, midlife, and old age. ences between actors that are most readily de- differences in tected as researchers observe
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