Personality Change Introduction · James (1890) first suggested personality is "set like plaster" by early adulthood (James, 1890). Since, there has been a vigorous back and forth on whether or not personality remains the same and from what stage in a person's life its stability begins -> more research needed . McCrae and Costa's (1988) => stability of personality by age 30 and provide support to James's (1890) hypothesis. . Recent research leans towards personality changes through life · Freud (1905) personality is 'fixated' after a process in which individuals experience a sequence of different psychosexual stages during which the events that do or do not occur will permanently set their personality. . In contrast, Skinner's (1938) theory of personality was heavily behaviourist, arguing that personality is influenced purely by the individual's surroundings throughout the entirety of their lifespan. . Two ways by which personality change can be analysed are rank order stability and mean level shifts (Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000). - High rank order = high correlation between first and second time personality was measures -> means no notable changes in personality. - Mean level shift = average amount to which the personality trait of the population goes up or down as time progresses (doesn't necessarily correlate with rank order) Personality is fixed - Trait and Biological Perspective; Rank order stability · Personality traits are viewed as biological therefore are not affected by the environment and do not change over time (McCrae et al. 2000). · Weiss, Bates and Luciano (2008) Monozygotic (identical and share exact DNA) and dizygotic (fraternal and do not share exact DNA) twins were investigated on their personalities and subjective well-being -> subjective well-being linked to personality by common genes. -> genetic variance behind individual differences in happiness was found to also be responsible for individual differences in certain Big Five personality traits -> implies that personality and other aspects of behaviour are affected by genetics. . Although the study by Weiss et al (2008) does not state whether or not
genetically affected personality traits remain stable throughout lifespan, McGue, Bacon and Lykken (1993) mention that genes and personality consistency are in fact in relation to each other after conducting personality tests over a ten year period using a similar participant sample. -> estimated genetic material contributed 80% to personality consistency. · Tellegen et al. (1988) = genes have a bigger role in personality than the environment. MZs and DZs reared together and apart found an average of 50% of personality differences linked to genetics -> suggests personality can hold some level of genetic consistency, there seems to be room to argue that personality can remain unchanged from birth itself which further solidifies the argument that personality traits affected by genetics remain consistent. · Robins et al. (2001) recent evidence that personality is stable in young adulthood in a longitudinal study on university students whose Big Five personality traits were evaluated at the beginning and end of their 4 year -> only small- to medium-sized