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ONE OF THE OLDEST DEBATES IN PSYCHOLOGY CONCERNS WHETHER PERSONALITY…
ONE OF THE OLDEST DEBATES IN PSYCHOLOGY CONCERNS WHETHER PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN
Three assumptions are made about traits (Costa and McCrae, 1998) which are deemed to be present when determining personality:
- Traits re based on comparisons of individuals
- Qualities of behaviours making up particular trait must be distinctive enough to avoid confusion
- Traits attributed to a person are assumed to be stable characteristics
Costa and McCare's five factor model is grounded in longitudinal, cross-sectional and sequential research and speculates five dimensions of personality, which include:
- Neuroticism
- Extraversion
- Openness to experience
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
Several studies show that personality traits exhibit long-term stability. Costa found that personality traits stop changing by age 30, they become set in plaster
Advances in statistical research techniques shows a slightly different picture. These findings show evidence for change in certain factions. These include evidence for:
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Allemand et al found that the way people differ in their personality becomes more pronounced with older age.
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Longitudinal studies done at Berkley California showed that lifestyle during young adulthood is a better predictor of life satisfaction in women in old age but personality is better predictor for men. These studies further found that transitions to parenthood in young adulthood as well as work and family-related transitions, showed more variability than stability.
It is evident that despite impressive evidence for stability using the five factor theory, there is evidence that change exists. Staudenger and Kunzam tried ti reconcile theses differences by proposing that there are two forms of personality:
- Adjustment: involves developmental changes in terms of adaptive values and functioning effectively in everyday life.
- Growth: refers to ideal en states for instance wisdom, integrity and so forth.
when we look at the five factor theory, change is found with age and is seen in the absence of neuroticism and increase in agreeableness which suggests that adjustment, and also shows a decrease in openness to experience which shows growth BUT certain factors such as wisdom, ego and emotional complexity don't increase with age.
Studies on women personality development during adulthood, Helson and her colleagues focused on women who chose a typically feminine social role and found that change in personalities as the tiles changes and this is seen as function of changes in social roles and social contexts.
Critique of research proving stability is summed up as follows: - The five factor theory may have methodological problems
- Dispositional traits don't describe the core aspects of human nature and are not good [predictors of behaviour
- The stability theory doesn't consider the contextual aspects of development
- Assessment of dispositional traits through questionnaires assumes that the respondent is able to take an objective, evaluative stance to personal characteristics.
The case for change and/ development of personality across the lifespan. Personal concern takes into consideration a persons developmental context and distinguishes between having personality traits and performing everyday behaviours. Personal concerns entail descriptions of what people are trying to accomplish and the goals they set.
Jung found the following:
- various aspects of personality are emphasised such as masculinity, femininity, extroversion and introversion.
- people more towards integrating these dimensions as they age, with midlife being a very important period.
- young adults are more extroverted because they need to find a mate, develop a career and get on with life. older adults become more introverted as they get older.
- he was convinced that personality development continued across adulthood.
Erikson proposed a theory which postulated as follows:
- several developmental stages that an individual has to navigate.
- the theory can be interpreted as a trust achievement wholeness cycle repeating twice.
- generatively is more prominent than other adult stages.
- research has shown that generative concern and generative action can be found across all adult age groups.
- the theory functions according to the epigenetic principle which means that each stage has its own special time of ascendancy or period of importance.
- as the stages are extended across a whole lifespan,it takes a lifetime to acquire all the psychosocial strengths
Loevinger's theory:
- there are 8 stages of personality development is considered.
- six of these stages occur during adulthood.
- most adults never go through all the stages and the last level is achieved by only a handful of people.
- most adults are at the conscientious-conformist level.
-links to cognitive development are apparent.
- it makes use of the sentence-completion test which has a higher reliability than other personality development measures
What can we conclude about the personal concerns theories above:
- these theories show that substantive changes occur in adults personal concerns as they age.
- the evidence of change is in a sharp contrast to the evidence of stability shown by the five factor theory.
- there is a close connection between change and specific ages is not supported by the bulk of the data.
- it finds that change rather occurs in wide windows of time depending on many contextual factors, include socio-cultural circumstances
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Life Narrative Theories:
McAdams
- argues that one creates a lie story that is an internalised narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an anticipated ending.
- an adult would have reformulated that life story throughout adulthood.
- this life story reflects emotion, motivations, beliefs, values and goals set in the context of behaviour.
Whitbourne
- believes that people have a life-span construct, a unified sense of the past, present and future.
- she integrates the concepts of piagets assimilation and accommodation to explain how people's identity changes over time