13.1 Personality Development in Adulthood

A mixture of genes, experiences, and contexts results in personality, which includes each person’s unique actions and attitudes. Continuity is evident: Few people develop characteristics that are the opposite of their childhood temperament. But personality can change as people deal with adversity and challenge.

Theories of Adult Personality

To organize the discussion of this mix of embryonic beginnings, childhood experiences, and adulthood contexts, we begin with theories.

Erikson and MaslowErikson originally envisioned eight stages of development, three of which occur after adolescence. He is praised as “the one thinker who changed our minds about what it means to live as a person who has arrived at a chronologically mature position and yet continues to grow, to change, and to develop” (Hoare, 2002).

Erikson’s early stages, described in previous chapters, are each tied to a particular chronological period. But late in his life, Erikson stressed that adult stages do not occur in lockstep. Adults of many ages can be in the fifth stage, identity versus role confusion, or in any of the three adult stages—intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair (McAdams, 2006) (see TABLE 13.1). He saw adulthood as the continuation of identity seeking via exploration of intimacy and generativity, a vision confirmed by current research (Beaumont & Pratt, 2011).

Similarly, Abraham Maslow (1954) refused to link chronological age and adult development when he described a hierarchy of needs with five stages achieved in sequence (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.11). Completion of each stage allows a person to move ahead.

As an example, people who are in Maslow’s third level (love and belonging, similar to Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation) seek to be loved and accepted by partners, family members, and friends. Without affection, people might stay stuck at this level. By contrast, those who experience abundant love are able to move to the next level, success and esteem. The dominant need at this fourth stage is to be respected and admired.

For humanists like Maslow, these five drives characterize all people, with most adults seeking love or respect (levels three and four). Unless mired in poverty or war, people move past Maslow’s lower two stages (safety and basic needs) by adulthood.

Other theorists agree, sometimes describing affiliation and achievement, sometimes using other labels. We will soon use Erikson’s terms, intimacy and generativity, as a scaffold to describe these two universal needs. Every theory of adult personality recognizes that both are important in adulthood.

The Midlife CrisisNo current theorist sets chronological boundaries for specific stages of adult development. Middle age, if it exists, can begin at age 35 or 50. This contradicts the theory of the midlife crisis, thought to be a time of anxiety and radical change as age 40 approaches. Men, in particular, were said to leave their wives, buy red sports cars, and quit their jobs because of midlife panic. The midlife crisis was popularized by Gail Sheehy (1976), who called it “the age 40 crucible,” and by Daniel Levinson (1978), who said men experienced

Risk Taking Generally, risk taking decreases with age, but modern technology allows older adults to put their bodies on the line. This middle-aged man chases tornados with a “Doppler on wheels.”

RYAN MCGINNIS/ALAMY

However, no large study over the past three decades has found evidence of a normative midlife crisis (Austrian, 2008). In hindsight, it is easy to see where Sheehy and Levinson went astray. Levinson studied just 40 men, all from one cohort, and the data were then analyzed by men who were also middle-aged, which introduced bias into the analysis. Sheehy summarized social scientists’ research and then supplemented it by interviewing people she specifically chose. Neither Sheehy nor Levinson used replicated, multi-method, longitudinal research, the bedrock of developmental science.

The initial research on midlife crises was conducted in the early 1970s. Men who reached age 40 during that time period were affected by historic upheavals in their families. Many began marriages and careers in the 1950s with particular expectations of their children, wives, and careers. Instead, the first wave of feminism took place when they reached middle age. As a result, women’s views of family and career changed dramatically. Although the researchers concluded that the men were experiencing a crisis as a result of their age, in fact it was as a result of historical circumstances.

Regardless, the concept of midlife crisis continues to be referenced in popular movies, books, and songs. A 2013 Google search found more than 19 million hits for “midlife crisis.” In popular culture, midlife crisis is used to explain almost every aspect of adult personality, health, careers, and relationships. However, the reality is that as we get older, we must inevitably deal with loss, failure, and relationship problems. Most people who reach age 40 do not have a midlife crisis.

Personality Traits

Remember from Chapter 4 that each baby has a distinct temperament. Some are shy, others outgoing; some are frightened, others fearless. Such traits are affected by experiences, but they begin with genes.

The Big FiveTemperament does not vanish: Researchers find substantial, even astonishing, coherence in personality throughout life. There are hundreds of examples. One recent study found, for instance, that temperament at age 3 predicted gambling problems at age 32 (Slutske et al., 2012).

Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and multicultural research has identified five clusters of personality traits that appear in every culture and era, called the Big Five (to remember the Big Five, the acronym OCEAN is useful):

• Openness: imaginative, curious, artistic, creative, open to new experiences
• Conscientiousness: organized, deliberate, conforming, self-disciplined
• Extroversion: outgoing, assertive, active
• Agreeableness: kind, helpful, easygoing, generous
• Neuroticism: anxious, moody, self-punishing, critical.

Each person’s personality is somewhere between extremely high and extremely low on each of these five. The low end might be described, in the same order as above, with these five adjectives: closed, careless, introverted, hard to please, and placid.

These five clusters not only affect career choices and health habits, as expected, but also much more. Adults choose their social context, or ecological niche, selecting vocations, hobbies, mates, and neighbourhoods at least in part because of personality traits. Even the decision to retire and the reaction to retirement are related to the Big Five (Robinson et al., 2010).

Among the factors linked to the Big Five are education (conscientious people have higher rates of post-secondary graduation), marriage (extroverts are more likely to marry), divorce (more often for neurotics), fertility (lower for women in recent cohorts who are more conscientious), IQ (higher in people who are more open), verbal fluency (again, associated with openness and extroversion), and even political views (conservatives are less open) (Duckworth et al., 2007; Gerber et al., 2011; Jokela, 2012; Pedersen et al., 2005; Silvia & Sanders, 2010).

International research confirms that all human personality traits (there are hundreds of them) can be grouped in the Big Five. Of course, personality and behaviour are influenced by many other factors, not only gender and cohort as seen above, but also culture. It would be foolish to predict college or university graduation or voting behaviour or anything else solely on a person’s rank on the Big Five.

Personality Endures Fearfulness is one of the personality traits most likely to endure from childhood through late adulthood. Some children are terrified by Disney movies and fairy tales. Others enjoy the thrill of fear.

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Indeed, anyone might act in uncharacteristic ways if circumstances are dramatically altered—perhaps by unexpected divorce, recovery from addiction, forced emigration, treated depression, or a sudden disabling disease (Mroczek et al., 2006). Events influence traits, although the specific impact is always affected by personality (Specht et al., 2011). Nature and nurture interact, each affecting the other.

Thus, new events sometimes bring out old personality patterns. People might divorce and then remarry someone like the old partner, for instance, or find a new job that reflects their personality rather than change their personality to fit the job. In general, people are most comfortable when their personality fits with their partners, their neighbours, and their careers. For instance, one study found that people high in neuroticism tend to work in hazardous conditions—and then complain about it (Sutin & Costa, 2010).

Same Situation, Far Apart: Scientists at Work Most scientists are open-minded and conscientious (two of the Big Five personality traits). Culture and social context are crucial, however. The doctor in North America (left) focuses on research, while the doctor in Tanzania (right) treats patients.

JAMES GATHANY/PHOTO RESEARCHERS/GETTY IMAGES
KAI-UWE WRNER/DPA/CORBIS

Even happiness seems a matter of personality more than circumstances. Adults who experience things that temporarily make them overjoyed (e.g., winning a lottery) or depressed (e.g., losing a loved one) often revert to the level of happiness they had before that event. Personality trumps experience (Gilbert, 2006).

Culture, Age, and ContextMany researchers who study personality find that people adapt to their culture, expressing personality traits differently in, say, Egypt or Ecuador (Church, 2010). Traits that are considered pathological in one place (such as neuroticism in North America) tend to be modified as people mature within that community (L. A. Clark, 2009). By contrast, traits that are valued (such as conscientiousness) endure.

That is exactly what was found in a massive longitudinal study of midlife North Americans (called MIDUS). Agreeableness and conscientiousness increased slightly overall while neuroticism decreased, as did openness and extroversion (which may be more appreciated in the young than the old) (see Figure 13.1) (Lachman & Bertrand, 2001). This pattern was also found in other research (Allemand et al., 2008; Donnellan & Lucas, 2008).

FIGURE 13.1 Trends, Not Rules Overall stability, with some marked individual variation, is the main story for the Big Five over the decades of adulthood. In addition, each of the traits tends to shift slightly, as depicted here.

Since cultural values interact with personality traits, it should also be noted that the terms used to describe personality are not neutral. For instance, “open” seems a positive trait and “closed” seems negative. But instead of closed, perhaps another term, such as traditional, might be a more accurate descriptor.

The relationship between enduring personality and changing context was evident in a longitudinal study that tracked women in the United States from ages 20 to 70 (George et al., 2011). When women were in college in the 1950s, they expected to become wives and mothers, not employees. In the 1960s, the culture shifted—and so did the women. Most entered the workforce, learning new skills and gaining confidence. Nonetheless, personality endured, evident in the jobs they found. For example, those high in extroversion might work in sales and management; those high in conscientiousness might become nurses or accountants.

The relationship between personality and context are evident not only in careers, but also in family structure. For both men and women born in 1920, those high in openness had about the same number of children as those low in that trait. For those born in 1960, however, the more open a person was, the fewer children he or she had. They were open to non-traditional life patterns, which for some meant having no children (Jokela, 2012).

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES

Local Context Versus Genes

Some people believe that personality is so powerfully shaped by regional culture that a baby will have a different personality if born and raised in, say, Canada or Mexico. The opposite hypothesis is that personality is innate, fixed at birth, and impervious to social pressures with only minor, temporary impact from culture.

Evidence for the second hypothesis includes the fact that the same Big Five traits are found in many nations, with similar age-related trends. Supposed national differences in personality may instead be unfounded stereotypes (McCrae & Terracciano, 2006).

Further evidence that personality is inborn, not made by context, is the stability of personality throughout adulthood (B. W Roberts et al., 2006; Specht et al., 2011). Extroverted emerging adults become outgoing seniors, with many friends from early adulthood and with more new friends along the way. Other traits likewise endure, in new forms.

Other research, however, finds that culture and events change personality. For example, according to some social scientists, Asian cultures encourage a sixth personality dimension, called dependence on others, which should be added to the Big Five when studying Asians (Hofstede, 2007; Okazaki et al., 2009; Suh et al., 2008).

Active Brains, Active Personality The hypothesis that individual personality traits originate in the brain was tested by scientists who sought correlates between brain activity (shown in red) and personality traits. People high in four of the Big Five (conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—but not openness) activated brain regions known for comparable characteristics. Here are two side views (left) and a top and bottom view (right) of brains of people high in neuroticism. Regions sensitive to stress, depression, threat, and punishment (yellow bull’s eyes) were more active than in the low neurotic individuals (Deyoung et al., 2010).

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Asian children who seem low on this trait are encouraged by their culture to increase it, so cooperation is more common among Asian adults than among children. Since we now know that brain structures respond to experience, the childhood context—such as a preschool that teaches sharing and group cohesion—may cause an enduring, neurological change.

When Asian adults emigrate to a culture in which that trait is less valued, they may be considered too docile and overly concerned with blending in. This would not be true for Asians who emigrated as babies and were raised in the individualistic culture, unless their parents were strongly opposed to new cultural influences and raised their children as they themselves had been raised. Clinicians find that personality tests developed for native-born North Americans do not properly assess the personality traits of Asian-Americans who grew up in Asia (Okazaki et al., 2009).

Another example of personality change is in the Big Five trait of openness. Cultures differ in the extent to which they consider openness desirable. In some cultures, openness is prized as an indication of intelligence and willingness to learn. Children who ask questions in class are appreciated. However, in some places interpersonal harmony is more valued than individual initiative (Church, 2010). For instance, one group of researchers concluded: “Openness is not commonly used as a distinct dimension in the taxonomy of personality traits in Chinese culture” (Cheung et al., 2008). In this case, children are discouraged from impulsively “interrupting” with questions.

The idea that context shapes personality is highlighted in a U.S. study that found that the Big Five scores differ among adults in the 50 states (Rentfrow et al., 2008). According to the answers of 619 397 respondents to an Internet survey that asked questions about their traits, New Yorkers are highest in openness, New Mexicans highest in conscientiousness, North Dakotans highest in both extroversion and agreeableness, and West Virginians highest in neuroticism. Lowest in these five are, in the same order, residents of North Dakota, Alaska, Maryland, Alaska (again), and Utah.

This suggests that local norms, institutions, history, and geography also have an impact on personality. For example, residents of Utah include Mormons (a culture that does not use drugs, has large families, and are generally in good health) and awesome mountains. That might make them less anxious and more serene, resulting in low levels of neuroticism. In contrast, New York is multi-ethnic because it has always been an international arrival city (Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are in the harbour), which might encourage openness. The authors of this study suggest that many aspects of adults’ lives, including criminal behaviour, morbidity, education, and political preference, spring from regional differences in personality (Rentfrow, 2010).

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Before concluding that environment shapes personality, however, consider the opposite idea—that personality is innate. This could also spring from the same U.S. data. Perhaps adults move to wherever they feel appreciated for who they are. For example, a North Dakotan who, unlike his neighbours, is high in openness might relocate to New York. If many people moved because of their personality, then regional or national differences would appear as people go where their inborn temperament is valued.

A decades-long study in Finland indeed found that personality often leads to relocation (Jokela et al., 2008; Silventoinen et al., 2008). Finns with an outgoing personality (high in extroversion, or sociability) were likely to move from isolated rural areas to urban ones.

A consensus regarding the relationship between culture, geography, genes, and personality has not yet emerged (Church, 2010). As you see, both opposing views make sense: More longitudinal research is needed.