22.1 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 opposite their childhood temperament. But personality can change, usually for the better, as people overcome earlier adversity and confusion.

Theories of Adult Personality

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

Erikson originally envisioned eight stages of development, three 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, p. 3).

Erikson’s first four stages, already explained, are each tied to a particular chronological period. But 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 22.1). Erikson saw adulthood as the continuation of the search for identity, via exploring 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 his five stages. Thus, people of many ages can be in Maslow’s third level (love and belonging, similar to Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation).

At that stage, the priority for people is to be loved and accepted by partners, family members, and friends. Without affection, people might stay stuck, needing love but never feeling that they have enough of it. They might ignore other needs in order to be loved. By contrast, those who experience abundant love are able to move to the next level, success and esteem. The dominant adult need at this fourth stage is to be respected and admired.

For humanists like Maslow, these five needs characterize all people, with most adults seeking love or respect (levels three and four), and a few reaching self-actualization (level five). Unless mired in poverty, war, or severe early trauma, people move past Maslow’s lower two stages (safety and basic needs) by adulthood. [Lifespan Link: Maslow’s and Erikson’s theories are discussed in Chapter 2.]

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

Same Situation, Far Apart: Caution to the Winds Generally, risk taking decreases with age, but modern technology allows older adults to put their bodies on the line. This 80-year-old Israeli woman (left) has just skydived, and this man in his 50s (right) chases tornados with a “Doppler on Wheels”

ITAY BARSHADSKI/ISRAEL SUN/LANDOV
© RYAN MCGINNIS / ALAMY

No 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 notion 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. 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

The midlife crisis continues to be referenced in popular movies, books, and songs. A 2013 Google search found more than 2 million hits, including a Wall Street Journal article about wealthy, successful, middle-aged men in crisis (Clements, 2005) and the song “Midlife Crisis” sung by the rock band Faith No More. However, no large study over the past three decades has found a normative midlife crisis. How could earlier observers have been so wrong?

In hindsight, it is easy to see where they went astray. Levinson studied only 40 men, all from one cohort. The data were then analyzed by men who were also middle-aged. (That would no longer be considered good science.) Sheehy is not a scientist; she summarized Levinson’s research and then supplemented it by interviewing people she chose. Neither Sheehy nor Levinson used replicated, multimethod, longitudinal research on a diverse population, which now forms the bedrock of developmental science.

Personality Endures Fearfulness is likely to endure from childhood temperament through adult personality. Some children are terrified even by Disney movies and fairy tales and become adults who double-lock their doors. Others enjoy the thrill of fear.

RANDALL MCILWAINE/CARTOONSTOCK.COM

Even imperfect and limited data, however, might contain clues for new trends. Case studies and personal experiences may start scientists on a path of discovery. With the midlife crisis, however, every attempt at large-scale replication has failed. Why?

Remember cohort effects. Middle-class men who reached age 40 in about 1970 were affected by historic upheavals. Many began marriages and careers in the 1950s, expecting grateful family members and employers. When they reached middle age, their wives were in the first wave of feminism (some called men “sexist pigs”) and their teenagers thought their fathers were irrelevant (some said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30”).

No wonder these men were troubled. But their crisis was caused by personal reflections, family pressures, and historical circumstances, not by chronological age. Many adults, male or female, have moments when they question their earlier choices of career, or mate, or residence. Some make dramatic changes at age 30 or 40 or 50. However, few experience a classic midlife crisis.

Personality Traits

Remember from Chapter 7 that each baby has a distinct temperament. Some are shy, others outgoing; some are frightened, others fearless. Such traits begin with genes, but they are affected by experiences.

Temperament is partly genetic; it does not vanish. There are hundreds of examples, some of which are surprising. One recent study found, for instance, that temperament at age 3 predicted gambling addiction 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.

Adults choose their social context, or ecological niche, selecting vocations, hobbies, health habits, mates, and neighborhoods in part because of personality traits. Personality affects almost everything, from whether a young adult develops an eating disorder to whether an older adult retires (Sansone & Sansone, 2013; Robinson et al., 2010).

Among the events, conditions, and attitudes linked to the Big Five are education (conscientious people are more likely to complete college), 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, 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 human personality traits (there are hundreds of them) can be grouped in the Big Five. Of course, personality and behavior are influenced by many other factors, not only by gender and cohort but also by culture. A test of the Big Five among a group in rural Bolivia—people who were largely illiterate and who made their living by agriculture—failed to replicate results found in urban, developed nations (Gurven et al., 2013). Even in the United States it would be foolish to predict college graduation or voting behavior or anything else based solely on a person’s ranking in the Big Five.

Same Situation, Far Apart: Scientists at Work Most scientists are open-minded and conscientious (two of the Big Five personality traits), as both of these women are. Culture and social context are crucial, however. If the woman on the right were in Tanzania, would she be a doctor surrounded by patients in the open air, as the woman on the left is? Or is she so accustomed to her North American laboratory, protected by gloves and a screen, that she could not adjust? The answer depends on personality, not knowledge.

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

Trends, Not Rules Overall stability and some marked variation from person to person make up the main story for the Big Five over the decades of adulthood. In addition, each trait tends to shift slightly, as depicted here.

Many researchers who study personality find that personality shifts slightly with age, but the rank order stays the same. In other words, those highest in extroversion at age 20 are still highest at age 80, compared to others their own age, although not necessarily compared to 20-year-olds. The general age trend is positive. Traits that are considered pathological, such as neuroticism, tend to be modified as people mature (L. A. Clark, 2009). By contrast, traits that are valued, such as conscientiousness, increase slightly.

That is exactly what was found in a massive study of midlife North Americans (called MIDUS). Agreeableness and conscientiousness increased slightly overall while neuroticism decreased (Lachman & Bertrand, 2001) (see Figure 22.1). This pattern was also found in other research (Allemand et al., 2008; Donnellan & Lucas, 2008; Lehman et al., 2013).

Not surprisingly, then, self-esteem rises from early adulthood until about age 60, as people develop whatever personality is most appreciated within their culture (Orth et al., 2010). Of course, the same temperament can lead to opposite choices in people from different cohorts, as is evident in the relationship between personality and fertility.

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 because the entire culture valued fertility. For those born in 1960, people high in openness had far fewer children than average. Their openness may have encouraged them to learn about family planning and overpopulation, and to consider non-traditional roles, so some chose to have just one child or none (Jokela, 2012).

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES

Local Context Versus Genes

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

Evidence that personality is innate includes the fact that the same Big Five traits are found almost everywhere, with similar age trends. A 70-year-old grandfather in Iceland has a lot in common with a 70-year-old grandfather in Thailand. Some research suggests that supposed national differences in personality may be “unfounded stereotypes” (McCrae & Terracciano, 2006, p. 156).

Further evidence that personality is inborn rather than formed by culture is that each person usually has the same personality throughout adulthood. Personality changes, if they occur, happen more often early or late in life, not in the middle (Specht et al., 2011). Extroverted young adults become outgoing grandmothers with many friends from early adulthood and with more new friends each decade. Other traits likewise endure, sometimes changing a little but never reversing.

Nonetheless, some research finds that the environment affects personality, or, as one team wrote, “personality may acculturate” (Güngör et al., 2013, p. 713). One study compared the Big Five in three groups: Japanese, Japanese Americans, and European Americans. In general, the Japanese Americans were between the other two groups in self-rated personality.

For example, in extroversion, the average among European Americans was highest, followed by the Japanese Americans and then the Japanese. Perhaps local conditions, such as the greater density of people per square mile in Japan than in the U.S., make the Japanese more likely to seek social harmony and therefore result in less extroversion.

Another study focused on extroversion in 28 countries and reported a curious correlation between self-rated extroversion, well-being, and self-esteem. Essentially people were happiest if their own personality traits matched the norms of their surroundings. Extroversion was relatively high in Canada and low in Japan, and both the Canadians and the Japanese were happiest if their personal high or low ratings were consistent with their cultural norms (Fulmer et al., 2010).

The idea that context shapes personality also comes from the Big Five scores of adults in the 50 U.S. states (Rentfrow et al., 2010). According to 619,397 respondents on an Internet survey, 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 traits are, in order, residents of North Dakota, Alaska, Maryland, Alaska (again), and Utah.

Active Brains, Active Personality The hypothesis that individual personality traits originate in the brain was tested by scientists who sought to find correlations between brain activity (shown in red) and personality traits. People who rated themselves high in four of the Big Five (conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—but not openness) also had more activity in brain regions that are known to relate to those traits. Here are two side views (left) and a top and bottom view (right) of brains of people high in neuroticism. Their brain regions known to be especially sensitive to stress, depression, threat, and punishment (yellow bull’s-eyes) were more active than the same brain regions in people low in neuroticism (DeYoung et al., 2010).

DEYOUNG, ET. AL. TESTING PREDICTIONS FROM PERSONALITY NEUROSCIENCE: BRAIN STRUCTURE AND THE BIG FIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE JUNE 2010 21: 820-828, FIRST PUBLISHED ON APRIL 30, 2010 DOI:10.1177/0956797610370159

This survey suggests that local norms, institutions, history, and geography have an impact. Let us hypothesize how this could be. Those who live in Utah are surrounded by Mormons (no drugs, large families, generally good health) and awesome mountains. That might make them less anxious, more serene, and thus lowest in neuroticism. This study found that many aspects of adults’ lives, including criminal behavior, morbidity, education, intelligence, and political preference, sprang from regional differences in personality (Rentfrow, 2008; Pesta et al., 2012).

Not only within the United States but also in England, physical surroundings seem to affect people. The English who lived near parks, gardens, and other greenery were less distressed. This study controlled for many factors, including age and income, and even traced people who moved from, or to, a plant-rich neighborhood (White et al., 2013).

Before concluding from this study that environment shapes personality, note the focus on distress, not personality. Do people who are less distressed also develop more agreeable, less neurotic personalities? Maybe. Or is distress superficial?

Someone who believes personality is innate might also question the U.S. data. Instead of people being affected by their surroundings, maybe people move to a community where their inborn traits are appreciated. For example, a North Dakotan college student who, unlike his neighbors, is genetically high in openness might relocate to New York. If people move to be with similar others, then regional differences would reflect personalities, not create them.

One review suggests that both nature and nurture are relevant, with the power of each affected by the age of the person. People under the age of 30 may seek an ecological niche—including finding a place to live—to fit their innate personality: They “actively try to change their environment.” Later in life, context shapes traits, because once adults settle somewhere, they “change the self to fit the environment” (Kandler, 2012, p. 294).

A consensus regarding the relationship between culture, surroundings, genes, and personality has not yet emerged (Church, 2010). As you see, both opposing views are plausible. Which seems most accurate for you, your family, and friends? Do you “seek greener pastures” or “bloom where you are planted”? Does your culture affect your personality?

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