Cross-cultural experiences and self-development: a psychobiographical study of Bruce Lee.

A common challenge people face in today's cross-cultural world is how to solve a series of adaptation problems caused by cultural conflict. Exploring Bruce Lee's successful cross-cultural experiences through psychobiography offers some inspiration and thoughts. How did Bruce Lee successfully integrate martial arts, symbolising the Eastern culture, with films representing the Western culture, finally propelling kung fu films onto the international stage? Numerous publicly available materials about Bruce Lee were collected for this study, and the research data were evaluated using thematic analysis. Bruce Lee's success benefitted from reconstructing cultural environment information and exercising his initiative to shape a new cultural environment. His life experiences reflect individual cognition behaviour and social and cultural environments as two aspects of a dynamic circulation system and show that the two have reached internal and spiralling harmony through mutual integration. In the context of the Oriental collectivism culture's family narrative, Chinese adults' personality development features the unique theme of 'inheritance and innovation'. Dealing with the relationship between self-actualisation and familism is another important and challenging task in developing the Chinese personality.

Life events sometimes alter the trajectory of personality development: Effect sizes for 25 life events estimated using a large, frequently assessed sample.

OBJECTIVE: Personality changes across the life span. Life events, such as marriage, becoming a parent, and retirement, have been proposed as facilitating personality growth via the adoption of novel social roles. However, empirical evidence linking life events with personality development is sparse. Most studies have relied on few assessments separated by long time intervals and have focused on a single life event. In contrast, the content of life is composed of small, recurrent experiences (e.g., getting sick or practicing a hobby), with relatively few major events (e.g., childbirth). Small, frequently experienced life events may play an important and overlooked role in personality development. METHOD: The present study examined the extent to which 25 major and minor life events alter the trajectory of personality development in a large, frequently assessed sample (Nsample = 4904, Nassessments = 47,814, median retest interval = 35 days). RESULTS: Using a flexible analytic strategy to accommodate the repeated occurrence of life events, we found that the trajectory of personality development shifted in response to a single occurrence of some major life events (e.g., divorce), and recurrent, "minor" life experiences (e.g., one's partner doing something special). CONCLUSION: Both stark role changes and frequently reinforced minor experiences can lead to personality change.

Job characteristics and personality change in young adulthood: A 12-year longitudinal study and replication.

OBJECTIVE: Personality changes are related to successfully performing adult occupational roles which require teamwork, duty, and managing stress. However, it is unclear how personality development relates to specific job characteristics that vary across occupations. METHOD: We investigated whether 151 objective job characteristics, derived from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), were associated with personality levels and changes in a 12-year longitudinal sample followed over the school to work transition. Using cross-validated regularized modeling, we combined two Icelandic longitudinal datasets (total N = 1054) and constructed an individual-level, aggregated job characteristics score that maximized prediction of personality levels at baseline and change over time. RESULTS: The strongest association was found for level of openness (0.25), followed by conscientiousness (0.16) and extraversion (0.14). Overall, aggregated job characteristics had a stronger prediction for personality intercepts (0.14) than slopes (0.10). These results were subsequently replicated in a U.S. sample using levels of the Big Five as the dependent variable. This indicates that associations between job characteristics and personality are generalizable across life stages and nations. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that job titles are a valuable resource that can be linked to personality to better understand factors that influence psychological development. Further work is needed to document the prospective validity of job characteristics across a wider range of occupations and age.

Explicating narrow and broad conceptualizations of environmental influences on personality.

BACKGROUND: A surge of studies aims to identify environmental factors that explain individual differences, personality stability, and personality development. This special issue builds on this large interest and solicited articles on broad and narrow environmental factors of personality. OBJECTIVE: We provide an overview of the motivations behind the special issue, review each of the articles, and present data on researchers' perceptions of environmental factors contributing to personality expression and development. METHOD: We review 16 special issue articles, thematically grouped into seven topics-culture and race, genes and environment, geography and habitat, major/minor life events, social relationships, socioeconomic status and economic inequality, and work. We also present data on researchers' (N = 223) responses and ratings of environmental influences on personality expression and development. RESULTS: In the open-ended responses, the most important environmental influences were family, culture, peers, relationships, and trauma. Among the least important were weather, birth order, geography, climate, and shared environment. Nearly all the environmental influences featured in this special issue were considered at least somewhat important; however, there was considerable heterogeneity in how important researchers found each topic. CONCLUSIONS: There is no perfect consensus among researchers as to which environmental factors contribute most to personality expression and development. We hope that there is a larger surge of studies on personality constructs beyond traits, that contextualize concepts within a cultural and historical framework and develop more stringent theories to hypothesize about the environmental influences on personality.

A motivational framework of personality development in late adulthood.

Meta-analytic evidence shows that most personality traits tend to increase through early adulthood and middle age but decrease in late adulthood, whereas Emotional Stability continues to increase throughout late adulthood. We propose that these normative patterns of personality development can be explained by motivational theories of aging. Specifically, decreases in Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience may reflect a reduced capacity to control one's environment, whereas continued increases in Emotional Stability reflect increases in individual's ability to compensate and cope with age-graded losses. Pairing motivational theories of aging with longitudinal evidence in personality science provides an explanation for empirical patterns of personality trait development and raises interesting possibilities to promote healthy aging.

Using within-person change in three large panel studies to estimate personality age trajectories.

How does personality change when people get older? Numerous studies have investigated this question, overall supporting the idea of so-called personality maturation. However, heterogeneous findings have left open questions, such as whether maturation continues in old age and how large the effects are. We suggest that the heterogeneity is partly rooted in methodological issues. First, studies may have failed to recover age effects as they did not stringently separate within-person changes from confounding between-person differences. Second, items supposedly belonging to the same trait may show different individual trajectories, thus rendering results sensitive to the specific set of items used. We analyzed panel data from Australia (N = 15,268; Study 1), Germany (N = 22,833; Study 2), and the Netherlands (N = 10,163; Study 3) to investigate age trends in the Big Five on the levels of both scores and items. We applied a fixed effects approach that incorporates only within-person changes over time. Developmental trends in the Big Five scores were generally moderate to large and broadly confirmed personality maturation at younger ages. At older ages, maturation consistently continued for Neuroticism, whereas we found mixed evidence for such changes in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Furthermore, in each study, individual items showed age trends that diverged from the rest of the corresponding trait, and these differential patterns could be partly replicated across the three studies. Our results highlight the importance of items in the study of personality development and provide an explanation for previously unaccounted for variability in age trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Narrative identity characteristics and personality pathology: An exploration of associations from a dimensional and categorical perspective in a clinical sample of youth.

Narrative identity, as an integral element of personality, has gained increased attention for understanding personality pathology. In this study, associations between narrative identity characteristics (i.e., event valence, theme, contextual coherence, thematic coherence, self-event connection valence, agency, and communion) and personality pathology were examined. Personality pathology was conceptualized as (a) levels of personality (dys)functioning and maladaptive personality traits, (b) six trait facet profiles, and (c) categorical DSM-5 (fifth edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) diagnoses. Data of 242 youth (Mage = 18.79; SDage = 2.65) were collected as part of a longitudinal study on personality development. Narratives were assessed with turning point interviews, and trait and functioning levels with self-report questionnaires. The narrative identity characteristics of a negative valence, a negative self-event connection valence, low agency, and low communion were associated with higher levels of personality dysfunctioning, negative affectivity, detachment, and psychoticism. These characteristics were also associated with the borderline, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive, and schizotypal trait facet profiles. No associations were found when considering personality pathology from a categorical perspective. Findings may inspire researchers and clinicians to give personal stories a more central role in their work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective experiences of life events match individual differences in personality development.

The last 2 decades have witnessed increased research on the role of life events in personality trait development, but few findings appear to be robust. We propose that a key to resolving this issue is incorporating individuals' subjective experiences into the study of event-related development. To test this, we developed and administered a survey about event-related personality change to a representative Dutch sample (N = 5,513, Ages 16-95) and linked their responses to 12-year trajectories of measured Big Five development. Most participants (63%) believed that a life event impacted their personality in the past 10 years, on average 5 years presurvey. These participants, even those who experienced the same event, had markedly heterogenous perceptions of how their traits changed and why each event affected their personality. In preregistered analyses, we examined participants' individual personality trajectories before and after the event that they identified as most impactful. Across events, retrospective perceptions of event-related personality change were significantly correlated with short-term and long-term postevent personality trajectories across Big Five traits (mean rs = .22, .28) and preevent trajectories in all traits except agreeableness (mean r = .16). We also found correspondence between perceived and measured development in analyses of the two most commonly reported personality-changing events: health problems and death of a loved one/family member. Finally, we explored associations between personality development and perceived change-inducing event characteristics. Using these findings, we argue that future research into event-related personality development should de-emphasize mean-level change to focus on individuals' varied experiences of whether, when, how, and why life events have affected their personality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Fetal Fantasy and the Perfect Child: How Certain Challenges of Adolescence may Inform Aspects of the Abortion Debate.

This article explores psychic aspects of abortion, from the fixity of beliefs over its legalization, to conscious and unconscious fantasies related to the fetus, children, parenting, fertility, and so on. Generally speaking, the field has shown less direct interest in abortion per se than might be surmised, particularly given the centrality of sexuality and procreation in psychoanalysis. The recent legal changes may initiate more psychoanalytic interest in the topic. The current writing studies a possible strand of fantasy in which conscious and unconscious wishes for an unending, idealized, and blameless child-object are displaced onto a fetus or fetal imago. Speculations and suggestions are drawn from casework with an individual which points to a possible channeling or avoidance of unprocessed grief when the seeming perfection of childhood ends abruptly, almost without transition, with the imposition of adolescent personality development.

Contemporary methodological considerations for key issues in research on personality disorder development.

In the present article, we aim to contribute to further progress in the field of personality disorder (PD) development by highlighting several recent methodological innovations related to (a) the measurement of personality pathology, (b) the modeling of typical features of personality pathology, and (c) the assessment of processes that characterize PD development. For each of those issues, we discuss key points of attention and methodological strategies, illustrated with recent publications in the PD research field as potential resources for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Patterns of Personality Development and Psychosocial Functioning in Japanese Adolescents: A Four-Wave Longitudinal Study.

While patterns of adolescent personality development are country-specific, previous studies that have examined them have been limited to the Netherlands and Finland. This study aimed to identify the patterns of personality development and examine the relationship between these patterns and psychosocial functioning among Japanese adolescents. Overall, 618 Japanese adolescents (49.5% girls; 16 years) participated in the annual longitudinal survey from 2013 to 2016. Using latent class growth analysis, the following four patterns of personality development were identified: resilient, over-controlled, vulnerable, and moderate. Although the mean-level changes in the Big Five domains were generally insignificant among the four patterns, the vulnerable pattern showed a progressive increase in conscientiousness, and the moderate pattern showed a decrease in neuroticism and an increase in conscientiousness. Furthermore, multivariate analysis of variance tests indicated that the resilient pattern showed higher subjective well-being and lower psychosocial problems than the other personality patterns; the over-controlled pattern showed higher internalizing problems than the resilient pattern; the vulnerable pattern showed lower subjective well-being and higher internalizing problems than the other patterns; and the moderate pattern scored between the resilient, over-controlled, and vulnerable patterns in both subjective well-being and psychosocial problems. These findings suggest that the vulnerable and moderate patterns, which are immature patterns compared to the resilient and over-controlled ones, showed positive changes to the direction of maturity from middle to late adolescence in Japan.

Body mass predicts personality development across 18 years in middle to older adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: Various personality traits have longitudinal relations with body mass index (BMI), a measure of body weight and a risk factor for numerous health concerns. We tested these associations' compatibility with causality in either direction. METHOD: Using three waves of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (N = 12,235, Mage  = 53.33 at baseline), we tested how accurately the Five-Factor Model personality domains and their items could collectively predict BMI and change in it with elastic net models. With multilevel models, we tested (a) bidirectional and (b) within-person associations between BMI and personality traits. RESULTS: The five domains were able to predict concurrent (r = 0.08), but not future BMI. Twenty-nine personality items predicted concurrent and future BMI at r = 0.21 and r = 0.16 to 0.25, respectively. Neither the domains nor items could collectively predict change in BMI. Similarly, no individual trait predicted change in BMI, but BMI predicted changes in Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and several items (|b*| = 0.03 to 0.08). BMI had within-person correlations with these same traits; time-invariant third factors like genetics or childhood environments therefore could not (fully) account for their relations. CONCLUSIONS: Body weight may contribute to adults' personality development, but the reverse appears less likely.

Social expectations and abilities to meet them as possible mechanisms of youth personality development.

OBJECTIVE: Personality traits change from childhood through late-adolescence, however the effects of social expectations and self-regulatory efforts remain unknown. This study aims to explore mechanisms underlying personality development by assessing mean levels personality traits from childhood to late-adolescence. METHOD: We used Common-Language California Child Q-Set to measure youths' (N = 11,000) mean personality trait levels; social expectations for these traits as perceived by parents (N = 47), teachers (N = 42) and students (N = 120); and self-regulatory efforts required for achieving the desired levels in these traits as perceived by parents (N = 27), teachers (N = 26), and students (N = 54). RESULTS: Expectations for youths' traits were consistent, regardless of raters' or youths' age. In our unique between-trait study design, traits' mean levels were positively associated with expectations for them, but age differences minimally tracked these expectations. Traits' required self-regulatory efforts were not associated with their developmental trends. CONCLUSIONS: Results were only partially consistent with existing developmental theories of personality development.

Determinants of personal growth and life satisfaction in divorced adults.

Divorce is a major life event that can trigger sudden changes in how adults perceive themselves and operate in their social environments. Some previous evidence has documented changes in personality in reaction to marital dissolution. However, little is known about the determinants of personality development in the post-divorce period. Guided by the positive personality development model in adulthood, this study examined sociodemographic characteristics, divorce-related variables and personality-related indicators as determinants of life satisfaction and personal growth in divorced adults. Participants included 460 divorced adults who completed self-reported measures regarding sociodemographic characteristics, divorce-related variables and personality development indicators. Results showed that autonomy, environmental mastery, self-acceptance, emotional self-regulation indicators and motivation for personality adjustment goals were associated with post-divorce life satisfaction. Personal growth was associated with purpose in life, self-expansion, psychological mindedness and motivation for personality growth goals. The sociodemographic characteristics and divorce-related variables differently predicted life satisfaction and personal growth. We discussed the implications of the positive personality development model in understanding post-divorce personality adjustment and maturity.

Age and context effects in personality development: A multimethod perspective.

Observing most pronounced personality trait changes during young adulthood raises the question whether the traits are more stable per se after young adulthood or whether greater stability of daily life contexts also contributes to smaller trait changes in older adults. In this longitudinal multimethod study, we tested the competing explanations of trait stability and context stability by examining (a) whether age differences in Big Five trait changes are less pronounced when younger and older people experience similar context conditions, in this case, college life and (b) whether people of similar age change differently in different contexts. Furthermore, based on dual-process models of personality and because previous research has relied on self-ratings, we examined whether assumed personality changes also occur in implicit measures and other-ratings of traits. The sample of 241 adults consisted of older students (Mage = 67.5 years), older age- and education-matched nonstudents (Mage = 67.7 years), and young students (Mage = 21.1 years). We obtained self-ratings, other-ratings, and implicit measures of Big Five traits at four time points over 2 years. The results replicated increases in self-ratings of emotional stability, open-mindedness, extraversion, and conscientiousness in young first-year students and demonstrated distinct patterns of change among older students and older nonstudents. Changes in other-ratings and implicit measures only partly mirrored changes in self-ratings of Big Five traits. The study highlights the importance of different measures of traits to better understand personality development beyond self-ratings, and that in some groups, substantial trait changes are possible beyond young adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Does intelligence predict development of investment traits from mid to late adolescence? Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study.

INTRODUCTION: Investment theories have claimed reciprocal relations between intelligence and investment traits (i.e., personality traits related to seeking out, and dealing with, cognitive challenges). However, previous research has primarily addressed the effects of investment traits on intellectual development (environmental enrichment hypothesis) and often focused on either childhood or later adulthood. The present study investigated the effects of intelligence on investment traits (environmental success hypothesis) from mid to late adolescence. METHOD: In a 3-year longitudinal survey (2008-2011) covering four measurement occasions, the predictive effects of both fluid and crystallized intelligence on intraindividual change in both the achievement motive (i.e., hope for success and fear of failure) and need for cognition were examined. Overall, 476 adolescents (t1 : Mage = 16.43, SD = 0.55; 51.3% girls) from Germany participated. RESULTS: Second-order latent growth models indicated that fluid intelligence predicted a steeper growth in hope for success (ß = .40), but was unrelated to change in the other investment traits. Crystallized intelligence had no effects on the investment traits under study. CONCLUSIONS: The results contribute to the research on the bidirectionality of intelligence and investment traits and add to our understanding of personality development from mid to late adolescence. Specifically, they underline the importance of nurturing hope for success especially in individuals with lower intelligence, but also show that support for the environmental success hypothesis seems to be limited to certain investment traits.

Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.

Past research syntheses provided evidence that personality traits are both stable and changeable throughout the life span. However, early meta-analytic estimates were constrained by a relatively small universe of longitudinal studies, many of which tracked personality traits in small samples over moderate time periods using measures that were only loosely related to contemporary trait models such as the Big Five. Since then, hundreds of new studies have emerged allowing for more precise estimates of personality trait stability and change across the life span. Here, we updated and extended previous research syntheses on personality trait development by synthesizing novel longitudinal data on rank-order stability (total k = 189, total N = 178,503) and mean-level change (total k = 276, N = 242,542) from studies published after January 1, 2005. Consistent with earlier meta-analytic findings, the rank-order stability of personality traits increased significantly throughout early life before reaching a plateau in young adulthood. These increases in stability coincide with mean-level changes in the direction of greater maturity. In contrast to previous findings, we found little evidence for increasing rank-order stabilities after Age 25. Moreover, cumulative mean-level trait changes across the life span were slightly smaller than previously estimated. Emotional stability, however, increased consistently and more substantially across the life span than previously found. Moderator analyses indicated that narrow facet-level and maladaptive trait measures were less stable than broader domain and adaptive trait measures. Overall, the present findings draw a more precise picture of the life span development of personality traits and highlight important gaps in the personality development literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The development of the rank-order stability of the Big Five across the life span.

Several studies have suggested that the rank-order stability of personality increases until midlife and declines later in old age. However, this inverted U-shaped pattern has not consistently emerged in previous research; in particular, a recent investigation implementing several methodological advances failed to support it. To resolve the matter, we analyzed data from two representative panel studies and investigated how certain methodological decisions affect conclusions regarding the age trajectories of stability. The data came from Australia (N = 15,465; Study 1) and Germany (N = 21,777; Study 2), and each study included four waves of personality assessment. We investigated the life span development of the rank-order stability of the Big Five for 4-, 8-, and 12-year intervals. Whereas Study 1 provided strong evidence for an inverted U-shape with rank-order stability declining past age 50, Study 2 provided more mixed results that nonetheless generally supported the inverted U-shape. This developmental trend held for single personality traits as well as for the overall pattern across traits; and it held for all three retest intervals-both descriptively and in formal tests. Additionally, we found evidence that health-related changes accounted for the decline in rank-order stability in older age. This suggests that if analyses are implicitly conditioned on health (e.g., by excluding participants with missing data on later waves), the decline in stability in old age will be underestimated or even missed. Our results provide further evidence for the inverted U-shaped age pattern in personality stability development but also extend knowledge about the underlying processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).