Short-term personality development and early career success: Two longitudinal studies during the post-graduation transition.

OBJECTIVE: Investigate short-term personality development during the post-graduation transition. BACKGROUND: Prior research indicates that long-term personality development matters for employment outcomes. However, this evidence is primarily limited to multi-year longitudinal studies. This research switches the focus to personality changes during a shorter, impactful life transition. METHOD: We examined how short-term personality development during the 14-month post-graduation transition relates to early career outcomes among two diverse samples of graduates from universities (N = 816) and community colleges (N = 567). We used latent growth curve models to examine associations between career outcomes measured 14 months after graduation with initial personality levels and personality changes. RESULTS: Results revealed that mean-level changes in personality were small and mostly negative. Moreover, individual differences in personality changes were not associated with career outcomes. However, initial levels of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and extraversion positively related to both subjective and objective career success. Initial levels of agreeableness were also positively related to subjective (but not objective) success. CONCLUSIONS: Findings indicate that individual differences in personality trait levels at graduation are stronger predictors of early career success compared to short-term personality changes during the post-graduation transition. Taken together, these results help define the time sequence through which personality changes relate to career outcomes.

Life goal development, educational attainment, and occupational outcomes: A 12-year, multisample longitudinal study.

Life goals play a major role in shaping people's lives and careers. Although life goals have prior documented associations with occupational and other life outcomes, no prior studies have investigated associations between life goal development and occupational outcomes. Using two representative samples of Icelandic youth (Sample 1: n = 485, Sample 2: n = 1,339), followed across 12 years from adolescence to young adulthood, we examined life goal development and associations with educational attainment and a wide range of occupational outcomes. We found that life goals had relatively high rank-order and profile stability across the 12 years. Most life goals decreased in importance during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, except for family- and community-related goals, pointing to a continued focus on building social relationships in young adulthood. We also found meaningful variation in change at the item level within certain goal domains. Furthermore, adolescent levels of life goals, as well as changes in certain goals, predicted educational attainment and occupational outcomes in young adulthood. This suggests that life goals motivate career behaviors beginning at an early age and that subsequent changes in certain life goals also matter for educational and occupational outcomes. Dominance analyses revealed that education and prestige life goals were generally the strongest predictors of future outcomes. Overall, these results highlight the importance of life goal development in predicting later educational attainment and occupational outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

Interest-Ability Profiles: An Integrative Approach to Knowledge Acquisition.

Cognitive abilities and interests both play an important role in guiding knowledge acquisition, but most previous studies have examined them separately. The current study used a large and representative dataset to integrate interests and abilities using a person-centered approach that examines how distinct profiles of interests and abilities relate to individual strengths and weaknesses in knowledge. Two key findings emerged. First, eight interest-ability profiles were generated from Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), which replicated and extended the interrelations of interests and abilities found in previous studies using variable-centered approaches. Second, each profile's strongest knowledge scores corresponded to their strongest abilities and interests, highlighting the importance of interest-ability profiles for guiding the development of knowledge. Importantly, in some domains, the lower ability profiles were actually more knowledgeable than higher ability profiles. Overall, these findings suggest that people learn best when given opportunities to acquire knowledge relevant to both their interests and abilities. We discuss how interest-ability profiles inform integrative theories of psychological development and present implications for education and career development.

Personality Changes Predict Early Career Outcomes: Discovery and Replication in 12-Year Longitudinal Studies.

In this research, we examined whether personality changes from adolescence to young adulthood predicted five early career outcomes: degree attainment, income, occupational prestige, career satisfaction, and job satisfaction. The study used two representative samples of Icelandic youth (Sample 1: n = 485, Sample 2: n = 1,290) and measured personality traits over 12 years (ages ~17 to 29 years). Results revealed that certain patterns of personality growth predicted career outcomes over and above adolescent trait levels and crystallized ability. Across both samples, the strongest effects were found for growth in emotional stability (income and career satisfaction), conscientiousness (career satisfaction), and extraversion (career satisfaction and job satisfaction). Initial trait levels also predicted career success, highlighting the long-term predictive power of personality. Overall, our findings show that personality has important effects on early career outcomes-both through stable trait levels and how people change over time. We discuss implications for public policy, for theoretical principles of personality development, and for young people making career decisions.

Developmental structure of personality and interests: A four-wave, 8-year longitudinal study.

Personality traits and vocational interests capture different aspects of human individuality that intersect in certain ways. In this longitudinal study, we examined developmental relations between the Big 5 traits and RIASEC vocational interests over 4 timepoints from late adolescence to young adulthood (age 16-24) in a sample of Icelandic youth (N = 485) well-representative of the total student population. Results showed that interests and personality traits were similarly stable over time, but showed different patterns of mean-level change. There was evidence of personality maturation but a lack of cumulative changes in interest levels. For the most part, gender differences in developmental trends were minimal. In addition, latent growth curve analyses revealed broad and specific correlated changes between personality and interests. Changes in general factors of personality and interests were moderately related (r = .32), but stronger correlated changes were found among specific personality-interest pairs that share situational content. Overall, results reveal how interests and personality are related across different types of continuity and change. While there was little correspondence between group-level changes, substantial correlated change occurred at the individual level. This means that when a person's personality changes, their interests tend to change in predictable ways (and vice versa). Integrative theories that link different aspects of psychological functioning can benefit by incorporating these findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Normative changes in interests from adolescence to adulthood: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.

Vocational interests predict a variety of important outcomes and are among the most widely applied individual difference constructs in psychology and education. Despite over 90 years of research, little is known about the longitudinal development of interests. In this meta-analysis, the authors investigate normative changes in interests through adolescence and young adulthood. Effect sizes were aggregated from 49 longitudinal studies reporting mean-level changes in vocational interests, containing 98 total samples and 20,639 participants. Random effects meta-analytic regression models were used to assess age-related changes and gender differences across Holland's (1959, 1997) RIASEC categories and composite dimensions (people, things, data, and ideas). Results showed that mean-level interest scores generally increase with age, but effect sizes varied across interest categories and developmental periods. Adolescence was defined by two broad patterns of change: interest scores generally decreased during early adolescence, but then increased during late adolescence. During young adulthood, the most striking changes were found across the people and things orientations. Interests involving people tended to increase (artistic, social, and enterprising), whereas interests involving things either decreased (conventional) or remained constant (realistic and investigative). Gender differences associated with occupational stereotypes reached a lifetime peak during early adolescence, then tended to decrease in all subsequent age periods. Overall findings suggest there are normative changes in vocational interests from adolescence to adulthood, with important implications for developmental theories and the applied use of interests. (PsycINFO Database Record