Personality throughout the Lifespan

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Personalitythroughout theLifespan
Michael Hoerger
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Pervasiveness of Personality
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Personality

• Definitions
• A persons relatively enduring patterns of
  behavior, thoughts, and feelings
• Style of viewing and interacting with the world
• Often measured with surveys
• Highly debated in the 1960s and 1970s
• Interaction of
• Individual and situation
• Genes and environment
• Conscious and unconscious

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Temperament

• Highly heritable aspects of personality, evident
  even early in life
• Rythmicity predictability of behavior patterns,
  especially eating and sleeping
• Emotionality pleasant or unpleasant, intensity
  and duration of reactions
• Activity energy level
• Distractibility ability to ignore distractors
• Sociability tendency to approach/ avoid

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Norms of Reaction

• Definition expected pattern of development,
  given a specific environment
• Temperament interacts with environmental
  influences in adaptive or harmful ways

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Personality Disorders

• Style of personality that is inflexible, extreme,
  and causes impaired functioning
• Examples
• Schizotypal unusual beliefs, socially isolated
• Dependent needs a relationship, cant make own
  decisions
• Antisocial Personality Disorder impulsive,
  manipulative, aggressive

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Characteristic Adaptations

• Personality can be difficult to change,
  especially for personality disorders
• Rather than trying to modify traits, often
  psychologists focus on characteristic
  adaptations or how those traits are used
• Example for disagreeableness
• Criminal who breaks many laws
• Lawyer who argues and debates

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Lifespan Perspective

• Childhood personality influenced by family
• Niche picking in adulthood, people choose
  environments more suitable to their genes
• People report large changes in personality
  (though changes tend to be small)
• Changes tend to be adaptive
• Early to late adulthood ?N, ?E, ?O, ?A, ?C
• Criminality tends to decline after age 45

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Demographic Differences

• Gender females score higher than males on N and
  A
• Gender convergence Masculinity and femininity
  tend to fluctuate with changing family roles
  older adults become more androgynous
• Birth Order no differences!

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Personality Correlates

• Good Health low Hostility (aspect of A)
• Achievement high C
• Political Views high levels of education related
  to liberalism (aspect of O)
• Psychological Well-being high E, low N
• Assertiveness (aspect of E) may be key for
  reducing stress involves expressing ones
  feelings and needs, while still respecting others

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• Michael Hoerger
• To cite this lecture
• Hoerger, M. (2007, April 11). Personality
  throughout the Lifespan. Presented at a PSY 220
  lecture at Central Michigan University.