Personality theories of successful aging - University of Florida ...

Personality Theories of Successful Aging
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n of the stability argufor
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on personality traits
refers to the identification of a universal structure of personality, individual differences,
and the extent of longitudinal stability (Costa& McCrae, 7994,7995).
There is consensus that personality can be well described by the Big Five personality
traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and
openness to new experiences. These five factors have been identified by means of
factor analysis across various instruments and samples. Cross-sectional as well as
longitudinal evidence on the structural invariance of the Big Five exists for adulthood
and into old age (Costa& McCrae, 1994; Small , Hertzog, Hultsch, & Dixon,
2003). Moreover, according to a meta-analysis by Roberts and DelVecchio (2000),
the rank-order stability of the Big Five increases across the life span. These results
were recently supplemented with regard to old and very old age by longitudinal
aging studies (Mroczek & Spiro, 2003; Small et al., 2003).
Contrary to some trait personality theorists' view that personality is "set like
plaster" after the age of 30 (Costa& McCrae, 7994), cross-sectional as well as longitudinal
evidence on mean levels of personality show changes in some of the Big
Five characteristics across adulthood. Neuroticism, for example, decreases across
adulthood (Mroczek & Spiro, 2003) and shows some increase again in very old
age (Small et al., 2003). Moreover, in addition to becoming more neurotic, elderly
people tend to become less open to new experiences and less extraverted (Costa,
Herbst, McCrae, & Siegler, 2000), whereas they tend to become slightly more
agreeable and conscientious (Helson & Kwan, 2000).
Summarizing this empirical evidence based on trait as well as growth models of
personality clearly suggests that personality development in adulthood and old
age is characterized by both stability and change. Regarding the relationship of the
Big Five to subjective indicators of aging well, neuroticism is typically found to be
negatively associated with measures of subjective well-being, whereas extraversion
shows a positive relation to well-being. For instance, Isaacowitz and Smith (2003)
demonstrated that in old and very old age (70 to 102 years), neuroticism is linked to
higher negative and lower positive affect. The opposite pattern was found for extraversion
(negative correlation with negative affect, positive correlation with positive
affect). Note, however, that this pattern also holds for younger age groups (e.g., Diener.
1984) and thus does not seem to constitute a deaelopmenfal phenomenon.
Jurrrruc ro LEVEL III: PEnsoNal IpeNtttv
In contrast to dispositional traits, life narratives are heavily influenced by specificities
of the context and are subject to change across situations and time.
McAdams (1990) argues that a unified or integrated life story, however, provides
individuals with an identity and allows them to maintain a coherent self-concept
across the entire life span (Cohen, 1998). Life stories are told to different audiences
with different purposes: A life story told to a future spouse might look very
different from the life story told to a future employer, not because the narrator
becomes a different person in between the two events but because different aspects
of a biography seem important and merit elaboration in these two contexts.
According to McAdams, identity is not derived from one (veridical) life story but
from the very act of meaning-making and integration of different aspects of a life
into one coherent story (albeit possibly a different one each time it is told).
The concept of autobiographical memories is closely related to the concept of
life stories (see also Habermas & Bluck, 2000). Some theories on autobiographical