The Gift of Introversion

Agreeableness- are evident in childhood and adolescence and are associated with
distinct social-emotional patterns of behavior that are largely consistent with adult
manifestations of those same personality traits. Some researchers have proposed the
youth personality trait is best described by six trait dimensions: neuroticism,
extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
activity. Despite some preliminary evidence for this “Little Six” model, research in this
area has been delayed by a lack of available measures.
Previous research has found evidence that most adults become more agreeable,
conscientious, and less neurotic as they age. This has been referred to as
the maturation effect. Many researchers have sought to investigate how trends in adult
personality development compare to trends in youth personality development. Two main
population-level indices have been important in this area of research: rank-order
consistency and mean-level consistency. Rank-order consistency indicates the relative
placement of individuals within a group. Mean-level consistency indicates whether
groups increase or decrease on certain traits throughout the lifetime.
Findings from these studies indicate that, consistent with adult personality trends, youth
personality becomes increasingly more stable in terms of rank-order throughout
childhood. Unlike adult personality research, which indicates that people become
agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable with age, some findings in youth
personality research have indicated that mean-levels of agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and openness to experience decline from late childhood to late
adolescence. The disruption hypothesis, which proposes that biological, social, and
psychological changes experienced during youth result in temporary dips in maturity,
has been proposed to explain these findings.
Extraversion/Positive Emotionality
In Big Five studies, extraversion has been associated with surgency. Children with high
Extraversion are energetic, talkative, social, and dominant with children and adults;
whereas, children with low Extraversion tend to be quiet, calm, inhibited, and
submissive to other children and adults. Individual differences in Extraversion first
manifest in infancy as varying levels of positive emotionality. These differences in turn
predict social and physical activity during later childhood and may represent, or be
associated with, the behavioral activation system. In children, Extraversion/Positive
Emotionality includes four sub-traits: three traits that are similar to the previously
described traits of temperament – activity, sociability, shyness, and the trait
of dominance.
Activity: Similarly to findings in temperament research, children with high activity
tend to have high energy levels and more intense and frequent motor activity
compared to their peers. Salient differences in activity reliably manifest in
infancy, persist through adolescence, and fade as motor activity decreases in
adulthood or potentially develops into talkativeness.
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