Classically, the definitional existence of personal-

ity and the conceptual foundation of personality

traits in particular rested on the existence of rela-

tively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and

behaviors (Roberts, 2009). Longitudinal and devel-

opmental research over the last two decades has re-

affirmed the existence of these relatively enduring

patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, while

at the same time showing indisputable evidence

that personality traits also change. This body of re-

search has led to the necessity of changing our def-

inition of personality traits. Specifically, we now de-

fine personality traits as the relatively automatic

thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that arise in re-

sponse to environmental stimuli. These patterns of

automatic responses are relatively enduring across

time when people are confronted with isomorphic

environmental conditions. Finally, these automatic

patterns can be changed through relatively endur-

ing environmental or intrapsychic presses that con-

tradict given patterns of thought, feeling, and be-

havior.

This definition of personality traits is explicitly

different than standard deviations for several rea-

sons, but most importantly because of the inclusion

of the idea that personality traits change. What has

changed over the last few decades that would ne-

cessitate such a definitional refinement? Over the

last few decades, research that examines multiple

indices of continuity and change has shown that

personality traits are consistent over time, but they

also change throughout adulthood (e.g., Mroczek &

Spiro, 2003; Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006;

Soto, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2011; Srivastava, John,

Gosling, & Porter, 2003). We are just now integrating

this empirical edifice into our theoretical and con-

ceptual models. Therefore, in this paper we provide

an overview of the evidence for personality trait

continuity and change and some of the possible

Personality Trait Development in Adulthood: Patterns and Implications1)

Brent W. ROBERTS Yusuke TAKAHASHIUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Kyoto University

Recent longitudinal and cross-sectional aging research has shown that personality traits are both consistent

over time and yet change systematically in adulthood. In this paper, we review the evidence for personality trait

continuity, mean-level change in personality traits, as well as individual differences in change across the life

span. We then discuss several reasons for why personality would continue to change in adulthood and the im-

plications of those changes for human capital and social policy.

Key words: personality traits, personality development, adulthood, continuity, change

2011

2011 20 1110

1) This research was supported by grants R01 AG21178

and R01 AG1846 from the National Institute of Aging.

reasons for these changes. We also touch upon

some of the practical and theoretical implications

of these overall changes in personality traits.

Definitions of Personality

Continuity and Change

One reason for the confusion over personality

continuity and change is that researchers fail to

clarify what they mean when they describe person-

ality as consistent or changeable. Part of the diffi-

culty arises from the multiple ways to track conti-

nuity and change, such as rank-order consistency,

mean-level change, structural consistency, and indi-

vidual differences in change. A complete under-

standing of personality continuity and change can

only come from a thorough examination of multi-

ple indices of continuity and change as they are

often independent of one another and therefore

provide different answers to the question, Do per-

sonality traits change? (Roberts, Wood, & Caspi,

2008).

In this paper, we review rank-order consistency,

mean-level change, and individual differences in

change because these indices reflect the most di-

rect indicators of continuity and change. Rank-

order consistency refers to the maintenance of rank

on a trait relative to others in a sample or popula-

tion. Mean-level change refers to gains and/or

losses in specific personality traits over a pre-speci-

fied period of time and age for a population of in-

dividuals. Individual differences in change reflect

deviations from these overall patterns of mean-level

change. That is, some people will change much

more or less than the average patterns of increase

or decrease.

Rank-Order Consistency/Change

Despite widely differing views on the meaning of

rank-order stability, researchers have been finding

the same two findings since the earliest review of

rank-order consistency (i.e., Crook, 1941). Personal-

ity traits demonstrate modest to high rank-order

consistency (e.g, correlations between .4 and .6)

over reasonably long periods of time (e.g., 4 to 10

years) and the longer one tracks rank-order consis-

tency, the lower it gets (e.g., Fraley & Roberts, 2005),

with the evidence zeroing in on a long-term level of

about .2 over 40 years. Five meta-analyses on the

topic have come to similar conclusions (Ardelt,

2000; Bazana & Stelmack, 2004; Ferguson, 2010;

Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000; Schuerger, Zarrella, &

Hotz, 1989).

The findings of these meta-analyses on the rank-

order consistency of personality traits provide a

very clear picture. Across hundreds of studies, test-

retest correlations over time for personality are

moderate in magnitude, even from childhood to

early adulthood. Furthermore, rank-order consis-

tency increases as people age and then reaches a

plateau around .70 between ages 50 and 70. Per-

sonality traits demonstrate a clear pattern of in-

creasing continuity across the life course.

In terms of the overall levels of test-retest consis-

tency, personality psychologists can find solace in

the fact that the magnitude of rank-order consis-

tency, although not high enough to argue for ab-

solute stability, is still remarkably high. The only psy-

chological constructs more consistent than person-

ality traits are measures of cognitive ability (Conley,

1984; Schuerger, Tait, & Tavernelli, 1982) and voca-

tional interests are just about equal in their consis-

tency (Low, Yoon, Roberts, & Rounds, 2005). Sec-

ond, the level of continuity in childhood and ado-

lescence is much higher than originally expected

especially after age three. Although childhood char-

acter is by no means fate, there are striking conti-

2 20 1

nuities that point to the importance of childhood

temperament and the effects of cumulative conti-

nuity from childhood through adulthood (Moffitt,

Arseneault, Belsky, Dickson, Hancox, Harrington, &

Caspi, 2011).

One of the most conspicuous aspects of the in-

crease in rank-order consistency is the fact that it is

linear. Given developmental depictions of adoles-

cence and young adulthood, one would expect to

see marked decreases in rank-order consistency in

these age periods, especially if environmental

changes result in a drastic reconstruction of ones

personality. For example, adolescence is often char-

acterized as a time of psychological, if not social tu-

mult (Conger & Donnellan, 2007). If dynamic and

difficult life experiences translate one-to-one into

personality trait change, then we would expect a

marked decrease in continuity during these periods

of the life course. Despite these dramatic psycho-

logical and demographic shifts, personality consis-

tency marches in a linear fashion towards its peak

from childhood through old age. This implies that

the relationship between life experiences and per-

sonality trait development is neither simple nor di-

rect.

Mean-Level Changes in

Personality Traits

Complementing the data showing an increase in

continuity is the finding that personality traits show

reliable mean-level changes well into adulthood.

Specifically, cross-sectional research has shown that

middle-aged individuals tend to score higher than

young adults on agreeableness and conscientious-

ness and lower on extraversion, neuroticism, and

openness (Soto et al., 2011; Srivastava et al., 2003).

Moreover, within middle age, 60-year old partici-

pants scored higher than 40-year old participants

on most dimensions. The fact that these findings

continue to be replicated across several decades

(e.g., Soto et al., 2011) provides strong evidence

against the argument that age differences in per-

sonality traits are due to cohort effects.

Longitudinal studies, mostly of western cultures,

have found strikingly similar results. Changes in

mean-levels of personality traits were examined in a

meta-analysis of 92 longitudinal studies covering

the life course from age 10 to 101 (Roberts, Walton,

et al., 2006). Like the cross-sectional studies, signifi-

cant mean-level change in all trait domains was

found at some point in the life course and statisti-

cally significant change in 75% of personality traits

in middle (age 40 to 60) and old age (age 60).

Clearly, personality traits continue to develop in

adulthood.

Several important conclusions about personality

development can be drawn from the studies of

mean-level change in personality traits. First, most

mean-level personality trait change occurs between

the ages of 20 and 40. This contradicts the widely

held perspective that the most interesting years for

studying personality development are either early

or late in life. In contrast, young adulthood appears

to be the most important period for mean-level per-

sonality trait change. We believe that this finding

opens a new area of focus in developmental sci-

ence as the causes and mechanisms responsible for

personality trait change in young adulthood have

received little empirical or theoretical attention.

Second, personality traits continue to change,

even in old age. One of the precepts of a life span

orientation is that humans are open systems (e.g.,

Baltes & Nesselroade, 1973). That is, people retain

the capacity to change at all ages. The changes in

personality traits in middle and old age are by no

means dramatic, but nonetheless they show that the

3Personality Trait Development in Adulthood

life span orientation applies to personality traits and

that personality is not set like plaster at any point in

the life course.

Third, time has a positive effect on personality

trait change. Studies that follow people for a longer

period of time show larger mean-level changes

(Roberts, Walton, et al., 2006). The positive associa-

tion between time and mean-level change is impor-

tant for theoretical models of human nature. A com-

mon assumption is that personality traits act like

metabolic set points. People may stray briefly from

their biological propensity, but they will then tend

to drift back to their genetically driven set point

(see Kandler, Bleidorn, Riemann, Spinath, Thiel, &

Angleitner, 2010 for a review). Under these types of

models, one would expect to find a negative or null

association between time and mean-level change

because any change will represent short-term fluc-

tuations that disappear as people return to their bi-

ologically driven set point. However, time is posi-

tively associated with personality trait change,

which indicates that a strong set-point model does

not apply to personality trait development. That is,

when people change they tend to retain the

changes in personality traits for the remainder of

their lives.

Fourth, the direction of change is clearly in the

positive direction. People become more confident,

warm, responsible, and calm with age, or what

some have described as socially mature (Roberts &

Wood, 2006). Social maturity is equated with the ca-

pacity to become a productive and involved con-

tributor to society. Accordingly, most people do be-

come more socially mature with age, and those

who develop the cardinal traits of psychological

maturity earliest are more effective in their relation-

ships and work, and lead healthier and longer lives

(Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007).

The recent research on mean-level personality

trait change has mapped out the normative trends

in personality trait development and has led to sev-

eral surprises. Personality traits change more in

young adulthood than another other period of the

life course and continue to change in old age.

Moreover, most of the change is positive. These find-

ings motivate a new generation of questions con-

cerning why personality traits change more in

young adulthood than other periods of the life

course, and what the implications of the mostly pos-

itive trend in personality trait change might be. Of

course, one of the realities of any sweeping gener-

alization is that it does not apply to all people

much of this research needs to be replicated in

non-Western cultures before firm conclusions are

drawn. Moreover, some people fail to conform to

the general trends by either not changing at all,

being more accelerated in their change patterns

with time, or changing in ways that contradict nor-

mative trends. These deviations are captured with

the concept of individual differences in personality

trait change.

Individual Differences in Personality

Trait Change in Adulthood

The concept of individual differences in change,

a major tenet of lifespan developmental theory

(Baltes & Nesselroade, 1973), refers to the gains or

losses (or lack of) in absolute levels of a personal-

ity trait that each individual experiences over time.

These are changes that deviate from the population

mean-level pattern of change. This perspective

holds that personality change (and stability) is an

individual differences variable and a complete un-

derstanding of personality development is only pos-

sible if individual differences in personality trait

change are examined alongside more traditional in-

4 20 1

dices of development.

The key empirical hurdle that needs to be ad-

dressed is whether individual differences in change

are real or simply represent error in measurement

(Watson, 2004). This has drawn many personality

development researchers toward techniques to

gauge the amount and pattern of change over time,

such as the Reliable Change Index (Roberts, Caspi,

& Moffitt, 2001) or the variance in slopes from

growth models (Allemand, Gomez, & Jackson,

2010). Using these techniques, numerous studies

have established that the Big Five traits show un-

mistakable variability across individuals in direction

and rate of change.

Once the existence of reliable individual differ-

ences in personality trait change has been estab-

lished, the compelling question becomes why these

changes occur. A number of studies have shown

that life experiences are associated with changes in

personality traits (for review see Roberts, et al.,

2008). For example, people who experience more

successful and satisfying careers in young adult-

hood increase disproportionately on measures of

emotional stability and conscientiousness (Roberts,

Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003). Similarly, initiating and stay-

ing in a committed relationship in young adulthood

his associated with increases in conscientiousness

and decreases in neuroticism (Robins, Caspi, &

Moffitt, 2002; Lehnart, Neyer, & Eccles, 2010). Fur-

thermore, men who get remarried in middle age

show decreases in neuroticism (Mroczek & Spiro,

2003).

Not all experiences are for the better. People who

conduct problematic, counterproductive activities

at work, such as theft, aggression, and malingering

are prone to decrease on measures of conscien-

tiousness and emotional stability (Roberts, Bogg,

Walton, & Caspi, 2006). Similarly, people who con-

tinue to abuse drugs and alcohol tend to decrease

in conscientiousness and neuroticism in young

adulthood (see Littlefield, Sher, & Wood, 2010). In-

terestingly, seeing a psychotherapist is associated

with increases in neuroticism in college students

whether or not the experience is a good one

(Ldtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy, in press).

The irony of individual differences in change is

that many individual difference researchers fail to

appreciate their existence. Their meaning is rather

profound for individual development, however, as

they indicate that many people fail to follow the

normative path of development. Moreover, follow-

ing a non-normative path appears to be conse-

quential as it might result in personality changes, or

the lack thereof, that are not optimal.

Theoretical Implications

The first and most significant implication of the

fact that personality traits are both relatively endur-

ing and changing across the life course is the need

to revise our most prominent models of personality

and personality traits. For a variety of reasons, most

theoretical perspectives of personality traits fall into

one of two extreme camps (Roberts, 2009). On one

side is the view that personality traits are biological,

unchanging, and causal. This perspective is mani-

fest in some theoretical systems explicitly (McCrae

& Costa, 2008). It is also manifest implicitly in most

research utilizing personality traits, as most re-

search invoking personality assumes that traits

cause outcomes and therefore are used solely as

predictors. Based on these assumptions, personality

traits need not be assessed more than once be-

cause they do not change. Alternatively, some theo-

reticians minimize the significance and consistency

of personality traits, typically by overemphasizing

the state level of analysis (Mischel, 2009). Those

5Personality Trait Development in Adulthood

sympathetic to this perspective often take the fact

that personality traits change as support for a com-

pletely contextual model of personality traits and

personality in general.

Of course, reality is uncomfortably different than

either of these overly simplistic perspectives. Per-

sonality traits are, in fact, quite consistent over time,

but not absolutely consistent. Personality traits also

change with time, but are not a buzz of confusion

bouncing to and fro depending on the environ-

mental winds of change. Rather, what emerges from

the data is a unique perspective that combines op-

posing views (Roberts, 2009). Personality traits are

consistent, and consistent enough to be considered

causal forces. Personality traits also change and

change enough to consider change itself a phe-

nomenon of interest and key feature of human

functioning. Personality trait change, especially that

which occurs in middle and old age invites some

challenging questions. Why would human beings

remain open systems in which modifications are ca-

pable of being made late in life? Most developmen-

tal models assume that childhood is the critical

stage of personality development and that little of

interest happens thereafter. However, the majority

of personality trait change appears to occur in

adulthood, which begs the question of why?

Practical Implications

One of the unique aspects of the study of indi-

vidual differences in change is that personality

traits are considered dependent variables rather

than solely independent variables, as they are typi-

cally viewed. For example, in studies like Roberts

(1997), personality traits are seen as the conse-

quence of work experiences. One reason to con-

sider personality traits as dependent variables is

that personality trait change may be quite conse-

quential for people. Mroczek and Spiro (2007)

demonstrated that long-term increases in neuroti-

cism were predictive of mortality in an 18-year sur-

vival analysis. Those who started high on neuroti-

cism (above the sample median) and increased

over 10 years had higher mortality, controlling for

age, depression, and physical health.

In our ongoing research, we have found similar

patterns when linking personality to health. Taka-

hashi, Edmonds, Jackson, and Roberts (2011) ex-

amined whether and how initial levels and changes

in conscientiousness are linked to initial levels and

changes in both preventative health-related behav-

iors and self-rated physical health, using latent

change models (Hertzog & Nesselroade, 2003;

McArdle & Nesselroade, 1994). Our two-wave longi-

tudinal study extended previous research on con-

scientiousness and physical health by exploring re-

lations between latent variables of continuity and

change over a 3-year period. This study provided ev-

idence that people who increased in conscien-

tiousness also increased in their use of preventative

health-related behaviors, and in turn, became in-

creasingly healthy. Thus, personality trait change

may be an important health issue above and be-

yond how people stand on a trait at the beginning

of a longitudinal study.

Can Personality Traits Be Changed?

The fact that personality traits change and that

the change in personality traits may bring about

positive outcomes, such as greater success in work

and better health and longevity, leads to the next

question, which is can personality traits be

changed? Surprisingly, the answer appears to be yes

and has been known in some circles for quite some

time. Specifically, in their profoundly important

meta-analysis on the efficacy of psychotherapy,

6 20 1

Smith, Glass, and Miller (1980) also documented

the fact that therapy affected change in personality

traits in addition to many other outcomes. In fact,

cognitive-behavioral therapy changed measures of

personality traits more than a standard deviation.

Unfortunately, the existence of this empirical proof

of the changeability of personality traits has gone

largely unnoticed.

In the interim there has been a smattering of

studies reporting on the changeability of personal-

ity traits through direct intervention across a num-

ber of domains. For example, after a 20-week cog-

nitive behavior therapy intervention aimed to treat

depression, patients changed on a number of per-

sonality traits, most notably in extraversion and neu-

roticism (Clark, Vittengl, Kraft, & Jarrett, 2003). Evi-

dence also exists that personality traits change in re-

sponsive to a combination of therapy and medica-

tion (Santor, Bagby, & Joffe, 1997). For example,

De Fruyt, Van Leeuwen, Bagby, Rolland, and Rouil-

lon (2006) found that individuals treated with a

combination of either tianeptine or fluoxetine (the

active drug in Prozac) and therapy showed signifi-

cant positive increase in all Big Five personality

traits. Similarly, a recent study also found that both

cognitive therapy and medication (SSRIs) were as-

sociated with changes in neuroticism and extraver-

sion compared to a control group (Tang, DeRubeis,

Hollon, Amsterdam, Shelton, & Schalet, 2009).

In addition to clinical interventions, a number of

other types of intervention studies demonstrate that

personality traits are amenable to change. Training

programs, where the participant learns some type

of skill, appear to be an especially effective in

changing personality traits. For example, a recent

intervention trained medical students to become

more mindful. The mindfulness intervention re-

sulted in personality trait changes in the traits of

conscientiousness, agreeableness, empathy, and

emotional stability (Krasner, Epstein, Beckman,

Suchman, Chapman, Mooney, & Quill, 2009). Simi-

larly, a social skill training programs for recovering

substance abusers led to increases in agreeable-

ness, conscientiousness and emotional stability

(Piedmont, 2001). Moreover, a cognitive training in-

tervention for older adults was also associated with

changes in a personality trait. Across 16-weeks elder

adults learned inductive reasoning skills and com-

pleted 10 hours a week of crossword and Sudoku

puzzles. Compared to a control condition, the in-

tervention increased participants levels of open-

ness to experience (Jackson, Hill, Payne, Roberts, &

Stine-Morrow, in press).

Based on these studies it is clear that personality

traits can be changed through a variety of interven-

tions over a relatively short period of time. These

findings raise several issues. First, as none of these

studies was embedded in an ongoing longitudinal

study, it is unclear whether the changes actually

stick. It is quite possible that people change for the

better in the short run only to regress back to where

they were at earlier times in the absence of some

active intervention. On the other hand, if personal-

ity traits can be changed and the change remains, it

generates some interesting questions. For example,

most interventions focus on proximal thoughts, feel-

ings, attitudes, and behaviors that are linked to out-

comes deemed important by societies. Studies in-

tervening to increase the efficacy for specific out-

comes, such as achievement and health behaviors

are legion. Unfortunately, specific attitudes and ex-

pectancies tend to either not generalize or to be

negatively related to separate domains. For exam-

ple, in the education domain, efficacy in a topic

such as mathematics is often negatively correlated

with efficacy in language arts (Trautwein, Ldtke,

7Personality Trait Development in Adulthood

Roberts, Schnyder, & Niggli, 2009). In the case of

educational achievement, conscientiousness is pos-

itively related to effort and achievement across do-

mains (Trautwein et al., 2009). Therefore, interven-

ing to increase conscientiousness makes more

sense than intervening to change domain-specific

attitudes because it could result in positive effects

across domains and not adversely affect other im-

portant outcomes.

Summary

In the first portion of this paper, focusing on per-

sonality development in adulthood, we reviewed

the evidence showing both the continuity and

change in personality over time. With respect to the

rank-order stability, as Roberts and DelVecchio

(2000) found personality stability increases with

age. On the other hand, (Roberts, Walton et al.

2006) found that personality traits show mean-level

changes. The significant point to be stressed here is

that personality is stable and changeable at the

same time. In the second portion of this paper, we

placed an emphasis on discussing individual differ-

ences in personality change, because the knowl-

edge about personality change is relatively sparse.

We introduced that personality changes are pre-

dictable for individuals health and health behav-

iors (Takahashi et al., 2011), and reviewed that per-

sonality traits can be changed by receiving medica-

tion, psychological therapy, and cognitive interven-

tion. With these in mind, we need to move on the

next steps on personality research. We believe one

possible future direction of personality psychology

is to explore the pragmatic questions raised by the

existence of personality change. For example, how

can personality trait change be used to promote

better health and economic outcomes; are person-

ality traits appropriate candidates as an epidemio-

logical risk factor that predicts the development of

physical diseases (Roberts, 2009), and how we

should develop our personality traits to live as a

sound members of human society (Heckman,

2007).

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