Development of Personality in Early and Middle Adulthood: Set Like Plaster or Persistent Change?

Sanjay Srivastava and Oliver P. John
University of California, Berkeley
Samuel D. Gosling
University of Texas at Austin
Jeff Potter
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Different theories make different predictions about how mean levels of personality traits change in adulthood. The biological view of the Five-factor theory proposes the plaster hypothesis: All personality traits stop changing by age 30. In contrast, contextualist perspectives propose that changes should be more varied and should persist throughout adulthood. This study compared these perspectives in a large (N
132,515) sample of adults aged 21–60 who completed a Big Five personality measure on the Internet. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased throughout early and middle adulthood at varying rates; Neuroticism declined among women but did not change among men. The variety in patterns of change suggests that the Big Five traits are complex phenomena subject to a variety of developmental influences.
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