In this longitudinal study, we investigated the factor structure and stability of early-life temperament in a German sample, using three measures developed within Rothbart's psychobiological approach. Temperament was measured using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R) at the ages of 6 and 12 months, the Early Childhood Behavior…

Compassion may be directed at a broad range of targets. The present study investigated interrelations among other-directed compassion, self-compassion, and environmental compassion in early adolescence (age = 12-14; n = 256) and examined how the different manifestations of compassion related to age and sex during this age period. Dispositional…

The present cross-sectional study investigated age and gender differences in motivational manifestations of the Big Five in a large German-speaking Internet sample (N = 19,022). Participants ranging in age from 16 to 60 years completed the Five Individual Reaction Norms Inventory (FIRNI; Denissen & Penke, 2008a), and two traditional Big Five…

The authors investigated normative beliefs about personality development. Young, middle-aged, and older adults indicated the age-relevance of 835 French adjectives by specifying person characteristics as typical for any age decade from 0 to 99 years. With this paradigm, the authors determined age-relevance (How typical is a characteristic for a…

This research details the changing ways in which young people of different ages differently warrant the conviction that, notwithstanding evidence of good and bad behaviours, selves can be understood as unified across the various roles and contexts that they occupy. Canadian adolescents and young adults were asked to explain the apparent disunity…

It has been argued that the predominant focus of midlife personality development is generativity; other research has found that social roles influence both its onset and its expression. In this article, we examine women's midlife personality development and its relationship to career and family commitments. Results for a sample of 90 women…

The aim of this study was to explore child and adolescent personality in the Russian culture, addressing gender and age differences, and to examine personality and family effects on children's Internalizing and Externalizing problems. Parents of 1,640 Russian children aged 3-18 years completed the Inventory of Child Individual Differences…

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of social capital assessed in early adulthood in linking self-control in childhood with psychological and social functioning in middle age. Data collected at ages 8, 27, and 42 years were based on the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (159 females, 177 males).…

The present study used meta-analytic techniques (number of samples = 92) to determine the patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course. Results showed that people increase in measures of social dominance (a facet of extraversion), conscientiousness, and emotional stability, especially in young adulthood (age 20 to…

In a response to comments by P. T. Costa, Jr., and R. R. McCrae on the current authors' original article, the authors show that Costa and McCrae's writings on personality suggest a belief in immutability of personality traits. The authors agree with Costa and McCrae that new personality trait models that provide an accurate lower order structure…