Today, adult individuals must be able to continuously learn and adapt to the rapid changes occurring in society. However, little is known about the individual characteristics, particularly personality traits, that make adults more likely to engage in learning activities. Moreover, few studies have longitudinally and objectively investigated the…

Intergenerational transmission of disadvantage remains a problem despite political and educational initiatives. This study explored the role of personality and psychosocial factors in occupational status in a survey of 383 participants (174 males and 209 females) over 39 years from age 16 to 55. Mother's education, extraversion, and mastery…

The present paper investigates the power of personality to predict important life outcomes in the context of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). On the most global level, personality can be described by the Big Five dimensions, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and…

Resilience researchers are intrigued with the challenge of understanding how people overcome risk or adversity to succeed in life. The study of resilience emerged about 40 years ago when a group of scientists studying the origins of behaviour problems and mental illness were surprised to find that many children in "high risk" groups were…

A sample of 124 women with osteoarthritis or fibromyalgia, or both, completed initial assessments for demographic data, health status, and personality traits and 10-12 weekly interviews regarding pain, stress, negative affect, and positive affect. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that weekly elevations of pain and stress predicted increases…

Adult literacy programs offer individuals, particularly women, opportunities to improve their educational levels and economic circumstances; however, persistence in these programs is an issue for many. Two hundred forty five participants in a statewide adult literacy program took the Adult Education Persistence Scale, a measure of self-efficacy,…

In a study of self-reports from 111 adults enrolled in education classes at seven adult education centers, peer relations, positive and negative affect, and curiosity and perception of learning improvement each uniquely predicted secure attachment among the participants. After controlling for age, sex, and income, the hierarchical logistical…

This analysis of chronically unemployed job seekers after they completed a comprehensive job skills training program reveals dynamic interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics that have an impact on job-finding success. Of primary interest in this study was the relationship between R. B. Cattell's (1988) second-order personality factors and…

This study examined the degree to which certain religious/spiritual constructs simply reflect personality variables and to what extent they describe unique components of individual differences. It assessed the incremental validity of several recent or widely used religious measures over personality dimensions in predicting quality of life, racism,…