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Abstract

Over the past decades, extensive meta-analytic evidence has shown that personality traits exhibit both enduring stability and change in adulthood. Alongside normative trait developments across populations, people differ substantially in the direction and extent of their personality trait changes across their lifespan. Personality traits become increasingly stable across adulthood, which raises the question of whether personality malleability decreases with age as a function of biological, contextual, and motivational changes linked to aging. However, the mechanisms underlying individual and age differences in trait change remain largely unclear. To explain how trait changes can be initiated and maintained, more recent research investigates pre-action (e.g., change goals), action (e.g., states), and post-action (e.g., self-reflections) factors proposed by process theories of personality development. Yet, empirical investigations of these processes and potential differences in younger and older adults have been scarcely studied. Thus, the current dissertation investigated the role of state changes, self-reflections, and age as predictors of trait development. The focus was on the social-emotional traits of emotional stability and extraversion, which are associated with mental health, relational and professional success, and which many individuals desire to increase. Moreover, this dissertation overcomes methodological limitations of research using correlational and self-reported data by employing a multi-method approach with assessments of explicit and implicit self-concepts and three different pre-registered study designs: an intervention (N = 165, aged 19–78), an experiment (N = 231, aged 18–93), and a binational longitudinal study (N = 615, aged 18–84). Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of relevant theories, literature, and empirical evidence of processes of personality trait development. Chapter 2 examines associations between changes in personality states and explicit and implicit trait self-concepts during an 8-week intervention in younger and older adults, as well as the stability of these trait changes up to 12 months afterward. Findings demonstrated changes in states and explicit self-concepts for both traits, and in the implicit self-concept of extraversion. Only for emotional stability, state changes predicted corresponding explicit self-concept changes. Effects were similar for younger and older adults, and older adults showed higher engagement in the intervention. Chapter 3 investigates whether the reflective processes of past-temporal and social comparisons affect explicit and implicit self-concepts, and whether these effects differ by age. Two studies were conducted. In the longitudinal study, past-temporal and social comparisons predicted changes in the explicit self-concept of emotional stability but not extraversion over 6 months. In the experimental study, inducing state changes and past-temporal vs. social comparisons led to changes in explicit self-concepts of both traits, regardless of the comparison type. In line with theories, comparisons did not predict changes in implicit self-concepts. Younger and older adults changed similarly across experimental conditions. Chapter 4 examines domain specificity, temporal stability, and age differences in comparisons. In the longitudinal study, participants reported the frequency and perceived usefulness of past-temporal and social comparisons across five domains. Results showed that comparison tendencies were domain-specific, with high correlations between past-temporal and social comparisons within each domain. Comparison tendencies were stable over four weeks and partially predicted behavior 6 months later. Older adults used and valued comparisons less. Chapter 5 investigates associations between age, personality trait levels, and trait-specific comparisons and general self-reflections (explorative and ruminative) in the sample of the longitudinal study. Older adults reported fewer self-reflections than younger adults, with age differences being more pronounced for trait-specific comparisons than for general self-reflections. Higher trait levels were associated with fewer trait-specific comparisons, and some comparisons were more closely tied to trait levels in older adults. Chapter 6 integrates findings across chapters regarding their implications for theories and further research on personality development, while highlighting the strengths and limitations of this dissertation. In conclusion, the chapters support the proposition of process theories that state changes and self-reflections are crucial for trait development. Overall, older adults showed similar trait changes when engaged in interventions and reported similar frequencies of trait-specific self-reflection as younger adults outside intervention contexts, if their trait levels were low. These findings could suggest that trait change remains feasible across the entire lifespan when motivation and behavioral activation are present.