FOCUS ON RESEARCH Personality Development over Time

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The Humanistic Approach
doing
2
learn
by
CULTURE AND PERSONALITY In individualist cultures,
most children learn early that
personal distinction is valued by parents,
teachers, and peers. In collectivist cultures, having a strong sense of self-worth
may be seen as less important. In other
words, the features of “normal” personality development vary from culture to culture. Make a list of the core values you
have learned. Which of them are typical
of individualist cultures, which are typical
of collectivist cultures, and which reflect a
combination of both?
differences in self-systems may produce differences in what gives people a sense of
well-being and satisfaction (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). For example, in the United
States, a sense of well-being is usually associated with having positive attributes, such
as intelligence, creativity, competitiveness, persistence, and so on. In Japan and other
Asian countries, feelings of well-being are more likely to be associated with having no
negative attributes (Eliot et al., 2001). Studies of thousands of people all over the world
indicate that in collectivist cultures, life satisfaction is associated with having social
approval and harmonious relations with others. In individualist cultures, life satisfaction is associated with having high self-esteem and good feelings about one’s own life
(Uchida et al., 2001).
Because cultural factors shape ideas about how the ideal personality develops, it is
important to evaluate various approaches to personality in terms of how well they apply
to cultures other than the one in which they were developed (Cross & Markus, 1999).
Their applicability to males and females must be considered as well. Even within North
American cultures, for example, there are gender differences in the development of selfesteem. Females tend to show an interdependent self-system, achieving their sense of
self and self-esteem from attachments to others. By contrast, males’ self-esteem tends
to develop in relation to personal achievement, in a manner more in keeping with an
independent self-system (Cross & Madson, 1997). Cross-gender and cross-cultural differences in the nature and determinants of a sense of self highlight the widespread
effects of gender and culture on the development of many aspects of human personality (Zakriski, Wright, & Underwood, 2005).
P
FOCUS ON RESEARCH
sychologists have long been interested
in how people’s personalities differ, but
they also want to know why those difPersonality Development
ferences appear. Some search for the source
over Time
of personality differences by looking at
infants’ differing temperaments. As noted in
the chapter on human development, temperament is reflected in the unlearned, generalized patterns of emotional expression and other behavior that humans display
from birth (Buss, 1997).
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Chapter 11 Personality
■ What was the researchers’ question?
Can young children’s temperaments predict their personality characteristics and behaviors as adults?
■ How did the researchers answer the question?
To try to answer this question, Avshalom Caspi and his colleagues conducted a longitudinal study in which the same people were assessed at several different times in
their lives (Caspi, 2000; Caspi & Silva, 1995; Caspi et al., 1997; Caspi et al., 1995,
2003). The research sample included all the children born in Dunedin, New Zealand,
between April 1972 and March 1973—a total of about 1,000 people. When these children were three years old, research assistants observed them in a standard situation
and rated them on a number of dimensions, including the degree to which they
showed explosive or uncontrolled behavior, interacted easily with others, or acted
withdrawn and unresponsive. These observations were used to place each child into
one of five temperament categories: undercontrolled (irritable, impatient, emotional),
inhibited (shy, fearful, easily distracted), confident (eager to perform, responsive to
questions), reserved (withdrawn, uncomfortable), and well adjusted (friendly, well
controlled). The children were observed and categorized again when they were five,
seven, and nine years old. If it occurs to you that seeing a child at one point in life
might bias an observer’s ratings of that child later on, you are right. To ensure that
ratings would not be influenced by this kind of observer bias, the researchers
arranged for different people to make the ratings at each point in time. These ratings indicated that the children’s temperaments stayed about the same over the years
from age three to age nine.
When the research participants were twenty-one, they were interviewed about their
involvement in risky and unhealthy behaviors, such as excessive drinking, violent criminal activities, unprotected sex, and unsafe driving habits. To avoid bias, the interviewers were given no information about the participants’ childhood temperaments. At age
twenty-six, the participants took a standard personality test and were rated by friends
on the big-five personality dimensions.
■ What did the researchers find?
Several significant differences were found in the personality test results of the five original temperament groups. For example, the average test scores of twenty-six-year-olds
who had been classified as “undercontrolled” in childhood showed that they were more
alienated, uninhibited, and stressed than the other temperament groups. Further, people who had been classified as “confident” or “well adjusted” as children tended to be
better adjusted and more extraverted at twenty-six than people who had been classified as “inhibited” or “reserved.” These findings held true for males and females alike.
There were also small but significant correlations between childhood temperament
and risky behavior in young adulthood. For example, “undercontrolled” children were
about twice as likely as others to develop personalities that are associated with violence,
excessive drinking, and other health-risky behaviors (Caspi et al., 2003).
■ What do the results mean?
The results of this research provide support for a hypothesis long endorsed by personality psychologists, namely that we can make relatively accurate predictions about people’s
personalities and behaviors as adults if we know about their temperaments as children
(e.g. Schwartz et al., 2003). But as critical thinkers, we must be careful not to overstate
the strength of these results. Although the correlations between temperament and personality and between temperament and various problematic behaviors were statistically
significant, they were also relatively small. In other words, not all children classified as
“undercontrolled” at age three turned out to be aggressive or violent at eighteen. So it is
more accurate to say that personality may be influenced and shaped by temperament,
but not completely determined by it (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006).