The occurrence of major life events is associated with changes in mental health, well-being, and personality. To better understand these effects, it is important to consider how individuals perceive major life events. Although theories such as Appraisal Theory and Affective Adaptation Theory suggest that event perceptions change over time and that these changes are relevant for personality and well-being, stability and change of the perceptions of major life events have not been systematically examined. The present paper aims to fill this gap using data from a longitudinal study (N = 619 at T1). In this study, participants rated nine characteristics of the same major life event up to five times within one year with the Event Characteristics Questionnaire. We estimated rank-order and mean-level stabilities as well as intraclass correlations of the nine life event characteristics with continuous time models. Furthermore, we computed continuous time models for the stability of affective well-being and the Big Five personality traits to generate benchmarks for the interpretation of the stability coefficients. Rank-order stabilities of the life event characteristics were lower than for the Big Five, but higher than for affective well-being. Furthermore, we found significant mean-level changes for the life event characteristics extraordinariness, change in world views and external control. Most of the variance in life event characteristics was explained by between-person differences. Future research should examine whether these changes in perceived event characteristics are associated with changes in other constructs and which factors contribute to the stability and change of perceived event characteristics.
Stability and change of perceived characteristics of major life events.