scholarly journals Consistency and Change in Idiographic Personality: A Longitudinal ESM Network Study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emorie D Beck ◽  
Joshua James Jackson

The study of personality development primarily focuses on between-person, nomothetic assessments of personality using assessments of personality traits. An alternative approach uses individual, idiographic personality assessment, defining personality in reference to one’s self rather than to others. Nomothetic approaches to personality development identify high levels of consistency in personality, even over decades. But the developmental pattern of idiographic personality is unclear, partially due to difficulties in assessing personality idiographically. We examine a number of traditional and novel idiographic modeling techniques using two years of ESM data from the Personality and Interpersonal Roles Study (PAIRS; N = 372 participants, total assessments N = 17,715). We computed idiographic lagged (lag 1 autoregressive) and contemporaneous (concurrent) graphical VAR models, as well as several other idiographic models, for each subject at the individual level at both waves, which are represented as networks. The utility and interpretation of these newer idiographic personality models at an individual level is demonstrated by using two example subjects. Across all participants, idiographic personality models were heterogeneous in structure, indicating the value of an idiographic approach. Contemporaneous, but not lagged, idiographic models were consistent over time. Despite normative levels of consistency, both types of idiographic models exhibited a great range of individual differences in consistency where some people were completely stable across two years whereas others were very unlike their former selves. In sum, we demonstrate that novel idiographic modeling techniques provide a useful tool to address questions of personality dynamics that were not possible with more traditional idiographic assessments.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua James Jackson ◽  
Peter Harms

The field of personality development almost exclusively relies on nomothetic measures (i.e., measures that are designed to capture universal, shared characteristics). Over-reliance on nomothetic measures can neglect important, individualized aspects of personality that are not captured with standard nomothetic measures. The current study takes an individual, idiographic approach to studying personality development by examining the development of one’s self-concept. Participants (N = 507) provided 20 answers to the question “who am I?” four times across a four-year period in college. These self-defining statements were categorized into seven categories (loci, activities and interests, traits, self-evaluation, goals, ideology, and student), and their change and consistency were examined in multiple ways—using rank-order consistency, mean-level change, individual differences in change, and ipsative consistency. Analyses revealed that self-concept is moderately consistent across time, but that mean-level changes occurred in six of the seven categories. Further, mean-level change in self-complexity, or the number of categories used, was also found. Mean-level changes were qualified by significant individual differences in change as well as by a wide distribution of ipsative consistency. The results suggest that young adults are both changing and maintaining the ways they describe themselves over time, some more than others. The diverse content and consistency at the individual-level demonstrates the need for more individual, idiographic assessments to thoroughly examine personality development.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher James Hopwood ◽  
Ted Schwaba ◽  
Wiebke Bleidorn

Personal concerns about climate change and the environment are a powerful motivator of sustainable behavior. People’s level of concern varies as a function of a variety of social and individual factors. Using data from 58,748 participants from a nationally representative German sample, we tested preregistered hypotheses about factors that impact concerns about the environment over time. We found that environmental concerns increased modestly from 2009-2017 in the German population. However, individuals in middle adulthood tended to be more concerned and showed more consistent increases in concern over time than younger or older people. Consistent with previous research, Big Five personality traits were correlated with environmental concerns. We present novel evidence that increases in concern were related to increases in the personality traits neuroticism and openness to experience. Indeed, changes in openness explained roughly 50% of the variance in changes in environmental concerns. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the individual level factors associated with changes in environmental concerns over time, towards the promotion of more sustainable behavior at the individual level.


Author(s):  
Md. Razib Alam ◽  
Bonwoo Koo ◽  
Brian Paul Cozzarin

Abstract Our objective is to study Canada’s patenting activity over time in aggregate terms by destination country, by assignee and destination country, and by diversification by country of destination. We collect bibliographic patent data from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We identify 19,957 matched Canada–US patents, 34,032 Canada-only patents, and 43,656 US-only patents from 1980 to 2014. Telecommunications dominates in terms of International Patent Classification technologies for US-only and Canada–US patents. At the firm level, the greatest number of matched Canada–US patents were granted in the field of telecommunications, at the university level in pharmaceuticals, at the government level in control and instrumentation technology, and at the individual level in civil engineering. We use entropy to quantify technological diversification and find that diversification indices decline over time for Canada and the USA; however, all US indices decline at a faster rate.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Vantilborgh

This chapter introduces the individual Psychological Contract (iPC) network model as an alternative approach to study psychological contracts. This model departs from the basic idea that a psychological contract forms a mental schema containing obligated inducements and contributions, which are exchanged for each other. This mental schema is captured by a dynamic network, in which the nodes represent the inducements and contributions and the ties represent the exchanges. Building on dynamic systems theory, I propose that these networks evolve over time towards attractor states, both at the level of the network structure and at the level of the nodes (i.e., breach and fulfilment attractor states). I highlight how the iPC-network model integrates recent theoretical developments in the psychological contract literature and explain how it may advance scholars understanding of exchange relationships. In particular, I illustrate how iPC-network models allow researchers to study the actual exchanges in the psychological contract over time, while acknowledging its idiosyncratic nature. This would allow for more precise predictions of psychological contract breach and fulfilment consequences and explains how content and process of the psychological contract continuously influence each other.


Author(s):  
Courtney A Polenick ◽  
Kira S Birditt ◽  
Angela Turkelson ◽  
Benjamin C Bugajski ◽  
Helen C Kales

Abstract Objectives Individuals often manage chronic conditions in middle and later life that may diminish well-being. Little is known, however, about discordant conditions (i.e., two or more conditions with competing self-management requirements) among older couples and their links to depressive symptoms. We considered discordant conditions at both the individual level and the couple level (i.e., between spouses), along with their long-term implications for depressive symptoms. Methods The U.S. sample included 1,116 middle-aged and older couples drawn from five waves (2006–2014) of the Health and Retirement Study. Longitudinal actor-partner interdependence models evaluated whether individual-level and couple-level discordant chronic health conditions were concurrently linked to depressive symptoms, and whether these associations became stronger over time. Models controlled for age, minority status, education, prior wave depressive symptoms, and each partner’s baseline report of negative marital quality and number of chronic conditions in each wave. Results Wives and husbands reported significantly greater depressive symptoms when they had individual-level discordant conditions about 2 years after baseline, and these links intensified over time. Beyond this association, husbands had significantly greater depressive symptoms when there were couple-level discordant conditions. Discussion Individual-level and couple-level discordant conditions may have lasting implications for depressive symptoms during midlife and older adulthood.


1982 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald R. Lehmann ◽  
William L. Moore ◽  
Terry Elrod

This paper examines Howard's (1963) typology dividing decision making into extensive problem solving (ESP), limited problem solving (LSP), and routinized response behavior (RRB). Specifically, the amount of information accessed in a longitudinal experiment is studied. Information acquisition is modeled stochastically at the individual level, and the existence of two segments (LSP and RRB) is tested in a nested-model framework.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. 1250077 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIRK VAN ROOY

This paper introduces a connectionist Agent-Based Model (cABM) that incorporates detailed, micro-level understanding of social influence processes derived from laboratory studies and that aims to contextualize these processes in such a way that it becomes possible to model multidirectional, dynamic influences in extended social networks. At the micro-level, agent processes are simulated by recurrent auto-associative networks, an architecture that has a proven ability to simulate a variety of individual psychological and memory processes [D. Van Rooy, F. Van Overwalle, T. Vanhoomissen, C. Labiouse and R. French, Psychol. Rev. 110, 536 (2003)]. At the macro-level, these individual networks are combined into a "community of networks" so that they can exchange their individual information with each other by transmitting information on the same concepts from one net to another. This essentially creates a network structure that reflects a social system in which (a collection of) nodes represent individual agents and the links between agents the mutual social influences that connect them [B. Hazlehurst, and E. Hutchins, Lang. Cogn. Process. 13, 373 (1998)]. The network structure itself is dynamic and shaped by the interactions between the individual agents through simple processes of social adaptation. Through simulations, the cABM generates a number of novel predictions that broadly address three main issues: (1) the consequences of the interaction between multiple sources and targets of social influence (2) the dynamic development of social influence over time and (3) collective and individual opinion trajectories over time. Some of the predictions regarding individual level processes have been tested and confirmed in laboratory experiments. In a extensive research program, data is currently being collected from real groups that will allow validating the predictions of cABM regarding aggregate outcomes.


1994 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter F. Merenda ◽  
Joseph L. Fava

Behaviorally descriptive adjectives and personality trait terms have been analyzed periodically by many psychological researchers and practitioners during the last half of this century. This analysis of personality-descriptive adjectives and terms has led to the development of several widely used adjective checklists for personality assessment and the postulation and the construct validation of several personality models. Foremost among the adjective checklists have been the 1948 Activity Vector Analysis (AVA), the 1950 Adjective Check List (ACL), and the more recent Personality Adjective Check List (PACL) in 1987. The first descriptions and reports of their developmental and validation research appeared in the professional refereed literature, respectively by Clarke in 1956, Gough in 1960, and Strack in 1987. The ACL contains 300 adjectives, various forms of the AVA contain 81 to 87 adjectives, and the PACL contains 153 adjectives. The dimensionality of personality models and the number of scales interpreted in the protocols from these instruments have either remained stable as in the case of AVA (4 dimensions, 6 scales) or have been quite variable over time. For example, the ACL was originally 5-dimensional with 6 scales being interpreted. Currently, the ACL yields 37 interpretable scales, and the PACL perhaps a 5-factor structure.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN L. GUSTMAN ◽  
THOMAS L. STEINMEIER ◽  
NAHID TABATABAI

AbstractStudies using data from the early 1990s suggested that while the progressive Social Security benefit formula succeeded in redistributing benefits from individuals with high earnings to individuals with low earnings, it was much less successful in redistributing benefits from households with high earnings to households with low earnings. Wives often earned much less than their husbands. As a result, much of the redistribution at the individual level was effectively from high earning husbands to their own lower earning wives. In addition, spouse and survivor benefits accrue disproportionately to women from high income households. Both factors mitigate redistribution at the household level. It has been argued that with the increase in the labor force participation and earnings of women, Social Security now should do a better job of redistributing benefits at the household level. To be sure, when we compare outcomes for a cohort with a household member age 51 to 56 in 1992 with those from a cohort born twelve years later, redistribution at the household level has increased over time. Nevertheless, as of 2004 there still is substantially less redistribution of benefits from high to low earning households than from high to low earning individuals.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise M. Saari ◽  
Charles A. Scherbaum

Over the years, employee opinion surveys have evolved in their use and how they are conducted. A major advancement has been the use of linkage analyses, whereby employee attitudes at a unit level are statistically related to other important organizational outcomes. A more recent development has been linkage analyses at the individual level and over time. In order to carry out these types of analyses, “identified surveys” must be used—surveys that retain identifying information on each survey respondent in order to link with other individual-level variables over time. The purpose of this article is to open up a discussion on identified surveys, describe under what circumstances they may be uniquely beneficial, and highlight potential concerns with them. We close with proposed guidelines for professional practice and recommend that our profession have a point of view on identified surveys for ourselves and to advise others.


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