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The article explores the truth about personality maturation and how desirable traits grow over time. It refers to extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness and neuroticism as the Big Five personality traits aligned to better life outcomes. The probability of people to mature as they change considering the five personality traits is explored.

Studies have reported associations between the five-factor model’s personality traits and inflammation markers interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP). Findings, however, have been inconsistent. This study investigates these associations in individuals who ranged in age from approximately 70 to 73 years.

The Five Factor Model (FFM), a valid model of interindividual differences in the personality of a group of people, reportedly does not always provide a good fit for the individuals of that group. In addition to intraindividual variation across a considerable period of time, meaningful intraindividual variation can be observed within a single test administration. Two person-fit indices showed that the FFM is an adequate model for 95% of the 1,765 target-judge pairs in four different countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany): the double-entry intraclass correlation (ICCDE), which indicated that the 30 NEO PI-R scores on scales measuring the same personality trait are more similar and certainly less different than scores measuring different traits, and the individual contribution to the extracted eigenvalues (Zeig). The individual response pattern to the personality questionnaire characterized by the ICCDEand Zeigstrongly determined the percentage of explained variance for the group-level factor structure of interindividual differences and the mean self-observer profile agreement. We demonstrate that, if the percentage of variance explained by the first five principal components is high enough, the FFM also provides an adequate fit at the individual level for most people.

The distinction between the effects people expect alcohol to have on themselves and on others is poorly understood. This study employs the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality for investigating these two types of beliefs. Participants responded to short personality questionnaires with instructions to describe themselves and an average young man while moderately intoxicated; they also described their actual and desired personality trait levels. Intoxication was believed to decrease Conscientiousness and increase Neuroticism as well as Extraversion for actors as well as observers alike, while predictions for Openness and Agreeableness depended on the rating target. Profile similarity analysis revealed that, although both types of beliefs reflected socially undesirable trait levels in domains other than Extraversion, actor-expectations were less undesirable than observer-expectations. Implications of the findings suggest that the FFM can be profitably used to study intoxication-related beliefs.

The Estonian version of the International Personality Item Pool NEO (IPIP-NEO; Goldberg, 1999) was administered to 297 participants in parallel with the Estonian version of the NEO-PI-R (Kallasmaa, Allik, Realo, & McCrae, 2000). On average, the EPIP-NEO items were 3 words, 7 syllables, and 18 characters shorter than the NEO-PI-R items. By all relevant psychometrical properties the EPIP-NEO was comparable to the NEO-PI-R. The mean convergent correlation between the facet scales was .73. The scales with shorter and grammatically simpler items tended to have higher internal consistency. In an independent cross-validation sample the initial results were generally replicated. The scales also demonstrated an adequate cross-observer agreement. It is concluded that the EPIP-NEO, as a more readable personality inventory compared to the NEO-PI-R, is suitable for a wider range of samples with different levels of reading skills.