Search

The current longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between the development of future perceptions in adolescence and depressive symptoms in adolescence and early and middle adulthood. Participants (N = 1,527; 48.3% female; broadly representative of Western Germany with respect to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status) were measured yearly in adolescence at the age of 12 to 16 years and then in adulthood at the age of 35 and 45. Future perceptions were assessed during adolescence, whereas depressive symptoms were assessed at the age of 16, 35, and 45. Three important results stand out. First, the measure of future perceptions functioned equivalently across adolescence. Second, the development of future perceptions during adolescence varied across individuals, though mean-level stability was evidenced in the sample. Third, individual differences in the level and change of future perceptions during adolescence predicted depressive symptoms in adolescence and adulthood. These findings demonstrate that one's perception of the future not only has short-term affective consequences but may have long-term effects on depressive symptoms beyond adolescence.

Background: Given the gendering of engineering roles and competencies, the evidence that the skills required for engineering management are widely referred to as social, and the fact that men engineers are stereotyped as more technical, and women as more social, it might be theorized that (a) those that occupy managerial (vs. technical) roles in engineering are more socially oriented, and (b) that this will especially be the case for women. However, no research has empirically tested the relationship between having socially oriented characteristics and being in managerial roles within the engineering profession, nor have gender differences been examined. Purpose: We test whether social interests and communal goal strivings are linked to engineers' positioning in managerial roles and explore gender as a moderator of these relationships. Additionally, because enterprising interests and agentic goal strivings have been linked to managerial roles in other occupations, we test these as additional predictors of engineers' positioning in managerial roles. Method: In a field survey of 274 industry engineers from multiple organizations and subfields, we tested the relationships described using hierarchical linear regression analysis. Results: Enterprising interests and agentic goals, but not social interests and communal goals, were associated with being in managerial roles, and there were no gender differences in these relationships. Conclusions: Our findings challenge perceptions that managerial roles in engineering, and particularly women's positioning in these roles, are associated with socially oriented tendencies. Findings have implications for research on gender stereotyping and intraoccupational gender segregation in engineering and hold educational implications for curriculum, instruction, and advising.

ObjectivesResearch has demonstrated sense of purpose predicts better health in older adulthood. However, work is limited with respect to understanding how experiencing a health event or illness diagnosis impacts older adults' sense of purpose.MethodThe current study employed a propensity score matching approach to compare older adults who did or did not experience an adverse health event on changes in sense of purpose across 3 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Sense of purpose was assessed at each wave, and changes were compared between people who did versus did not experience one of 7 diagnoses and health events.ResultsWhen propensity score matching was employed, no differences in trajectories of change for sense of purpose were found with respect to all 7 events. Individual differences in trajectories, however, were evidenced across groups.DiscussionThe current findings suggest that even when health events impact older adults' physical functioning or place limitations on their activity, they may hold little ramifications for their sense of purpose. Future research should consider this potential for resilience, focusing on how adults compensate for losses.

A core attribute of the positive youth development movement has been to nullify negative perceptions of youth's capacities. Toward this end, measurement and classification systems benefit from efforts to view youth's capacities as assets contextualized by developmental potentials and opportunities. In this article, we consider this point with respect to whether youth are purposeful. The prevailing sentiment of some researchers holds that few adolescents have a purpose in life, perhaps reifying negative beliefs about their capacity. We assert an alternative view that focuses on "sense of purpose," which relies on abundant evidence that adolescents generally perceive themselves to be purposeful, thus offering a more inclusive and positive portrayal of young people. This different perspective also opens the door to new opportunities for studying the development of purpose among marginalized adolescents, as well as how interventions may motivate a sense of purpose among youth.

Being securely attached and willing to forgive your partner tends to promote greater relationship success. Though attachment and partner forgiveness are associated cross-sectionally, research has yet to investigate whether and how these positive relationship factors tend to codevelop over time. The current study examined cross-lagged effects and correlated changes in partner forgivingness and attachment across a 2-year period with two measurement occasions (n = 514 individuals). Additionally, dyadic analyses were conducted with a subsample of dyads in the study (n = 149 dyads). Individual level analyses evidenced negative cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between attachment-anxiety and forgivingness. Attachment-avoidance and forgivingness showed significant correlated changes over time. Dyadic level analyses showed that attachment-avoidance predicted partner forgivingness 2 years later but not vice versa. Findings suggest that longitudinal associations between attachment and forgivingness may take different forms at the individual and dyadic level.

McCrae (2020) argues that it is premature to explore interventions focused on personality change. In his commentary, he suggests that interventions should be promoted only if their effects in self-report data are confirmed by the additional opinion of informants. We agree with the essence of his position and would go further by envisioning a new framework for rigorous collaborative research on personality change (Bleidorn et al., 2020). We nevertheless maintain that policymakers would benefit from considering the additional opinion of personality scientists. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Personality traits are powerful predictors of outcomes in the domains of education, work, relationships, health, and well-being. The recognized importance of personality traits has raised questions about their policy relevance, that is, their potential to inform policy actions designed to improve human welfare. Traditionally, the use of personality traits in applied settings has been predicated on their ability to predict valued outcomes, typically under the assumption that traits are functionally unchanging. This assumption, however, is both untrue and a limiting factor on using personality traits more widely in applied settings. In this article, we present the case that traits can serve both as relatively stable predictors of success and actionable targets for policy changes and interventions. Though trait change will likely prove a more difficult target than typical targets in applied interventions, it also may be a more fruitful one given the variety of life domains affected by personality traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A minimal amount of information is known about how adolescents and emerging adults construe purpose and meaning in life, leaving many researchers to assume youth think about these constructs consistent with scientific understandings. In this preregistered study, we compared adolescent and emerging adult conceptions of purpose and meaning using directed content analysis. High school and college students were randomly assigned to write about purpose, meaning, or a control topic. Themes mentioned within the written samples did not significantly differ across purpose and meaning conditions, and this pattern did not significantly vary between adolescents and emerging adults. However, many who wrote about meaning mentioned purpose explicitly, suggesting nuanced differentiation. These findings can inform how purpose and meaning are studied and the development of future interventions.

Conscientiousness and sense of purpose consistently predict health, wellbeing, and health behavior. However, it remains an open question whether they are unique or overlapping predictors of health and wellbeing. The current study considered this question using the MOSAiCH study, a nationally representative sample of 2305 Swiss adults (M : 52.33 years old; SD = 17.36). Participants reported on sense of purpose and conscientiousness, in addition to multiple health, wellbeing, and health behavior indicators (e.g. dietary practices, activity engagement, health conditions, psychological concerns, and doctor visits). Results found conscientiousness and sense of purpose were moderately associated with multiple health, wellbeing, and health behavior indicators. Bifactor modeling was employed to test the incremental validity of conscientiousness and sense of purpose, when accounting for their shared variance. The specific factor for purpose predicted outcomes even when accounting for conscientiousness. However, conscientiousness had little incremental validity over the general factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated how perceived social support was associated with personality trait development in a Swedish longitudinal sample (n = 3914; mean age = 63.09 years) with six waves of data on individuals' Big Five personality traits, and perceived support from family, friends, and a special someone. We employed random intercept cross-lagged panel models to consider the between- and within-person associations for these constructs over time. First, in almost all cases, between-person associations were found between the levels for personality traits and support variables. Moreover, findings did not differ much depending on the source of the relationship. Second, again in almost every model, significant within-person covariances were evidenced, suggesting that when individuals increased on support relative to their typical level at a given wave, they also tended to report higher levels than they typically do on these traits. Finally, however, little evidence was found for cross-lagged effects in either direction. Across models, only one cross-lagged association even reached significance. In sum, our findings support the close connection between personality and perceived social support in older adulthood, and they motivate future directions into when and why such associations occur using more proximal measurements. Plain language summary: In older adulthood, social relationships take on new meanings and importance compared to earlier in the lifespan. However, work is needed to understand how social relationships may shape the kind of person we are, or our personalities, in older adulthood. The current study examined whether older adults' personality changed in tandem with their social support levels. Older adults were asked to report on their personality and how much they felt supported six times, one year apart. Our findings suggest that when older adults feel more or less supported by others, it often coincides with changes in their personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive gerontology research requires consideration of performance as well as perceptions of performance. While subjective memory is positively associated with memory performance, these correlations typically are modest in magnitude, leading to the need to consider whether certain people may show weaker or stronger linkages between performance and perceptions. The current study leveraged personality (NEO Big Five), memory performance (i.e., word recall), and perceptions of memory ability (i.e., metamemory in adulthood and memory decline) data from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) study (n = 774, mean age: 71.52 years). Extraversion and conscientiousness held the most consistent associations with the cognitive variables of interest, as both traits were positively associated with metamemory and word recall, but negatively associated with subjective decline. Moreover, extraversion moderated associations between word recall and both memory capacity and complaints, insofar that objective-subjective associations were weaker for those adults higher in extraversion. These findings highlight the need to understand how personality influences the sources of information employed for subjective cognitive beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the developmental benefits associated with higher sense of purpose, past work has aimed to understand how experiences of adversity relate to sense of purpose. With a specific focus on experiences of adversity that may impact individuals from marginalized groups, past work has found that discrimination is related to lower sense of purpose in life, but that these effects are weaker for Black adults relative to White adults. The current research aims to extend past work by examining how and for whom discrimination is related to sense of purpose in life. Moreover, the current work also aimed to understand the extent to which sense of purpose spans across generations and whether there are generational differences in the relationship between discrimination and sense of purpose. Using data from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study, 822 parents (G1 participants) and 654 children (G2 participants) completed measures for sense of purpose, major experiences of discrimination, and personality traits. Results found mixed evidence for a relationship between discrimination and sense of purpose, with little evidence for consistent moderators. In addition, while the current work found no evidence of intergenerational associations for sense of purpose, results showed that discrimination was positively associated across generations, suggesting a potential for an intergenerational cycle of marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early adverse experiences can hold lasting influence on later life outcomes, particularly during formative developmental periods such as adolescence. The current study evaluates the impact of different kinds of adolescent trauma on later sense of purpose in adulthood, using data from the Hawaii Longitudinal Study of Personality and Health. Participants (n = 545) retrospectively reported three kinds of trauma during adolescence: (1) non-betrayal trauma, such as a natural disaster; (2) low betrayal trauma, such as being abused by a stranger; and (3) high betrayal trauma, such as being abused by a relative. At a later assessment, participants (M[subscript age] = 60.15, SD = 1.96) reported their sense of purpose. Trauma scores were uncorrelated with sense of purpose for the overall sample. However, the associations differed when comparing two of the largest cultural groups in the sample, Japanese Americans and Native Hawaiians. For participants who identified as Japanese American, trauma scores held a negative association with later sense of purpose across multiple measures. Results are discussed with respect to how early life experiences differentially impact purpose development across individuals.

Are recent cohorts of college students more narcissistic than their predecessors? To address debates about the so-called "narcissism epidemic," we used data from three cohorts of students (1990s: N = 1,166; 2000s: N = 33,647; 2010s: N = 25,412) to test whether narcissism levels (overall and specific facets) have increased across generations. We also tested whether our measure, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), showed measurement equivalence across the three cohorts, a critical analysis that had been overlooked in prior research. We found that several NPI items were not equivalent across cohorts. Models accounting for nonequivalence of these items indicated a small decline in overall narcissism levels from the 1990s to the 2010s ( d = -0.27). At the facet level, leadership ( d = -0.20), vanity ( d = -0.16), and entitlement ( d = -0.28) all showed decreases. Our results contradict the claim that recent cohorts of college students are more narcissistic than earlier generations of college students.