what happens to personality dispositions with age. In the same period,
personality psychology itself has revived from a period of skepticismand stagnation, bringing new vitality to an area that has proved itself in -
dispensable in helping us to understand human beings and their lives.
We have made conceptual advances and have come to see that much ofwhat we were quarreling about was words instead of facts. A good dealhas now been established, and a completely new direction for researchon personality and aging can now be envisioned.
Conceptually , we have learned to distinguish personality traits
from the Characteristic Adaptations that they help shape. Five-FactorTheory argues that traits are biologically based Basic Tendencies that aremanifested in consistent styles of thought, feeling, and action.
The Five-Factor Model of personality has brought order to the
competing systems of personality structure by showing that most traitscan be understood in terms of the basic dimensions of Neuroticism,Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Weknow that we can measure these traits with an acceptable degree of ac-curacy by either self-reports or ratings from knowledgeable sources.
We have learned all the pitfalls of assuming that cross-sectional
comparisons show age changes, and we have considered the evidencefrom longitudinal and sequential designs as well. And study afterstudy has shown that, aside from small declines in Neuroticism,Extraversion, and Openness, there is neither growth nor decline inadult personality after age 30. A psychology whose sole purpose wasto explain how personality changes with age would have little to say .Indeed, it becomes more pertinent to explain how personality remainsstable.
For stable it is, not only in groups, but in the rank order of individ -
uals. Longitudinal studies using a variety of instruments, and using rat -
ers as well as individuals’ own reports, find great continuity in the level
of traits in individuals. These same findings are confirmed by retrospec -
tive accounts that show the same traits active in youth and in old age.
But the stability of traits does not imply that life itself must be repe -
titious and stagnant. Lives change, history moves on, and all of us must
work to adapt to change or actively reshape our lives. Internally , oursense of self, our fundamental identity , may change as the social roles,values, physical attributes, and personal relationships that are central toit shift.234 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD