304 III. DEvELOPMENT
their relationships with different forms of 
adaptive and more maladaptive function -
ing. Perspectives on individual differences, 
in association with environmental models 
of change, are extremely helpful in under -
standing why not all adolescents behave and 
develop alike, and may follow different de -
velopmental pathways. These various trajec -
tories may lead to not only more adaptive 
outcomes, such as well-being, interpersonal 
connectedness, social–  emotional skills or 
educational achievements, but also to more 
maladaptive outcomes, including different 
forms of psychopathology.
We begin this chapter with a brief histori -
cal review of trait research spanning pre- to 
late adolescence, including an overview of 
current knowledge on gender and age dif -
ferences. This is followed by a more applied 
section on the significance of traits to un -
derstand various consequential outcomes in 
adolescence. We close the chapter with rec -
ommendations on how personality research 
can advance knowledge of adolescent devel -
opment and functioning.
Discovering and  Measuring the  Big Five
Research on personality traits in adolescence 
is nowadays well established. Its origins go 
back to John Digman (1963) who was the 
first to demonstrate that broad personality 
dimensions, like the ones we know today 
as the Big Five (Goldberg, 1990), could be 
retrieved in teacher  ratings of students as 
early as the first and second grade. Initial -
ly Digman (1963) used a Q -sort procedure 
with 39 items and retained way too many 
factors (11 factors based on only 39 items). 
However, in subsequent work, Digman and 
Inouye (1986) analyzed teachers’ Q -sort rat -
ings of 499 sixth-grade children on 43 scales 
and extracted fewer (seven) factors: Five re -
sembled the Big Five as we now know them, 
namely, Introversion–  Extraversion (Sur -
gency), Considerate and Conscientiousness 
(Agreeableness), Will (to Achieve), Emo -
tional Stability, and Intellect (including also 
items related to Openness to Experience), 
whereas the two surplus factors were mar -
ginally loaded by verbal expression items 
or loaded by imaginative and aesthetically 
sensitive items, respectively. Although Dig -man and Inouye (1986) used different labels 
at that time, in hindsight, clear correspon -
dence can be noted between their “Surgen -
cy” factor and Extraversion, “Considerate 
and Conscientiousness” and Agreeableness, 
and “Will to Achieve” and today’s Consci -
entiousness component; “Emotional Stabil -
ity” is labeled identically in contemporary 
FFM research, and finally ‘Intellect’ corre -
sponds with references to Openness to ex -
perience. It is further worth mentioning that 
part of the content of one of their additional 
factors would be nowadays classified under 
the Openness factor (i.e., items referring to 
imagination and aesthetics), whereas also 
the blend of Considerate and Conscientious -
ness can be observed in contemporary FFM 
research, where traits such as “respect” usu -
ally are located at the intersection of Agree -
ableness and Conscientiousness, creating 
such a blending factor.
Continued Top‑Down  Research
Digman’s pioneering work was followed 
by research of a more top-down nature,  
in which measures primarily developed for 
adults were, often after small modifications, 
used to describe personality differences in 
children and adolescents. John, Donahue, 
and Kentle (1991) carefully reviewed all the 
available Big Five research on youth and 
adults, then identified core elements shared 
across studies and represented this content 
in their Big Five Inventory (BFI) consisting 
of 44 short personality descriptive items that 
are understandable by fifth graders (John & 
Srivastava, 1999). Soto, John, Gosling, and 
Potter (2008) showed that the Big Five factor 
structure emerged by age 10, but only after 
they corrected for acquiescence.
Mervielde, Buyst, and De Fruyt (1995) 
proposed the Big Five Bipolaire Beoordel -
ingschalen-25 (B5-BBS25; Mervielde, 1992) 
and investigated the structure and validity 
of teacher ratings of 4- to 12-year-olds to 
predict school grades. For kindergarten-  age 
children, evidence for a four-  factor struc -
ture was found, with conscientiousness and 
intellect/openness items blending into a sin -
gle factor. When students entered primary 
school, however, a distinct five-  factor struc -
ture emerged, with a clear split of openness 
and conscientiousness items. At the age that 