to have consulted a psychiatrist at some point. Men rated as being
agreeable in college showed more effective social relationships in mid -
dle age. Men rated as being conscientious showed less alcohol abuse
and less need of psychiatric consultation, and reached the highest levelson an Eriksonian measure of adult development.
The most fundamental influence of personality stability on life is
the fact of stability itself. As we noted in Chapter 7, in order to make alife for oneself at all one must have some firm foundations, some pre -
dictable regularities. Some sources of continuity are external to us, in -
cluding our cultural background and social class and socialization into
particular professions or groups. Others are internal, including talents,abilities, and personality traits. Choosing a major in college, decidingwhom to marry , accepting a job transfer, planning for retirement—alldepend on the knowledge that our basic motives and styles will endure.Bandura (1982) argued that part of the reason for stability in personal-ity may be that we choose and create environments that will reinforceour dispositions; regardless of the reasons, stability is a fact we mustand do count on.
Psychological Adjustment across the Lifespan
One of the saddest truths that has emerged from the experience of psy-chologists in the last century is that individuals with difficulties in liv-ing generally continue to have problems, even after extensive treatment.Tsuang, Woolson, Winokur, and Crowe (1981) have shown that 92% ofindividuals once diagnosed as schizophrenic are still judged schizo -
phrenic 30 years later. T wenty-five years after World War II, Keehn,
Goldberg, and Beebe (1974) found that soldiers given psychiatric dis -
charges were more likely to have died from suicide, homicide, acci -
dents, or alcohol-related illnesses than normal soldiers with the same
war experiences. L. N. Robins (1966) showed that deviant children aremuch more likely than others to become adult criminals, and recidivismrates from police records show that an adult criminal generally leads anentire lifetime of crime. But schizophrenia is an illness, and the socialsystem may trap some individuals into a pattern of crime. Do enduringpersonality traits in normal individuals affect long-term adjustment tolife?
Certainly . Neuroticism is the aspect of personality most relevant to
adjustment, and those high on this dimension are likely to show evi -218 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD