subjects were somewhat less likely to describe themselves in terms of
traits that reflected emotional instability or Neuroticism, but none ofthe other personality factors was significantly associated with age. Self-esteem was also unrelated to age; instead, it was associated with lowlevels of Neuroticism and high levels of Extraversion. Adjusted extra -
verts have high self-esteem at any age. Third, age was only modestly re -
lated to the other scoring categories. Older subjects were somewhat less
likely to describe themselves in terms of family relationships and some -
what more likely to mention daily activities and attitudes. Age itself was
rarely mentioned as a salient part of the self-concept. Older people maythink of themselves as citizens, parents, curious individuals, or garden -
ing enthusiasts, but they apparently don’t think much about being old.
Perhaps they have learned that age itself is not very important for de -
scribing what they are like as persons.
***
This chapter set out to consider criticisms of the stability position that
might be offered by personologists with different theoretical and meth-odological preferences. We conceded that the processes by whichbehavior is integrated and organized, both moment by moment andover the sweep of a lifetime, are not explicitly addressed by trait models,as they should be in a complete theory of personality . But we also ar-gued that individual differences in these processes, including differ-ences between young and old people, were likely to have trait-like char-acteristics and that, in fact, the traits we normally measure are as likelyto influence the organization and integration of other traits as they areto influence specific behaviors. To the extent that this is true, we mightargue that there are probably no age differences in ego processes.
But is that true? Or are there other organizing features of personal -
ity that have eluded the grasp of self-report trait measures? To answer
this, we turned to the favored resort of theorists who concentrate on egoprocesses—projective methods. We found that, to the extent that theydepart from the information that could be obtained from self-reports,these measures are generally unreliable and invalid, except perhaps assamples of cognitive behavior or as evidence of shadowy processes (likemastery style) that have little relevance to daily functioning or thecourse of life. To the extent that they mirror conscious concerns and162 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD