 12. Personality Development in Middle Childhood  285
particularly important time for personality 
development, because it is during this period 
that children begin to display traits more 
similar to adults; exhibit individual differ -
ences in goals, motives, and coping strate -
gies; and consolidate important life-  defining 
memories that may form the later basis for 
life narratives.
In this chapter, I present empirical find -
ings that substantiate the claim that middle 
childhood is an especially rich period for per -
sonality development. Rather than provid -
ing an in-depth look at any one component 
of children’s personalities, I highlight the 
broad range of interesting and important in -
dividual differences among school-  age chil -
dren. The chapter is organized in three main 
sections. The first provides an update on the 
biological, cognitive, social–  emotional, and 
contextual changes in middle childhood that 
enable children to display such a wide range 
of personality differences during this period. 
In the second section, I review research on 
children’s individuality as actors —with a 
focus on the Big Five traits, plus the addi -tional trait of Activity. In the third section, 
I review children’s emerging differences as 
agents —meaning their goals, values, and 
strategies for coping with stress and adversi -
ty. For each aspect of personality, I describe 
what is known about its structure, then re -
view any existing research on patterns of 
rank-order stability  (the extent to which 
individuals maintain their relative standing 
on an individual difference over time) and 
mean-level stability  (normative patterns in 
which a sample as a whole changes on av -
erage levels of an individual difference over 
time). In this chapter, I focus on the first two 
levels of McAdams’s personality model—the 
individual as actor and agent, because the 
third level—the individual as author,  does 
not emerge fully until adolescence (McAd -
ams, 2015, 2019), although I highlight this 
aspect of individuality later as an important 
topic for future research. At the end of the 
chapter, I summarize key findings and offer 
several suggestions for future work on per -
sonality development in this vital but some -
times neglected period of life.EARLYTRAITS
Positive emotiona lity, negative 
emotiona lity, effortful control, 
precursors to agreeablene ss and 
openn ess to experience
“Little Six” Traits: 
Big Five + Activity
Individual 
Differences in 
Agency
Goals, values, 
coping strategiesCOMPETENCE
Children ’s mast ery of 
the developmental tasks 
of middle childhoo d:  
rule-abiding conduct, 
academic  achievement, 
and social competence 
with peers
Emerging Life 
StoriesPersonality in 
Middle Childhood
FIGURE 12.1.  A conceptual model for personality development in middle childhood.