Preface
During the 1970s several major longitudinal studies of personality were
completed and published, providing for the first time a solid scientificbasis for evaluating theories of personality and aging. To almost every-one’s surprise, all these studies pointed to an extraordinary degree ofstability: Personality apparently changes little after age 30 in most peo-ple. After several years of testing our interpretation of the data andworking out some of its implications for personality psychology and foran understanding of adult life, we published a small book on the topic(McCrae & Costa, 1984).
In the next few years several additional longitudinal studies were
reported that generally confirmed early findings. But the major develop -
ment of the 1980s was the rediscovery of the Five-Factor Model (FFM)
and the demonstration that it was indeed a comprehensive model ofpersonality trait structure, including virtually all the traits identified incommon language and in scientific theories. This was arguably the mostimportant advance in modern personality psychology , because it put torest the unfruitful competition between rival trait models that had goneon for decades, and it allowed a systematic approach to the study of per -
sonality . We brought out a new version of our book in 1990 that de -
scribed the FFM and its implications for the study of aging.
The current revision of our book Personality in Adulthood reports
progress over the past decade. There are three notable changes since thelast edition.
First, detailed research in large samples has made it possible (and
necessary) to qualify our original claims about stability . Although it re -
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