adult personality were reported. Fortunately , all these studies have been
in substantial agreement, and so we can draw our conclusions with con -
siderable confidence.
There is, however, one approach in this area that parallels the
cross-sectional study as a quick method of seeing what changes occur toan individual over the lifespan. In the retrospective study , people areasked to recall what they were like at earlier ages and compare theirpresent state. On the whole, psychologists have been extremely leery ofthis kind of research (e.g., Halverson, 1988). Memory , they maintain,has ways of playing tricks on people. In fact, a number of studies haveshown that people can and do distort the past, whether consciously ornot. Many more people, for example, “remember” voting for the win -
ning candidate than election results could possibly allow. There has
been very little research comparing memories of earlier personality withactual records. However, the recent harvest of longitudinal findings al-lows us to compare retrospective reports with objective facts. As we willsee, they suggest that conclusions based on retrospective reports gener-ally square with prospective longitudinal findings.
DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS IN INDIVIDUALS
Although most personality theorists assume that adult personality is insome way an outgrowth or developmental continuation of earlier per-sonality , other views are also possible. We have already encountered(and, we hope, countered) the critical view that wholly denies the real -
ity of personality , assigning to it the status of a social myth or a meta -
physical existence like that of the soul. So elusive and insubstantial an
entity could hardly be said either to change or to stay the same, and thewhole issue would be banished from the realm of scientific inquiry . Amore moderate position might hold that personality is like mood—areal enough phenomenon, but one that comes and goes according tolaws so obscure that it seems completely random. Finally , a number ofcontemporary psychologists would probably conceptualize personalityas largely a function of the recent environment. They might seeExtraversion, for example, as a set of learned responses to social situa -
tions: One’s environment may change radically as one goes from one’s
parents’ home to college to one work situation and then another and fi -
nally to a retirement home. In some of these situations the person mayThe Course of Personality Development 101