be rewarded for friendliness, leadership, and energetic behavior. In oth -
ers, independence, compliance, or quiet may be preferred and rein -
forced. After months or years in such circumstances, the individual may
come to internalize the system of rewards and punishments, to assumethe qualities promoted by the environment. Personality may change.
Note that this kind of change is not necessarily age related. Chance
may play a large role (Bandura, 1982). What are neighbors like? Whatjobs are available? What does the family expect, and what are the effectsof remarriage or of having or losing children? Conceivably one might bean introvert at 20, 40, and 60 and an extravert at 30, 50, and 70. Laterpersonality might not be predictable at all from earlier personality . Ifthere were any continuity in personality , it could be attributed to thestability of supporting environments. If the life structure remains thesame, personality will too; but a change in the first could lead to achange in the second.
This extreme environmentalist position, compatible with older
versions of social learning theory , is appealing neither to personalitytheorists nor to developmentalists. It locates the origin of behavior incircumstances, temporarily internalized, but easily replaced when cir-cumstances change. Personality psychologists like to believe that per-sonality is an intrinsic part of the person, changeable perhaps, but notquite so readily and with so little regard for the qualities that the indi-vidual brings to his or her exchanges with the environment. Develop-mentalists would also take exception to the social learning view , sincethey see personality as something that unfolds more or less naturally ,each phase an outgrowth of earlier developments. Personality is some -
thing with history , they would say , not simply a mirror of current
events.
Of course, the fact that the environmentalist view of personality is
distasteful to those interested in personality and aging does not in theleast mean that it is wrong. T wenty years ago, in fact, a majority of psy -
chologists would probably have said that it was correct (many still
would; see Lewis, 2001). At that time there were few studies that couldreally address the issue, but a number have since appeared.
True or false, the environmentalist view is certainly less beguiling
than developmental theories, with their sometimes elaborate chains ofgrowth, unfolding, and transformation. Central to the idea of develop -
ment is notion of continuity : In any developmental sequence, a single
organism goes through a series of changes, each an expression of the102 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD