they answered questions the first time and repeat their performance on
subsequent administrations despite real changes in their personality .This possibility is frequently advanced, but it becomes more and moreimplausible on examination. Why would people be so concerned withmaintaining the appearance of consistency? A few subjects might be ob -
sessed with maintaining an image, but it is hard to believe that nearly
everyone in the sample would be (though that would be necessary ac -
count for the observed coefficients). Further, even if they wanted to, is
it likely that subjects could repeat their earlier performance? Informally ,
subjects often report that they do not even remember taking the test be -
fore—are we to believe that they somehow recall how they answered
each particular question?
This deliberate consistency hypothesis is almost too implausible to
entertain, so it is fortunate for us that it has already been tested. Wood -
ruff and Birren (1972) retested a sample of individuals who had com-
pleted a personality measure 25 years before when they were in college.In addition to being given a simple readministration, the subjects werealso asked to fill out the questionnaire as they believed they had filled it
out 25 years earlier . In terms of average level, the original responses
were closer to the readministration responses than they were to the sub-jects’ recollections of their original responses. Woodruff (1983) demon-strated this even more forcefully when she examined the correlationsbetween real and recalled responses. The correlation between originalscores and later recollections was low and statistically nonsignificant.By contrast, there was a strong and highly significant correlation be -
tween original responses and personality as measured 25 years later. We
get a more accurate picture of what people were like 25 years ago byasking what they are like today than by asking them to recall how theywere; memories, it seems, are not as stable as personality .
A more plausible interpretation of a response set explanation
would be based on the following analogy: When individuals take a test,they employ a characteristic set of response styles that operate muchlike habits. Just as one never forgets how to ride a bicycle, so one maynever forget habits of test responding. When subjects retake the testyears later, the same habits are activated and the same results obtained.Thus, there would be stability , but it is stability of response style, notpersonality .
This is not as strong an argument as it may at first seem. It might
account for the convergence between scores on the same trait at two118 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD