transformation: Perhaps the social advantages of a good education lead
to a more congenial environment in adulthood, making the personmore friendly . Or perhaps both academic pursuits in childhood and so -
ciability in adulthood reflect an underlying tendency to please signifi -
cant others in one’s life. Speculations on what might account for such
relationships are endless and endlessly intriguing, which may accountfor the popularity of this model with many developmentalists.) Almostany trait in childhood might develop into almost any other; and ofcourse the changes need not be limited to childhood. Young adults maydevelop into older adults with quite different, but quite predictable, setsof traits (Livson, 1973).
For a brief time—before additional data disillusioned us—we
thought we had found just such a pattern (Costa & McCrae, 1976). Inlooking at cross-sectional data on several aspects of Openness to Expe -
rience, we seemed to see a shift in the aspects of experience to which
open men were open. In young men, when youthful romanticism was atits peak, Openness was expressed as a sensitivity to feelings and to aes-thetic experiences. In middle age, when the responsibilities of raising afamily and furthering a career were uppermost, the same Openness wasseen in more intellectual form, of which curiosity and a willingness toreformulate traditional values were the hallmarks. Finally , in the wis-dom of age, the open person was sensitized to both feelings andthoughts, both beauty and truth. Since differentiation and subsequentintegration are familiar developmental processes (Werner, 1948), thissequence seemed to provide a classic case of personality development inadulthood.
We had to abandon this model soon after we proposed it, because
we found that later and better data offered no support for it whatsoever.Individuals who are open to feelings and aesthetic experiences tend alsoto be open to ideas and values (and actions and fantasy) at allages in
adulthood. This is as true for women as for men, our later studiesshowed (McCrae & Costa, 1983a). Age, it now appears, has nothing dowith the structure of Openness.
The heterotypic continuity model has most frequently been dis -
cussed by researchers interested in personality development in early
childhood, when observable behavior (such as the smiles or cries of aninfant) may bear only the vaguest resemblance to later personality traitssuch as Sociability or Anxiety . The model’s use there may or may not bejustified—a good deal more research is needed before we will know forcertain.104 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD