years communicates that point. For others, another comparison may
make it more forcefully . The observed rate of decrease in Masculinitywas 0.41 items every 6.6 years. We once computed that at this rate itwould take our older subjects, initially 75 years old, 136 years to reachthe same level of femininity as the average college woman. Psycholo -
gists may speak of the feminization of older men, but the reader should
recall that the process would be fully completed only if men lived 211years!
Even more extensive analyses were conducted on NEO-PI scales in
a 6-year longitudinal study of 983 men and women ranging in age from21 to 96 (Costa & McCrae, 1988b). In addition to self-reports, we con -
ducted some parallel analyses on spouse ratings of 167 men and
women. (Because we did not recruit a new sample of spouse raters, wewere not able to conduct cross-sequential analyses of ratings, and be -
cause we had spouse ratings of A and C only at the second time period,
we were unable to do longitudinal analyses on these scales.) The resultsof cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-sequential analyses are sum-marized in Table 8. In this table, minus signs suggest a decline with age,plus signs an increase, and zeros no effect; stronger effects are indicatedby more signs. However, none of the effects accounts for as much as10% of the variance in personality scores; age and aging are at bestweakly related to personality .
Although it might appear that there are several age effects, a closer76 PERSONALITY IN ADULTHOOD
TABLE 8. Age Effects from Analyses of NEO-PI Domain Scales
Cross-sectional Longitudinal
NEO-PI scaleSelf-
reportSpouse
ratingSelf-
reportSpouse
ratingCross-
sequential
Neuroticism – – – – – – + 0
Extraversion – – – – – – 0 0 +Openness – – – – – 0 0 +Agreeableness + 0 – – – – – –Conscientiousness 0 +++ – –
Note. Minus signs indicate a negative association of the variable with age; plus signs indicate a posi -
tive association. Larger effects are indicated by more signs. Longitudinal analyses of Agreeableness
and Conscientiousness and cross-sequential analyses were conducted only for self-reports. Adaptedfrom Costa and McCrae (1988b).