 12. Personality Development in Middle Childhood  293
However, interestingly, children themselves 
may not report increases in neuroticism (Van 
den Akker et al., 2014). The more external -
izing aspects of neuroticism—  including ir -
ritability and frustration—  seem to be more 
stable or even decrease over childhood 
(Deater-  Deckard & Wang, 2012; de Haan 
et al., 2017), as children become better at 
regulating these types of negative emotions.
Findings for conscientiousness in child -
hood are not entirely consistent. In the pre -
school years, children’s capacities for con -
centration continue to increase (de Haan et 
al., 2017; Rueda, 2012), but findings for the 
broader conscientiousness trait are inconsis -
tent, with some studies showing declines in 
conscientiousness during middle childhood 
(de Haan et al., 2017; Ong, Hong, Tsai, & 
Tan, 2019; Soto, 2016) and others showing 
increases (Van den Akker et al., 2014).
Agreeableness increases from early child -
hood through the preschool years (de Haan 
et al., 2017; Prinzie & Dekovic, 2008), as 
children become more compliant and proso -
cial, and less egocentric. As with conscien -
tiousness, however, findings for agreeable -
ness are not consistent in middle childhood. 
Compliance may decrease in middle child -
hood, and girls may become more prosocial 
and altruistic (de Haan et al., 2017), but 
other aspects of agreeableness may remain 
relatively stable (de Haan et al., 2017; Soto, 
2016) or may increase slightly (Van den 
Akker et al., 2014). These mixed findings 
for conscientiousness and agreeableness may 
arise because different measures tend to em -
phasize different facets of the traits, and the 
facets may change in different ways.
Finally, for openness, although the in -
tellect component may increase in the pre -
school years (de Haan et al., 2017), the 
trait as a whole generally decreases across 
the middle childhood years (de Haan et al., 
2017; Soto, 2016). Taken together, over the 
preschool years and middle childhood, chil -
dren become less energetic, optimistic, ex -
pressive; less confident and more anxious; 
less irritable and angry; better able to con -
centrate; and less curious and imaginative. 
The patterns of mean-level change for other 
aspects of conscientiousness and agreeable -
ness remain unclear.
Far more studies have investigated mean-
level change in the transition to adolescence, perhaps because youth can provide self- 
reports by this time, and because adoles -
cence has been viewed as a period of “storm 
and stress.” A meta-  analysis of 14 stud -
ies (Denissen, van Aken, Penke, & Wood, 
2013), as well as subsequent other studies, 
including a cross-  sectional study of over 1 
million participants providing self-  reports 
(Soto, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2008), has 
provided evidence for what has been called 
the disruption hypothesis —namely, that, 
during the transition from late childhood 
to adolescence, some negative personality 
changes take place, followed by increasing 
personality maturity in the transition to 
adulthood (Soto & Tackett, 2015). Specifi -
cally, youth may display decreases in con -
scientiousness, agreeableness, and openness 
during this time and may continue their 
decreasing trajectory of extraversion. Path -
ways of neuroticism may diverge for girls 
and boys, with girls showing an increase 
in neuroticism and boys remaining stable 
or even decreasing on this trait. Youth then 
later show increases in conscientiousness, 
agreeableness, and openness in many stud -
ies. The name disruption hypothesis  implies 
that youth undergo “negative” personality 
changes in the transition to adolescence, but 
many of these changes may already be un -
derway in middle childhood—  including the 
decreases in openness and the increases in 
aspects of neuroticism. A better understand -
ing of normative change in middle child -
hood will offer insights into what is and is 
not disrupted in personality development as 
youth transition to adolescence.
The Emergence of Agency: Goals, Values, 
and Coping in  Middle  Childhood
School-  age children’s personalities ex -
tend beyond personality traits to include a 
wide variety of individual differences. As 
noted earlier, McAdams (2015, 2019) has 
described middle childhood as the period 
during which children move beyond sim -
ply being actors—  who display character -
istic patterns of behavior—  to becoming 
agents  who develop a sense of their own 
values, pursue goals, and make choices as 
they work toward those goals. The changes 
that take place during the 5- to 7-year shift 