Stability and Change of Personality across the Life Course: The Impact of Age and Major Life Events on Mean-Level and Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five

Does personality change across the entire life course, and are those changes due to intrinsic maturation or major life experiences? This longitudinal study investigated changes in the mean levels and rank order of the Big Five personality traits in a heterogeneous sample of 14,718 Germans across all of adulthood. Latent change and latent moderated regression models provided four main findings: First, age had a complex curvilinear influence on mean levels of personality. Second, the rank-order stability of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness all followed an inverted U-shaped function, reaching a peak between the ages of 40 and 60, and decreasing afterwards, whereas Conscientiousness showed a continuously increasing rank-order stability across adulthood. Third, personality predicted the occurrence of several objective major life events (selection effects) and changed in reaction to experiencing these events (socialization effects), suggesting that personality can change due to factors other than intrinsic maturation.. - Fourth, when events were clustered according to their valence, as is commonly done,. - effects of the environment on changes in personality were either overlooked or. - overgeneralized. In sum, our analyses show that personality changes throughout the life. - span, but with more pronounced changes in young and old ages, and that this change is. - partly attributable to social demands and experiences.personality development, Big Five, life events, stability, adulthood

The Benefits of Believing in Chance or Fate: External Locus of Control as a Protective Factor for Coping with the Death of a Spouse

The death of a spouse is an extremely stressful life event that consequently causes a large drop in life satisfaction. Reactivity to the loss, however, varies markedly, a phenomenon that is currently not well understood. Because lack of controllability essentially contributes to the stressful nature of this incident, we analyzed whether individual differences in the belief in external control influence the coping process. To examine this issue, widowed individuals (N = 414) from a large-scaled panel study were followed for the 4 years before and after the loss by using a latent growth model. Results showed that belief in external control led to a considerably smaller decline in life satisfaction and higher scores in the year of the loss. Thus, although usually regarded as a risk factor, belief in external control acts as a protective factor for coping with the death of a spouse.Locus of control, life satisfaction, latent growth model, subjective well-being, subjective indicators, family and networks

Minor and inconsistent differences in Big Five personality traits between vegetarians and vegans

Most research examining individuals who follow different diets has combined vegetarians and vegans into a single group. To investigate whether this consolidation is justified, we analyzed possible differences between vegetarians and vegans for the Big Five personality traits in two studies. In our pre-study, we used data from a German convenience sample of 400 vegetarians and 749 vegans and found that vegans reported slightly higher scores in Openness compared to vegetarians (d = 0.22). In the preregistered main study, we used data provided by 1203 vegetarians and 128 vegans from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study; we found that vegetarians reported slightly higher scores in Neuroticism compared to vegans (d = 0.18) but did not differ in Openness. We found no differences in Conscientiousness, Extraversion, or Agreeableness in either study. Controlling for the socio-demographic variables of age, gender, and socio-economic status did not alter the pattern of results. Overall, these results suggest that there are no or only small differences in Openness or Neuroticism between vegetarians and vegans. Further studies utilizing very large, representative samples are needed to better understand the relationship between personality and diet groups

Cortical brain abnormalities in 4474 individuals with schizophrenia and 5098 control subjects via the enhancing neuro Imaging genetics through meta analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium

BACKGROUND: The profile of cortical neuroanatomical abnormalities in schizophrenia is not fully understood, despite hundreds of published structural brain imaging studies. This study presents the first meta-analysis of cortical thickness and surface area abnormalities in schizophrenia conducted by the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Schizophrenia Working Group. METHODS: The study included data from 4474 individuals with schizophrenia (mean age, 32.3 years; range, 11-78 years; 66% male) and 5098 healthy volunteers (mean age, 32.8 years; range, 10-87 years; 53% male) assessed with standardized methods at 39 centers worldwide. RESULTS: Compared with healthy volunteers, individuals with schizophrenia have widespread thinner cortex (left/right hemisphere: Cohen's d = -0.530/-0.516) and smaller surface area (left/right hemisphere: Cohen's d = -0.251/-0.254), with the largest effect sizes for both in frontal and temporal lobe regions. Regional group differences in cortical thickness remained significant when statistically controlling for global cortical thickness, suggesting regional specificity. In contrast, effects for cortical surface area appear global. Case-control, negative, cortical thickness effect sizes were two to three times larger in individuals receiving antipsychotic medication relative to unmedicated individuals. Negative correlations between age and bilateral temporal pole thickness were stronger in individuals with schizophrenia than in healthy volunteers. Regional cortical thickness showed significant negative correlations with normalized medication dose, symptom severity, and duration of illness and positive correlations with age at onset. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that the ENIGMA meta-analysis approach can achieve robust findings in clinical neuroscience studies; also, medication effects should be taken into account in future genetic association studies of cortical thickness in schizophrenia

A Focused Review of Language Use Preceding Death by Execution

Executions are one form of death that can be assumed to be maximally anxiety provoking. Words spoken by death row inmates moments before their execution can provide valuable insights into people's end-of-life communication needs and themes, conveying what individuals choose to express to others in the face of imminent death. In this focused review, we describe findings from quantitative and qualitative text analysis studies that have analyzed affective experiences and meaning-making attempts in transcriptions of actual statements made by Texas death row inmates. Overall, the most prevalent content themes identified in these final acts of verbal communication in the reviewed studies consisted of a strong predominance of emotional positivity, messages to relevant social others, and spiritual references. We subsequently view the reviewed findings in the light of additional research in which people's conceptions of death and dying were explored and language studies in which people's communication before other forms of death was analyzed. Finally, we describe open questions and directions for future analyses of death row inmates' final statements, and we outline practical implications