Wiebke Bleidorn
Biographic Data
| ID | 226148 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wiebke Bleidorn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wiebke |
| FAMILY NAME | Bleidorn |
| SIGNATURE | BLEIDORN W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3795-8143 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 94 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 322 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 94 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Self-efficacy predicts differential neuroticism change in a smartphone-based intervention.
25.88; 85% female; Residence: 47% Switzerland, 26% Germany, 26% Austria, 1% other), we tested whether self-efficacy and growth mindset predict change in multiple neuroticism measures across a 6-week intervention and 2-month follow-up. To isolate temporal processes during the intervention, we examined codevelopment of weekly neuroticism and self-efficacy and their week-to-week temporal associations. We found evidence for self-efficacy predicting d…
Self-Esteem and Sexual Experiences
There is evidence that people with higher self-esteem tend to have more satisfying sexual relationships, but little is known about how changes in people’s self-esteem and sexual experiences are related over time. Several theories predict reciprocal effects between self-esteem and sexual experiences. The present study tested these theories using 12-wave longitudinal data from more than 11,000 participants of a representative sample in Germany. Dat…
Identifying Robust Longitudinal Transactions Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Traits
OBJECTIVE: Understanding when and why people become lonely is of theoretical and practical relevance. Personality traits and loneliness have been theorized to reciprocally influence each other over time. However, longitudinal research on personality-loneliness transactions remains scarce, and existing studies yielded inconsistent findings. METHODS: To advance understanding of the longitudinal transactions between loneliness and the Big Five perso…
Associations between romantic partners’ dietary motives and their plant-based meat alternative consumption
Plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) play a key role in the transition towards more sustainable food systems. Consumer research has so far primarily focused on how personal factors influence people's decisions for or against PBMAs. Yet dietary choices are socially embedded and subject to interpersonal influences. Among these, romantic partners may be particularly important for each other's PBMA consumption because of their close relationship and…
Tailoring personality interventions: How timing, context, and strategies influence proximal intervention outcomes
Personality interventions are a field of growing interest, because many people want to change aspects of their personality and personality changes may positively impact important life outcomes. Although initial research shows that personality interventions can be successful in eliciting lasting trait changes, the strategies, timing, and context of effective personality interventions remain unclear. A careful examination of how these characteristi…
Life satisfaction, loneliness, and depressivity in consistently single young adults in Germany and the United Kingdom
Young adults increasingly abstain from committed romantic relationships. However, psychological theories of singlehood are lacking, and it remains unclear who selects into remaining single throughout emerging adulthood and how consistent singles' well-being is affected over time. Here, we included 17,390 initially never partnered respondents from three panel studies from the United Kingdom and Germany providing 110,261 yearly observations from ag…
Personality Traits and Insurance Demand
Personality traits drive people’s financial decisions and hence affect their lives. Yet, we know little about the relationship between personality traits and insurance decisions. Do Risk-Taking, the Big Five and Locus of Control predict a variety of personal insurance decisions? Using a sample of 14,624 German adults with the goal of identifying associations between personality and insurance demand, we found that personality traits predict demand…
Personality and Cultural Income Differences Shape the Life Satisfaction Gap Between Aging Immigrants and Natives in Europe
The present study examined the size and possible sources of life satisfaction differences between immigrants and natives in a sample of over 55,000 adults (aged 50+ years) across 16 European countries and Israel. Consistent with theory and prior research, immigrants reported lower life satisfaction than natives on average, while the size of the life satisfaction gap varied substantially across individuals and countries. Low neuroticism and high e…
High Openness and Low Conscientiousness Predict Green Party Preferences and Voting
A substantial rise of vote shares of Green parties across European countries suggests an increasing support of environmental issues. A critical question for researchers and policymakers alike is, who endorses Green parties? Here, we examined the Big Five personality predictors of green partisanship, voting behavior, and party switching in a nationally representative sample of more than 27,000 Germans collected over a period of 16 years. Consisten…
Personality traits and traditional philanthropy: A systematic review and meta-analysis
14, 95% CI [.04, .25]). There was little evidence for systematic moderator effects. We describe the theoretical implications of these results for future research, discuss practical applications, and highlight gaps in this body of literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Personality trait change in three sub-Saharan countries: Normative development and life events
Over the last 20 years, personality development has become one of the most widely studied topics in personality science. However, evidence on normative and event-related personality development stems almost exclusively from Western countries, providing limited insight into the cross-cultural generalizability of personality trait changes. To address this limitation, we used data from the Africa Long Life Study to examine personality development in…
What explains personality change intervention effects
Volitional personality change interventions have been shown to help people change their current personality toward their ideal personality. Here, we address three limitations of this literature. First, we contrast the dominant theoretical perspective of self-improvement with self-acceptance as pathways to reduce the discrepancy between current and ideal personality. Second, we test how well-being aspects change as a by-product of targeting person…
Personality and Meat Consumption Among Romantic Partners in Daily Life
OBJECTIVE: Eating is often a social activity that can be influenced by others, particularly in close relationships when dietary preferences reflect underlying value differences. We sought to examine the personality traits of meat-eating couples who differ in their preferences for meat. METHOD: We recruited Swiss romantic couples in which one partner typically consumed more meat than the other (N = 272, couples = 136). At baseline, participants co…
The dynamics of self-esteem and depressive symptoms across days, months, and years
6,210) rated their self-esteem and depressive symptoms between 6 and 14 times across days, months, and years, respectively. Using continuous time dynamic models, we found limited evidence for significant within-person cross-lagged effects between self-esteem and depressive symptoms. Only in the yearly data set, a cross-lagged effect from depressive symptoms to self-esteem emerged quite consistently. However, in all data sets, cross-lagged effects…
Longitudinal course and correlates of realness
People who are real are able to express how they truly think and feel and what they truly want even when there is social pressure not to. Previous research suggests that realness is associated with better social functioning and adaptive personality traits including lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. However, unlike other measures of the broader concept of authenticity, realness is not related to agreeablen…
No Evidence for Transactional Effects Between Religiosity and Self-Esteem in a Secular Country
This research tests the unique predictions of three different theoretical perspectives on the self-esteem benefits of religiosity: the religiosity-as-a-personal-relationship-with-a-higher-power perspective, the religiosity-as-a-resource perspective, and the religiosity-as-social-value perspective. To do so, we used random-intercept cross-lagged panel models and examined the between- and within-person associations between three indicators of relig…
Big Five personality traits predict small but robust differences in civic engagement
OBJECTIVE: This preregistered study provides robust estimates of the links between Big Five personality traits and civic engagement across different samples and life stages. METHODS: We recruited two samples from the United States and United Kingdom (total N = 1593) and measured Big Five domains, Big Five aspects, and six civic engagement indicators: volunteerism, charitable giving, donating blood, posthumous organ donation, political voting, and…
Psychological change before and after religious conversion and deconversion
OBJECTIVE: Theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that people undergo psychological changes before and after religious conversion and deconversion. Yet, existing research provided inconclusive evidence. Here, we examined psychological change before, during, and after institutional conversion and deconversion in a large-scale longitudinal study. METHOD: We used 11-wave longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of Dutch adults (N ~ 2…
Personality, self‐knowledge, and meat reduction intentions
OBJECTIVE: Meat consumption has a host of serious negative consequences for nonhuman animals, underprivileged humans, and the natural environment. Several interventions have been developed to encourage meat reduction but to relatively limited effect. There is also a range of established predictors of meat consumption, but much less is known about the factors that predict intentions to reduce meat consumption. The goal of this study was to determi…
Personality aspects and proenvironmental attitudes
OBJECTIVE: Climate change is a serious threat. Personality psychologists can help address this threat by understanding what kind of people tend to endorse proenvironmental attitudes and engage in sustainable behavior. Previous research supports reliable associations between proenvironmental attitudes and personality traits. However, this research has generally aggregated different kinds of attitudes into a single composite and has focused on the …
The Veg∗n Eating Motives Inventory Plus (Vemi+): A measure of health, environment, animal rights, disgust, social, pandemic and zoonotic diseases, and farm workers’ rights motives
Health, environmental concern, and animal rights are established motives for reduced meat consumption that can be measured by the Vegetarian Eating Motives Inventory (VEMI). This preregistered study aimed to expand the VEMI to include four less-studied motives: disgust, social, concern about zoonotic diseases and pandemics, and concern for workers' rights. We had three objectives: to combine the seven motives into a comprehensive model, to test i…
Incremental relations between self-understanding and social functioning beyond personality traits in young adults
Personality models differentiate personality traits from self-understanding. • Tested if self-understanding adds to social functioning beyond personality traits. • Coherence in self-understanding has an incremental link to social functioning. • Self-understanding does not moderate links between personality traits and social functioning. Personality traits are well-established predictors of social functioning, but contemporary models of personalit…
Socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts: Insights from 6 million people across 133 nations
11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequal…
Codevelopment of life goals and the Big Five personality traits across adulthood and old age
55,040, age range: 18-103 years) and span a study period of 13 years. During this period, the Big Five traits and life goals were assessed four times. Our findings suggest that development in broader life goal domains (e.g., self-fulfillment) is more strongly connected to personality development across the life span, whereas changes in specific goals (e.g., having children) are more closely tied to trait changes during young and middle adulthood.…
Nature and Impact of Reference Group Effects in Personality Assessment Data
People have a tendency to engage in social comparisons when evaluating and reporting on personality. This tendency and variation in who people compare their personality to is known as the reference group effect and has been largely discussed in cross-cultural research. However, reference group effects have implications beyond cross-cultural research and should be considered when collecting and interpreting personality data. In the present study, …
Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window
Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provi…
Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 it…
Left or right? Sources of political orientation: The roles of genetic factors, cultural transmission, assortative mating, and personality
In this study, we used an extended twin family design to investigate the influences of genetic and cultural transmission as well as different sources of nonrandom mating on 2 core aspects of political orientation: acceptance of inequality and rejecting system change. In addition, we studied the sources of phenotypic links between Big Five personality traits and political beliefs using self- and other reports. Data of 1,992 individuals (224 monozy…
The policy relevance of personality traits
Personality traits are powerful predictors of outcomes in the domains of education, work, relationships, health, and well-being. The recognized importance of personality traits has raised questions about their policy relevance, that is, their potential to inform policy actions designed to improve human welfare. Traditionally, the use of personality traits in applied settings has been predicated on their ability to predict valued outcomes, typical…
Patterns and sources of adult personality development: Growth curve analyses of the NEO PI-R scales in a longitudinal twin study
The present study examined the patterns and sources of 10-year stability and change of adult personality assessed by the 5 domains and 30 facets of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Phenotypic and biometric analyses were performed on data from 126 identical and 61 fraternal twins from the Bielefeld Longitudinal Study of Adult Twins (BiLSAT). Consistent with previous research, LGM analyses revealed significant mean-level changes in domains an…
Big Five personality stability, change, and codevelopment across adolescence and early adulthood
Using data from 2 large and overlapping cohorts of Dutch adolescents, containing up to 7 waves of longitudinal data each (N = 2,230), the present study examined Big Five personality trait stability, change, and codevelopment in friendship and sibling dyads from age 12 to 22. Four findings stand out. First, the 1-year rank-order stability of personality traits was already substantial at age 12, increased strongly from early through middle adolesce…
Transactions between life events and personality traits across the adult lifespan
Life events refer to status changes in important demographic variables, such as employment or marital status. Life events offer an interesting opportunity for studying transactions between environmental changes and personality traits, which are of relevance for diverging theories about the role of environmental factors in life span personality development. Yet in spite of the potential importance of life events for personality development, nuance…
Cultural norm fulfillment, interpersonal belonging, or getting ahead? A large-scale cross-cultural test of three perspectives on the function of self-esteem
What is the function of self-esteem? We classified relevant theoretical work into 3 perspectives. The cultural norm-fulfillment perspective regards self-esteem a result of adherence to cultural norms. The interpersonal-belonging perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of interpersonal belonging. The getting-ahead perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of getting ahead in the social world, while regarding low anxiety/neuroticism a…
Nature and nurture of the interplay between personality traits and major life goals
Modern personality theories differ in their assumptions about the structure and etiology of the interplay between personality traits and motivational constructs. The present study examined the genetic and environmental sources of the interplay between the Big Five and major life goals concurrently and across time in order to provide a more decisive evaluation of the conflicting assumptions stated in the five-factor theory as opposed to socioanaly…
Longitudinal actor, partner, and similarity effects of personality on well-being
The current study aimed to conceptually replicate previous studies on the effects of actor personality, partner personality, and personality similarity on general and relational well-being by using response surface analyses and a longitudinal sample of 4,464 romantic couples. Similar to previous studies using difference scores and profile correlations, results from response surface analyses indicated that personality similarity explained a small …
Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies
Personality trait development across the transition to retirement
In this study, we examined trajectories of Big Five personality development in the 5 years before and after retirement. Our sample was composed of 690 retirees (ages 51-81) and a propensity-score matched comparison group of 532 nonretirees drawn from a nationally representative longitudinal study of the Netherlands. Participants contributed data across a maximum of 6 measurement waves over a period of 7 years. In the month after retirement, parti…
Openness to experience and culture-openness transactions across the lifespan
We examined the life span development of openness to experience and tested whether change in this personality trait was associated with change in cultural activity, such as attending the opera or visiting museums. Data came from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Study for the Social Sciences panel, which includes 5 personality assessments across a 7-year period of a nationally representative sample of 7,353 individuals, aged 16 to 95 years. Latent …
The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation
Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and…
Refining the maturity principle of personality development by examining facets, close others, and comaturation
Across adulthood, people tend to experience psychologically adaptive personality trait change, a robust finding known as the maturity principle of personality development. We identify three open areas of inquiry regarding personality maturation and address them in a preregistered study, using a sample of U.S. adults ages 30-70 who completed a battery of personality questionnaires and were rated by two close others twice over an 11- to 16-year per…
Development and validation of the motivations to Eat Meat Inventory
Previous research suggests that there are four primary motives to eat meat: that it is natural, normal, necessary, or nice. However, these motives have not yet been distinguished empirically; the lack of a measurement tool that can distinguish these motives has contributed to a literature that focuses primarily on meat-eating motivation or justification in general, as opposed to differences between these motives. We developed a 19-item measure, t…
Correlated change of Big Five personality traits across the lifespan: A search for determinants
Cross-cultural variations in Big Five relationships with religiosity: A sociocultural motives perspective
A sociocultural motives perspective (SMP) on Big Five relationships is introduced. According to the SMP, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness elicit assimilation to sociocultural norms, Openness elicits contrast from these norms, and Extraversion and Neuroticism are independent of sociocultural assimilation and contrast. Due to sociocultural assimilation, then, relationships of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness with an outcome wax (become more p…
Disentangling self-concept clarity and self-esteem in young adults
Self-concept clarity and self-esteem are powerful determinants of people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Yet, even after over 30 years of research, the conceptual and empirical ties between these two self-aspects remain understudied, and little is known about the nature and function of their relationship. The present study aimed at discerning the empirical similarities and differences between self-concept clarity and self-esteem in order to …
Personality and Compassion for Animals
People vary in their compassion for animals, likely due in part to more variation in more basic personality and interpersonal behavior attributes. Previous research has generally suggested that more communal and agreeable people also tend to be more compassionate to animals. However, this research is limited regarding the range and depth of individual differences used to examine this issue. The goal of this preregistered study was to extend previ…
Realness is a core feature of authenticity
We established realness as the relatively stable tendency to act on the outside the way one feels on the inside, without regard for proximal personal or social consequences. In nine studies, we showed that realness is a) a core feature of individual differences in authenticity, b) generally adaptive but largely unrelated to agreeableness, c) highly stable, d) reliably observable in dyadic behavior, and e) predictive of responses to situations wit…
Self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships across time
14,741). When using CT-SEM, we found a bidirectional positive relation between self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships, with larger effects over longer intervals. When using RI-CT-SEM, we found the largest effects of self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships across intervals of 1 year, with smaller effect sizes at both shorter and longer intervals. In addition, the effect of fluctuations in people's satisfaction with s…
Longitudinal associations between trait neuroticism and negative daily experiences in adolescence
It is well established that trait neuroticism bears strong links with negative affect and interpersonal problems. The goal of this study was to examine the longitudinal associations between neuroticism and daily experiences of negative affect and interpersonal problems during the developmentally important period of adolescence. Dutch adolescents and their best friends (N = 1,046) completed up to 6 yearly personality trait questionnaires and up to…
Virtues in action - the new look of character traits
The present study aimed to take fresh look at the nature and psychological meaning of consistency in character traits and virtuous behaviour as manifested in everyday life. To this end, a 10-day experience-sampling study was conducted. Using smartphone technology, a sample of 83 working mothers and fathers provided a total of 4,342 momentary behavioural reports while being in the role of the parent versus being in the job role. Consistent with re…
Sources of cumulative continuity in personality: A longitudinal multiple-rater twin study
This study analyzed the etiology of rank-order stability and change in personality over a time period of 13 years in order to explain cumulative continuity with age. NEO five-factor inventory self- and peer report data from 696 monozygotic and 387 dizygotic twin pairs reared together were analyzed using a combination of multiple-rater twin, latent state-trait, and autoregressive simplex models. Correcting for measurement error, this model disenta…
Patterns and sources of adult personality development: Growth curve analyses of the NEO PI-R scales in a longitudinal twin study
The present study examined the patterns and sources of 10-year stability and change of adult personality assessed by the 5 domains and 30 facets of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Phenotypic and biometric analyses were performed on data from 126 identical and 61 fraternal twins from the Bielefeld Longitudinal Study of Adult Twins (BiLSAT). Consistent with previous research, LGM analyses revealed significant mean-level changes in domains an…
Nature and nurture of the interplay between personality traits and major life goals
Modern personality theories differ in their assumptions about the structure and etiology of the interplay between personality traits and motivational constructs. The present study examined the genetic and environmental sources of the interplay between the Big Five and major life goals concurrently and across time in order to provide a more decisive evaluation of the conflicting assumptions stated in the five-factor theory as opposed to socioanaly…
Sources of cumulative continuity in personality: A longitudinal multiple-rater twin study
This study analyzed the etiology of rank-order stability and change in personality over a time period of 13 years in order to explain cumulative continuity with age. NEO five-factor inventory self- and peer report data from 696 monozygotic and 387 dizygotic twin pairs reared together were analyzed using a combination of multiple-rater twin, latent state-trait, and autoregressive simplex models. Correcting for measurement error, this model disenta…
Genetic and Environmental Influences on Personality Profile Stability: Unraveling the Normativeness Problem
The present study is the first to disentangle the genetic and environmental influences on personality profile stability. Spanning a period of 10 years, we analyzed the etiology of 3 aspects of profile stability (overall profile stability, distinctive profile stability, and profile normativeness) using self‐ and peer reports from 539 identical and 280 fraternal twins reared together. This 3‐wave multirater twin design allowed us to estimate the ge…
Left or right? Sources of political orientation: The roles of genetic factors, cultural transmission, assortative mating, and personality
In this study, we used an extended twin family design to investigate the influences of genetic and cultural transmission as well as different sources of nonrandom mating on 2 core aspects of political orientation: acceptance of inequality and rejecting system change. In addition, we studied the sources of phenotypic links between Big Five personality traits and political beliefs using self- and other reports. Data of 1,992 individuals (224 monozy…
Personality Maturation Around the World: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Social-Investment Theory
During early adulthood, individuals from different cultures across the world tend to become more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic. Two leading theories offer different explanations for these pervasive age trends: Five-factor theory proposes that personality maturation is largely determined by genetic factors, whereas social-investment theory proposes that personality maturation in early adulthood is largely the result of normative…
It Takes Two: A Longitudinal Dyadic Study on Predictors of Fertility Outcomes
OBJECTIVE: Although previous studies have found personality traits to be associated with reproductive behavior, it remains unclear whether there are dyadic associations between partners' personality and couples' decisional process to have children. The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations between partners' personality, parenthood expectations and intentions, and the couple's fertility outcomes one year later. METHOD: We us…
The divided self and psychological (mal) adjustment – A meta-analytic review
Correlated change of Big Five personality traits across the lifespan: A search for determinants
What Drives Adult Personality Development? A Comparison of Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence
Increasing numbers of empirical studies provide compelling evidence that personality traits change across the entire lifespan. What initiates this continuing personality development and how does this development proceed? In this paper, we compare six theoretical perspectives that offer testable predictions about why personality develops the way it does and identify limitations and potentials of these perspectives by reviewing how they hold up aga…
Cross-cultural variations in Big Five relationships with religiosity: A sociocultural motives perspective
A sociocultural motives perspective (SMP) on Big Five relationships is introduced. According to the SMP, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness elicit assimilation to sociocultural norms, Openness elicits contrast from these norms, and Extraversion and Neuroticism are independent of sociocultural assimilation and contrast. Due to sociocultural assimilation, then, relationships of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness with an outcome wax (become more p…
Personality Differences and Development: Genetic and Environmental Contributions
Geographically varying associations between personality and life satisfaction in the London metropolitan area
Significance Recent studies in geographical psychology have demonstrated regional variations in personality—people with similar personality traits are more likely to be found in some regions than others. What is the psychological significance of such spatial clustering? Our study was motivated by the person–environment hypothesis, which postulates that the match between people’s personality and neighborhood characteristics is important for people…
Cultural norm fulfillment, interpersonal belonging, or getting ahead? A large-scale cross-cultural test of three perspectives on the function of self-esteem
What is the function of self-esteem? We classified relevant theoretical work into 3 perspectives. The cultural norm-fulfillment perspective regards self-esteem a result of adherence to cultural norms. The interpersonal-belonging perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of interpersonal belonging. The getting-ahead perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of getting ahead in the social world, while regarding low anxiety/neuroticism a…
Virtues in action - the new look of character traits
The present study aimed to take fresh look at the nature and psychological meaning of consistency in character traits and virtuous behaviour as manifested in everyday life. To this end, a 10-day experience-sampling study was conducted. Using smartphone technology, a sample of 83 working mothers and fathers provided a total of 4,342 momentary behavioural reports while being in the role of the parent versus being in the job role. Consistent with re…
Stability and Change in Self-Esteem During the Transition to Parenthood
The present longitudinal study used data from 187 newlywed couples to examine the impact of the birth of the first child on self-esteem over the course of the first 5 years of marriage. Results suggest that the birth of the first child is associated with changes in parents’ (especially mothers’) self-esteem. For the average parent, these changes were negative with sudden declines in self-esteem in the year after childbirth and continuing gradual …
Personality Trait Development During the Transition to Parenthood: A Test of Social Investment Theory
Social investment theory (SIT) proposes that the transition to parenthood triggers positive personality trait change in early adulthood. Using data from a representative sample of first-time parents compared to nonparents, the results of rigorous tests do not support the propositions of SIT. Specifically, we found no evidence for the proposition that parents show more pronounced mean-level increases in emotional stability, agreeableness, and cons…
Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances
It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 it…
Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window
Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provi…
The New Look of Behavioral Genetics in Social Inequality: Gene‐Environment Interplay and Life Chances
Velocity explains the links between personality states and affect
Big Five personality stability, change, and codevelopment across adolescence and early adulthood
Using data from 2 large and overlapping cohorts of Dutch adolescents, containing up to 7 waves of longitudinal data each (N = 2,230), the present study examined Big Five personality trait stability, change, and codevelopment in friendship and sibling dyads from age 12 to 22. Four findings stand out. First, the 1-year rank-order stability of personality traits was already substantial at age 12, increased strongly from early through middle adolesce…
The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation
Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and…
Changes in Affect, Cognition, and Perceived Behavioral Changes Among Vicarious Victims of the Paris Terrorist Attacks of November 13, 2015
Terrorist attacks are supposed to hit not only the direct victims but the entire society. In this prospective longitudinal study, we examined changes in mood, life satisfaction, and terror-related cognitions and perceived behavioral changes 2, 4, and 8 weeks after the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015, in Paris in a sample of the so-called vicarious victims ( N = 201). Average mood levels dropped significantly after the attacks compared to p…
Life Events and Personality Trait Change
OBJECTIVE: Theory and research have emphasized the impact of life events on personality trait change. In this article, we review prospective research on personality trait change in response to nine major life events in the broader domains of love and work. METHOD: We expected to find that life events lead to personality trait change to the extent that they have a lasting influence on individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Moreover, we pre…
Psychology (86 works) · Social Psychology (78 works) · Personality (64 works) · Developmental psychology (60 works) · Big Five personality traits (49 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (40 works) · Extraversion and introversion (23 works) · Agreeableness (21 works) · Trait (20 works) · Cognitive Abilities and Testing (18 works)