Measuring Personality - Psychology notes

Longitudinal studies show that there is continuity to personality.  High socialisers tend to maintain this orientation over a life time.  Impulsive persons as adults were very likely impulsive as children.  However, the degree of impulsively diminishes over time.  In the case of delay of gratification--a characteristic often associated with maturity--children who could delay an immediate smaller reward for a delayed larger reward--were rated later in adolescence as more verbally fluent, rational, attentive, planners, self reliant and self confident.  In contrast, those who could not delay gratification in childhood were described in adolescence as handling stress poorly, having poor self image, difficulties with peer relationships, stubborn, and distrustful (Mischel et al. 1988).  Thus, changes in personality traits occur, however, some personality characteristics remain fairly stable and correlate with a number of other traits later in life.