Ivana Anusic

Stability and change of personality traits, self-esteem, and well-being: Introducing the meta-analytic stability and change model of retest correlations.

The stability of individual differences is a fundamental issue in personality psychology. Although accumulating evidence suggests that many psychological attributes are both stable and change over time, existing research rarely takes advantage of theoretical models that capture both stability and change. In this article, we present the Meta-Analytic Stability and Change model (MASC), a novel meta-analytic model for synthesizing data from longitudinal studies. MASC is based on trait-state models that can separate influences of stable and changing factors from unreliable variance (Kenny & Zautra, 1995). We used MASC to evaluate the extent to which personality traits, life satisfaction, affect, and self-esteem are influenced by these different factors. The results showed that the majority of reliable variance in personality traits is attributable to stable influences (83%). Changing factors had a greater influence on reliable variance in life satisfaction, self-esteem, and affect than in personality (42%-56% vs. 17%). In addition, changing influences on well-being were more stable than changing influences on personality traits, suggesting that different changing factors contribute to personality and well-being. Measures of affect were less reliable than measures of the other 3 constructs, reflecting influences of transient factors, such as mood on affective judgments. After accounting for differences in reliability, stability of affect did not differ from other well-being variables. Consistent with previous research, we found that stability of individual differences increases with age. (PsycINFO Database Record

Dependability of personality, life satisfaction, and affect in short-term longitudinal data.

The consistency of individual differences across time has implications for theory building and clinical applications. Indeed, personality psychologists have long worked to place constructs on the continuum of consistency of more trait-like to more state-like constructs. Recently, Chmielewski and Watson () highlighted the importance of dependability coefficients for interpreting the results of stability studies. These coefficients provide an estimate of how strongly short-term transient error affects retest correlations for a given measure. In this article, we use a modified version of Kenny and Zautras (, ) STARTS model to estimate dependability of personality, life satisfaction, and affect in a 2-month longitudinal study of 8 waves. Results from 226 undergraduate students indicated that personality ratings were least influenced by transient state factors, whereas affect was most influenced. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for the continuum of consistency and for the practical issue of selecting retest intervals for dependability analyses.

The Validity of the Day Reconstruction Method in the German Socio-economic Panel Study

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) is a useful tool for evaluating short-term changes in emotional experiences over a variety of daily situations. However, traditional method of collecting DRM data can be time-intensive for both researchers and participants. In this paper we provide evidence that a random-sampling approach to DRM assessment can provide useful data that are largely consistent with previous research that used the full version of the DRM. In a nationally representative sample of 2303 people, we demonstrate that (1) there is variability in emotional ratings of episodes that replicates what has been found in prior studies, (2) correlations with global measures are typically small in magnitude (<0.30), (3) correlations with personality are for the most part negligible, (4) correlations with global ratings of domain satisfaction are higher for domain-relevant situations, and (5) parents report more positive affect while providing care for their children when compared to other activities, and this effect can account for the observed differences in emotional experiences of parents and non-parents.

Do Social Relationships Buffer the Effects of Widowhood? A Prospective Study of Adaptation to the Loss of a Spouse

The idea that strong social relationships can buffer the negative effects of stress on well-being has received much attention in existing literature. However, previous studies have used less than ideal research designs to test this hypothesis, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the buffering effects of social support. In this study, we examined the buffering hypothesis in the context of reaction and adaptation to widowhood in three large longitudinal datasets. We tested whether social relationships moderated reaction and adaptation to widowhood in samples of people who experienced loss of a spouse from three longitudinal datasets of nationally representative samples from Germany (N = 1,195), Great Britain (N = 562), and Australia (N = 298). We found no evidence that social relationships established before widowhood buffered either reaction or adaptation to the death of ones spouse. Similarly, social relationships that were in place during the first year of widowhood did not help widows and widowers recover from this difficult event. Social relationships acquired prior to widowhood, or those available in early stages of widowhood, do not appear to explain individual differences in adaptation to loss.

The Effect of Mood on Judgments of Subjective Well-Being: Nine Tests of the Judgment Model

Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person’s life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person’s life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small sample sizes, and few replications have been attempted. Nine direct and conceptual replications of past studies testing the effects of mood on life satisfaction judgments were conducted using sample sizes that were considerably larger than previous studies (Ns = 202, 200, 269, 118, 320, 401, 285, 129, 122). Most of the 9 studies resulted in nonsignificant effects on life satisfaction and happiness judgments, and those that were significant were substantially smaller than effects found in previous research.

Does Happiness Change? Evidence from Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal research offers important insight into the degree of change in subjective well-being over the life span. This chapter reviews evidence from recent longitudinal studies evaluating whether change in subjective well-being does or does not occur. Particular attention is paid to studies evaluating stability of subjective well-being and mean-level change in well-being following major life events. Although early research in this area suggested that subjective well-being showed little change over the life span, more recent longitudinal research has addressed some of the limitations of this early research. The cumulative body of empirical evidence suggests that considerable change can occur, particularly when people experience certain major life events. This chapter also highlights some recent innovations in the study of change in subjective well-being over the life span and identifies some of the important remaining questions in this literature. Overall, this review shows that further work evaluating the underlying factors causing change in subjective well-being will be a fruitful avenue of continued research.

Comparing the Reliability and Validity of Global Self-Report Measures of Subjective Well-Being With Experiential Day Reconstruction Measures

Self-report measures of global well-being are thought to reflect the overall quality of people’s lives. However, several scholars have argued that people rely on heuristics, such as current mood, when reporting their global well-being. Experiential well-being measures, such as the day reconstruction method (DRM), have been proposed as an alternative technique to obtain a potentially more accurate assessment of well-being. Across two multimethod, short-term longitudinal studies, we compared the psychometric properties of global self-reports and short-form DRM-based assessments of well-being. We evaluated their stability across one month, tested their convergent validity using self–informant agreement, and evaluated correlations with personality traits. Results indicated that global measures of well-being were more stable than DRM-based experiential measures. Self–informant agreement was also either equal across global and DRM measures or higher for global measures. Correlations with personality were similar across approaches. These findings suggest that DRM and global measures of well-being have similar psychometric properties when used to provide an overall assessment of a person’s typical level of subjective well-being.

Evidence of Self-Informant Agreement in Ethnic Identity

Ethnic identity is considered to be a psychologically important characteristic that is associated with adjustment outcomes. However, little is known about the degree to which ethnic identity manifests itself in characteristics that are observable to others. This study is the first to evaluate self-other agreement in ethnic identity and to use a multimethod approach for testing the associations between ethnic identity and adjustment outcomes. Results provide evidence of agreement across self and informant reports of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, the most widely used measure of ethnic identity in the literature. We also find evidence for shared method effects across informant reports of life satisfaction and ethnic identity. Finally, we find evidence for an association between latent ethnic identity and latent life satisfaction and self esteem scores, suggesting that the association between ethnic identity and both life satisfaction and self-esteem is more than just shared method variance.