Personality profiles and adolescents' maladjustment: A longitudinal study

Latent profile of personality traits for American older adults and its transition during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background

The impact of COVID-19 on older adults' personality development is essential for emergency management but under-researched. This study seeks to explore the personality profiles of older adults living in the United States and how these profiles transitioned during the pandemic.

Methods

Longitudinal data were collected from 3,550 adults aged 60 and older who participated in both the 2016 and 2020 waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (61.18% female, mean age 65.85 in 2016). Personality traits were assessed using the Midlife Development Inventory. COVID-19-related experiences including pandemic concerns, restricted healthcare access, financial instability, work challenges, disrupted social connections, and mutual aid behaviors. Latent Profile Analysis and Transition Analysis were used for analysis.

Results

Three distinct personality profiles were identified: Well-adjusted, Moderate-adjusted, and Poor-adjusted. About 42% of respondents experienced personality changes during the pandemic. Higher levels of COVID-19 concern were linked to an increased likelihood of transitioning to Poor-adjusted from Moderate (OR=1.06, p<0.05) or Well-adjusted (OR=1.05, p<0.01). Challenges such as healthcare delays and financial hardships hindered transitions from Poor- to Moderate-adjusted (Healthcare delay: OR=0.39, p<0.05; Financial hardships: OR=0.67, p<0.05) but increased the likelihood of Moderate-adjusted individuals transitioning to Poor-adjusted (Healthcare delay: OR=1.46, p<0.05; Financial hardships: OR=1.51, p<0.05). However, Poor-adjusted individuals who provided help to others were more likely to transition to Moderate-adjusted (OR=2.71, p<0.01).

Conclusions

Personality transitions during crisis are significant among older adults. Future interventions should focus on addressing traumatic concerns, encouraging helping behaviors, and mitigating healthcare and financial challenges to support older adults' personality development during crisis.

Patterns of Personality Development and Psychosocial Functioning in Japanese Adolescents: A Four-Wave Longitudinal Study

While patterns of adolescent personality development are country-specific, previous studies that have examined them have been limited to the Netherlands and Finland. This study aimed to identify the patterns of personality development and examine the relationship between these patterns and psychosocial functioning among Japanese adolescents. Overall, 618 Japanese adolescents (49.5% girls; 16 years) participated in the annual longitudinal survey from 2013 to 2016. Using latent class growth analysis, the following four patterns of personality development were identified: resilient, over-controlled, vulnerable, and moderate. Although the mean-level changes in the Big Five domains were generally insignificant among the four patterns, the vulnerable pattern showed a progressive increase in conscientiousness, and the moderate pattern showed a decrease in neuroticism and an increase in conscientiousness. Furthermore, multivariate analysis of variance tests indicated that the resilient pattern showed higher subjective well-being and lower psychosocial problems than the other personality patterns; the over-controlled pattern showed higher internalizing problems than the resilient pattern; the vulnerable pattern showed lower subjective well-being and higher internalizing problems than the other patterns; and the moderate pattern scored between the resilient, over-controlled, and vulnerable patterns in both subjective well-being and psychosocial problems. These findings suggest that the vulnerable and moderate patterns, which are immature patterns compared to the resilient and over-controlled ones, showed positive changes to the direction of maturity from middle to late adolescence in Japan.

Big Five Traits Based Profiles and Humor Styles in Preadolescents

Abstract. The present study investigated the relationship between Big Five traits-based profiles and humor styles in a sample of 426 Greek preadolescents. Latent Profile Analysis yielded three distinct personality profiles: resilients, average, and undercontrollers. These profiles exhibited significant group differences in humor styles. The resilient profile displayed the highest scores on the two benign humor styles and the lowest on the two malign styles. On the contrary, the under controllers scored lowest on the two benign humor styles and highest on self-defeating humor. Findings showed that the patterns identified in the extant literature between humor, personality, and adjustment generalize to preadolescents. These are discussed with reference to prior work and relevant theoretical implications.

Facing the Pandemic in Italy: Personality Profiles and Their Associations With Adaptive and Maladaptive Outcomes

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' psychosocial functioning was widely attested during the last year. However, the extent to which individual differences are associated with adaptive and maladaptive outcomes during quarantine in Italy remains largely unexplored. Using a person-oriented approach, the present study explored the association of personality profiles, based on three broad individual dispositions (i.e., positivity, irritability, and hostile rumination) and two self-efficacy beliefs in the emotional area (i.e., expressing positive emotions and regulating anger emotion), with adaptive and maladaptive outcomes during the first Italian lockdown (March-June 2020). In doing so, we focused also on how different age groups (i.e., young adults and adults) differently faced the pandemic. The study was conducted through an online survey from May to June 2020 and included 1341 participants living in Italy, divided into two groups: 737 young adults aged 18-35 and 604 adults aged 36-60 years old. Latent Profile Analysis identified three personality profiles: resilient, vulnerable, and moderate. A subsequent path analysis model showed that the resilient profile was positively associated with prosocial behavior as an indicator of adaptive outcome, and negatively associated with three maladaptive outcomes: interpersonal aggression, depressive symptoms, and anxiety problems. Contrarily, the vulnerable profile resulted negatively associated with prosocial behavior and positively associated with the three maladaptive outcomes. Finally, regarding age group differences, young adults belonging to the vulnerable profile showed a greater association especially with interpersonal aggression, depression, and anxiety problems, as compared to adults belonging to the same profile. Overall, the results of the present study highlighted the importance to analyze individual functioning during an isolation period by using a person-oriented approach. Findings evidenced the existence of three different profiles (i.e., Resilient, Vulnerable, and Moderate) and subsequent path analysis revealed, especially for the vulnerable profile and young adults, a greater maladaptive consequence of the quarantine. The practical implications will be discussed.

Personality types revisited-a literature-informed and data-driven approach to an integration of prototypical and dimensional constructs of personality description

A new algorithmic approach to personality prototyping based on Big Five traits was applied to a large representative and longitudinal German dataset (N = 22,820) including behavior, personality and health correlates. We applied three different clustering techniques, latent profile analysis, the k-means method and spectral clustering algorithms. The resulting cluster centers, i.e. the personality prototypes, were evaluated using a large number of internal and external validity criteria including health, locus of control, self-esteem, impulsivity, risk-taking and wellbeing. The best-fitting prototypical personality profiles were labeled according to their Euclidean distances to averaged personality type profiles identified in a review of previous studies on personality types. This procedure yielded a five-cluster solution: resilient, overcontroller, undercontroller, reserved and vulnerable-resilient. Reliability and construct validity could be confirmed. We discuss wether personality types could comprise a bridge between personality and clinical psychology as well as between developmental psychology and resilience research.

Is Family Structure Associated with Deviance Propensity during Adolescence? The Role of Family Climate and Anger Dysregulation

Transgressive conduct and opposition towards the rules often characterize adolescence. During the development, antisocial and aggressive behavior could be a way to grow personally and to be independent. According to previous studies results, the family has a high impact on teens' aggressive behaviors and moral disengagement. Our research involved 2328 Italian adolescents (13-19 years old) who have filled in the following questionnaires: deviant behavior questionnaire; aggression questionnaire; family communication scale; moral disengagement scale; the multidimensional scale of perceived social support. Our study investigated the role of family structure on deviance propensity through family climate and anger dysregulation joint influence. We conducted a mediation analysis to reach this goal using structural equation modeling (SEM). We have also conducted a multigroup analysis in order to evaluate gender differences in the SEM. Results showed that both family climate and anger dysregulation mediated the relationship between family structure and deviance propensity. The multigroup analysis revealed that the indirect relationship between variables through family climate is significant for both boys and girls (higher in females); variables indirect relationship through anger dysregulation was significant only for girls. These data could be useful for prevention and intervention programs on children-parent relationships and to reduce antisociality and teenager's aggressive behavior.