Edited by Yavor Dragostinov and Lisanne de Moor
This Newsletter edition features summaries from published work from EJP’s November-December issue. Make sure to check the full manuscripts which are freely available for a limited time.
The articles published in this issue include exploring the effects of birth order on selection into scientific and artistic careers; the “self-other” agreement between romantic couples; the value that teachers and parents can add to personality ratings of children; the distinction between simple and residual consistencies in specific situations; the longitudinal interplay between personal values and subjective well-being.
November-December
Negligible effects of birth order on selection into scientific and artistic careers, creativity, and status attainment
Rodica Ioana Damian and Marion Spengler
Does birth order have a lasting impact on people’s education and career choice?
There are two theoretical accounts that propose answers, which were examined in this study: the niche-finding model and the confluence model. The former suggests that siblings develop competing strategies to maximize parental investment by filling different family niches. Thus, firstborns fill the more “traditional” role being more achievement-orientated and responsible, while laterborns fill the more “rebellious” role niche being more risk-taking and creative; according to the niche-finding model, these differences in personality could result into first-borns (vs. laterborns) selecting into more scientific (vs. more artistic and creative) careers, respectively. The confluence model proposes that firstborns have slightly higher levels of intelligence. This is because, with each child that is added to the family, the intellectual environment of the family becomes more diluted, as the proportion of adults-to-children decreases. To unpack the implications of birth order, Damian and Spengler evaluated a longitudinal sample (3,763 subjects) that tracked people across 50 years. The authors found modest support for the confluence model, but no support for the niche-finding model. Firstborns (versus laterborns) tended to attain higher levels of education, partially due to their slightly higher intelligence levels, as 19% of the effect was mediated via intelligence. Furthermore, they found support for a transactional model, in which educational attainment is a relatively proximal predictor of career outcomes. However, birth order was not associated with the type of career people selected into and personality did not mediate these effects, which is in contrast to the niche finding model.
In their conclusion, the authors emphasize that rather than assuming that firstborns are destined for success, it might be better to direct our attention to the social expectations, practices, or even parenting books that may be biasing our investments into the future of children based on their birth order as opposed to their observed individual characteristics.
Self–other agreement in personality development in romantic couples
Madeline R Lenhausen, Manon A van Scheppingen and Wiebke Bleidorn
Multiple studies have demonstrated that personality traits are both relatively stable and yet malleable enough to undergo marked changes across the lifespan. However, most of those studies have relied on self-report data, with relatively few studies using informant-report data (from friends, family members or spouses). Even less is known about the degree to which these self- and informant-reports correspond to estimates of personality trajectories.
In their study, Lenhausen, van Scheppingen and Bleidorn tested whether self- and informant-reports provided by romantic couples show similar patterns of rank-order stability and mean-level change. The authors also assessed self-other agreement (the convergence of self- and informant-reports of an individual’s personality traits) in personality development. A total of 255 couples provided both self- and partner-reports of the Big Five at four assessments across 1.5 years. Results indicated similar rank-order stabilities in self- and partner-report data. There were no differences between self- and partner-reported personality trajectories, with exceptions for extraversion and agreeableness. Specifically, whereas self-reported trajectories indicated no mean-level change in these traits, partner-reports indicated decreases in these two domains. Furthermore, self-other agreement was strong for all Big Five traits at each assessment wave and moderate for personality change in emotional stability and agreeableness.
These findings not only validate existing self-report research on personality development, but also highlight the importance of using combined self-other methods of assessment to tackle method-specific biases.
What teachers and parents can add to personality ratings of children: Unique associations with academic performance in elementary school
Naemi Brandt, Michael Becker, Julia Tetzner, Martin Brunner & Poldi Kuhl
Previous studies have shown that adults’ ratings of children’s personalities have been found to be more closely associated with academic performance than children’s self-reports. However, less is known about the relevance of the unique perspectives held by specific adult observers such as teachers and parents for explaining variance in academic performance.
In this study, Brandt and colleagues assessed teacher and parent ratings of the personality of 1,411 elementary school children to evaluate the relative merits for academic performance above and beyond the children’s self-reports. These associations were examined using standardized achievement test scores in addition to grades. The authors found that teachers’ unique views on children’s openness and conscientiousness had the strongest associations with academic performance. Parents’ unique views on children’s neuroticism showed incremental associations with overall academic performance above teacher ratings or self-reports. For extraversion and agreeableness, however, children’s self-reports were more strongly associated with academic performance than teacher or parent ratings.
Thus, teachers and parents provide different perspectives on the children in question, which also differ from children’s descriptions of their own personalities. These different perspectives on children’s personalities offer advantages for explaining variance in children’s academic performance and should not be simply dismissed as rater bias. Instead, varying access to different behavioural tendencies by children, teachers, and parents in different contexts can explain interindividual differences in children’s academic performance.
Distinguishing simple and residual consistencies in functionally equivalent and non-equivalent situations: Evidence from experimental and observational longitudinal data
Kai Horstmann, John Rauthmann, Ryne Sherman & Matthias Ziegler
“You cannot step twice into the same river”. This quote, attributed to Heraclitus, describes the notion that no person can ever be in the exact same situation more than once as both the situation and the person will have changed. This narrative was a running theme in the study by Horstmann, Rauthmann, Sherman, and Ziegler.
In the study, the authors argue that simple consistency, defined as the correlation between state scores without taking people’s traits into account, needs to be distinguished from residual consistency, which does account for traits. The existence of residual consistency reflects systematic interindividual differences in how people respond to or act in situations, above and beyond what is expected from their trait levels. This work examined the level and individual differences in both forms of consistency. In four micro-longitudinal studies, participants first provided trait self-ratings and then state ratings of the Big Five personality traits, either in response to two situation vignettes presented at separate testing occasions (Studies 1 and 2) or during experience sampling in daily life (Studies 3 and 4). In all studies, simple consistency was substantial, and the level of residual consistency varied with the level of equivalence of the situations. Furthermore, individual differences in both simple and residual consistencies were only weakly correlated.
These findings emphasize that not all consistency in personality states is reflected in the self-reported personality trait. This is exciting news for the field of individual differences, especially since the search for additional predictors for consistent states above and beyond broad personality traits has just begun.
Flexibility in using self-regulatory strategies to manage self-control conflicts: The role of metacognitive knowledge, strategy repertoire, and feedback monitoring
Sebastian Bürgler, Rick Hoyle & Marie Hennecke
In everyday life, people encounter situations in which they have to control themselves often multiple times a day. They may feel tempted by something pleasant that stands in conflict with personal goals or they may feel resistant to start or continue with an activity that helps them advance a personal goal but does not seem like fun. In these situations, people experience internal conflicts between what they believe they should do and what is inherently pleasurable to them. Evidence has demonstrated that flexibility in the use of self-regulatory strategies is an effective way in reducing or resolving daily self-control conflicts.
This study evaluated three specific components of flexibility:
1. Metacognitive knowledge, which refers to people’s knowledge about cognitive tasks and the cognitive strategies that will be effective in solving them.
2. Strategy repertoire, the concept of responding strategically to varying demands of different self-control conflicts.
3. Feedback monitoring. Once a strategy has been selected based on metacognitive knowledge, the efficacy of that strategy is monitored through attention to the feedback about progress toward resolving the self-control conflict.
In a 10-day experience sampling study, 226 participants reported whether they had experienced a self-control conflict within the past hour of initiating an aversive activity, persisting in it, or inhibiting an unwanted impulse in response to a temptation. Higher levels of all three components of flexibility were associated with higher levels of success in managing daily self-control conflicts, except for strategy repertoire and feedback monitoring in conflicts of persistence.
This study provides new insights into how trait self-control relates to self-regulatory flexibility, as well as how self-regulatory flexibility in strategy use relates to the resolution of self-control conflict.
The longitudinal interplay between personal values and subjective well-being: A registered report
Michael Grosz, Shalom Schwartz & Clemens Lechner
Personal values are broad, trans-situationally consistent goals. They serve as guiding principles and are associated with a wide range of preferences and behaviours. Thus, it is not surprising that values have often been found to be associated with subjective well-being (SWB). This has led to cross-sectional research that has inspired theories on the interplay between personal values and SWB.
In this registered report, Grosz, Schwartz and Lechner investigated which of the theories on the values–SWB interface fit best with the longitudinal associations between values and cognitive and affective SWB. The authors hypothesized that openness-to-change values have a causal effect on SWB and that SWB, in turn, has a causal effect on openness-to-change values. Grosz and colleagues evaluated 12 waves of GESIS German panel study (a total of 9,724 participants). All four six-month cross-lagged effects and one of the four 18-month cross-lagged effects from openness-to-change values to SWB and vice versa were statistically significant. This was partly consistent with the authors’ hypotheses. Neither openness-to-change values nor SWB appeared to predict the other more strongly.
By utilizing extensive longitudinal data, this study has brought us one step closer to understanding the interplay between values and SWB.
Do you have any questions or comments regarding this newsletter or its contents? Please contact:
Lisanne de Moor (Research Communications Editor; e.l.demoor@gmail.com) or Yavor Dragostinov (Research Communications Assistant; y.dragostinov@sms.ed.ac.uk)