Over the lifespan consistency of individual differences in personality typically

Age differences in implicit and explicit personality

There is now compelling evidence that personality changes across the lifespan—people tend to become more conscientious, agreeable, and less neurotic over time. Some of the earliest evidence for lifespan differences in personality came from large cross-sectional studies of age differences (Soto et al., 2010; Srivastava et al., 2003). However, most of these studies have used self-report measures of personality—or measures completed by a close other—which have historically been shown to, at least

The current study

In the current study, we assessed whether there was consistency in age differences across implicit (i.e., IAT-based) and explicit (i.e., traditional self-report) measures of personality. The preponderance of evidence suggests that personality differs by age, such that older adults are higher in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability (age differences in extraversion and openness are less clear). However, most of this research has been conducted using self-report measures of

Participants and procedure

12,702 participants completed the Implicit Personality measure via the Project Implicit website between October 15 and November 28, 2010 (Nosek et al., 2002). These data had been previously published (Vianello et al., 2013) and made publicly available by the original authors, but information on age differences was not included in the prior report or otherwise published. The material from the original authors, as well as a more focused data set and syntax for the current project, are available

Results

Correlations between the primary study variables are presented in Table 1. Reproducing Vianello et al. (2013), correlations between traits measured implicitly and explicitly were relatively small (range: 0.13 to 0.29; Mr = 0.19). We also reproduced the small gender differences, such that women were higher in agreeableness and neuroticism, and the remaining traits showed some inconsistent gender differences. Age was associated with each trait in a consistent way across implicit and explicit

Discussion

In the current study, we assessed consistency in age differences across one implicit and two explicit measures of Big Five personality traits. Most research examining age differences has relied on explicit self-reports. We compared self-reports with implicit measures of personality that are ostensibly less prone to the social desirability biases implicated in self-reports. Although there was some variability in the specific pattern of age differences (e.g., linear or quadratic) and some traits

Conclusion

The current study examined consistency in implicit and explicit measures of personality across the lifespan. Because most studies of personality are based largely on self-reports, it was possible that their results may have been influenced by social desirability effects. To address this limitation, we examined age differences in personality in a large sample of people between the ages of 18 and 94 with both implicit and explicit measures of personality. While there were small differences found

Author note

Data and syntax for this study, as well as materials from the original developers of the implicit personality measure, are available at (https://osf.io/r58px/?view_only=220b658d7aa34f4e8d14858f427e64f8). This study was not pre-registered.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mariah F. Purol: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Jeewon Oh: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Meghan C. Abrom: Writing – original draft. Hana Bernard: Writing – original draft. Anna Forest: Writing – original draft. Seija D. Huhtala: Writing – original draft. Hyonjoon Kim: Writing – original draft. Haoyan Lin: Writing – original draft. Caitlin M. Meredith: Writing – original draft. Corrin S. Misak: Writing – original draft. Alex Mison:

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