Although many different trait theories of personality have been proposed over the years, few have been concerned with or have been based on adults of different ages. A major exception to this is the five — factor model proposed by Costa and McCrae (1994; McCrae, 2002). Their model is strongly grounded in cross-sectional, longitudinal, and […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What is the five-factor model of dispositional traits? • What evidence is there for long-term stability in dispositional traits? • What criticisms have been leveled at the five-factor model? • What can we conclude from theory and research on dispositional traits? A bby was attending her high school reunion. She hadn’t seen […]

The debate over the degree to which personality in adulthood remains stable or changes is one that has generated numerous studies and theoretical perspectives. Consequently, sorting out the various approaches helps us understand what aspects of personality the various researchers are describing. Drawing on the work of several theorists and researchers, McAdams (1999) describes three […]

Levels of Analysis and Personality Research 9.1 DISPOSITIONAL TRAITS ACROSS ADULTHOOD The Case for Stability: The Five-Factor Model • Additional Studies of Dispositional Traits • Critiques of the Five-Factor Model • Current Controversies: Intraindividual Change and the Stability of Traits • Conclusions about Dispositional Traits 9.2 PERSONAL CONCERNS AND QUALITATIVE STAGES IN ADULTHOOD What’s Different […]

The research on social cognition and aging further accentuates why it is important to consider social fac­tors to explain cognitive functioning in older adult­hood. Factors such as the social context in which we communicate, the emotions we are feeling, and the strength of our beliefs and values drive our deci­sions and social judgments in important […]

Another approach to identifying conditions under which social facilitation of cognition in older adults occurs is in examining contextual variables that influence memory performance. For example, Cynthia Adams argues that memory performance is influenced when the task approximates a real — world learning and social memory experience (Adams et al., 2002). In this case, what […]

There has been a recent focus in the social cognition and aging literature to examine cognition in social contexts, that is, how cognition works when we are interacting with others. This can be seen in work on the benefits and costs of collaborative cognition on cognitive performance (e. g., memory and prob­lem solving) (Dixon, 1999; […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What is the social facilitation of cognitive functioning? • What is collaborative cognition, and does it facilitate memory in older adults? • How does the social context influence memory performance in older adults? B randon and Stephanie’s granddaughter asked them what happened when they first met. Stephanie recalled that they met at […]

As you progress through college, you are concerned with your grade-point average, how much you will learn relative to your profession of choice, and your performance on exams. The more control you perceive that you have over the situation, the more confident you feel. There are two types of control attributions you can make. You […]

The research just reviewed primarily examined con­trol-related beliefs such as the belief that control is in one’s own hands or in the hands of others. However, a number of theoretical approaches and empirical work have examined control-related strategies. For example, Brandtstadter (1999) proposes that the preservation and stabilization of a positive view of the self […]