21 - Personality development in reaction to major life events

Abstract

Major life events are abrupt changes in the status of individuals that may impact thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This chapter provides a review of studies that examined the impact of major life events on the development of the Big Five personality traits. First, theoretical perspectives are introduced on why personality may (or may not) change in reaction to major life events. Second, methodological requirements for analyzing changes in personality in reaction to major life events are summarized. Third, a review on how personality changes in the face of major life events is provided. The main findings are: (1) Emotional stability decreases in reaction to adverse events but studies clustering life events according to their valence are of limited informative value for testing theoretical predictions. (2) In the occupational domain, most consistent results have been found for conscientiousness that increases during work life entry and decreases in reaction to retirement. Other occupational events come along with specific demands that lead to diverse personality changes. (3) In the social domain, entering a romantic relationship has been found to be associated with personality maturation but most other life events in this domain have no positive impact on maturation. Three hypotheses offer possible explanations for this unexpected finding. (4) In the health domain, surprisingly few studies examined the impact of major life events. Available findings indicate that all of the Big Five traits decrease due to major disease onset. This chapter closes with future directions in this area of research.