Stability and change of perceived characteristics of major life events.

Abstract

The occurrence of major life events is associated with changes in well-being and personality. To better understand these effects, it is important to consider how individuals perceive major life events. Although theories such as appraisal theory and affective adaptation theory suggest that event perceptions change over time and that these changes are relevant for personality and well-being, stability and change of perceived event characteristics have not been systematically examined. This article aims to fill this gap using data from a longitudinal study (N = 619 at T1). In this study, participants rated nine perceived characteristics of the same major life event up to five times within 1 year. We estimated rank-order and mean-level stabilities as well as intraclass correlations of these life event characteristics with continuous time models. Furthermore, we computed continuous time models for the stability of affective well-being and the Big Five personality traits to generate benchmarks for the interpretation of the stability of the life event characteristics. Rank-order stabilities for the life event characteristics were lower than for the Big Five, but higher than for affective well-being. Most of the variance in life event characteristics was explained by between-person differences. Furthermore, we found a significant mean-level increase for the life event characteristic change in world views and a significant decrease for extraordinariness. These mean-level changes are in line with the meaning-making literature and affective adaptation theory, whereas the rather high rank-order stability of the life event characteristics challenges the importance of reappraisal processes of major life events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).