ABSTRACT
Life goals play a major role in shaping people's lives and careers. Although life goals have prior documented associations with occupational and other life outcomes, no prior studies have investigated associations between life goal development and occupational outcomes. Using two representative samples of Icelandic youth (Sample 1: n = 485, Sample 2: n = 1,339), followed across 12 years from adolescence to young adulthood, we examined life goal development and associations with educational attainment and a wide range of occupational outcomes. We found that life goals had relatively high rank-order and profile stability across the 12 years. Most life goals decreased in importance during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, except for family- and community-related goals, pointing to a continued focus on building social relationships in young adulthood. We also found meaningful variation in change at the item level within certain goal domains. Furthermore, adolescent levels of life goals, as well as changes in certain goals, predicted educational attainment and occupational outcomes in young adulthood. This suggests that life goals motivate career behaviors beginning at an early age and that subsequent changes in certain life goals also matter for educational and occupational outcomes. Dominance analyses revealed that education and prestige life goals were generally the strongest predictors of future outcomes. Overall, these results highlight the importance of life goal development in predicting later educational attainment and occupational outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
ABSTRACT
How much do people's personalities change or remain stable from high school to retirement? To address these questions, we used a large U.S. sample (N = 1,795) that assessed people's personality traits in adolescence and 50 years later. We also used 2 independent samples, 1 cross-sectional and 1 short-term longitudinal (N = 3,934 and N = 38, respectively), to validate the personality scales and estimate measurement error. This was the first study to test personality stability/change over a 50-year time span in which the same data source was tapped (i.e., self-report). This allowed us to use 4 different methods (rank-order stability, mean-level change, individual-level change, and profile stability) answering different developmental questions. We also systematically tested gender differences. We found that the average rank-order stability was .31 (corrected for measurement error) and .23 (uncorrected). The average mean-level change was half of a standard deviation across personality traits, and the pattern of change showed maturation. Individual-level change also supported maturation, with 20% to 60% of the people showing reliable change within each trait. We tested 3 aspects of personality profile stability, and found that overall personality profile stability was .37, distinctive profile stability was .17, and profile normativeness was .51 at baseline and .62 at the follow-up. Gender played little role in personality development across the life span. Our findings suggest that personality has a stable component across the life span, both at the trait level and at the profile level, and that personality is also malleable and people mature as they age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
