Sixteen going on sixty-six: A longitudinal study of personality stability and change across 50 years.

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...