The associations between life events and person-centered personality consistency

Objective: Few environments reliably influence mean-level and rank-order changes in personality – perhaps because personality development needs to be examined through an individualized, person-centered lens. Methods: The current study used Bayesian multilevel linear models to examine the association between 16 life events and changes in person-centered, Big Five personality consistency across four to 10 waves of data using four datasets (N = 24,491). Results: Selection effects were found for events such as marriage, (un)employment, retirement, and volunteering whereas between-person effects for slopes were found for events such as beginning formal education, employment, and retirement. Within-person changes were often small and emerged inconsistently across datasets but, when present, were brief and negative in direction, suggesting life events can serve as a short-term disruption to the personality system. However, there were many individual differences around event-related trajectories. Conclusion: Our results highlight that the effects of life events depend on how personality and its changes are quantified – with these findings underscoring the utility of a person-centered approach as it can capture the full range of these idiosyncrasies. Overall, these findings suggest that life events are associated with a range of idiosyncratic effects and can serve as a short-term, destabilizing shock to one’s personality system.