Individual differences in personality change across the lifespan generally…

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Question restatement: The prompt asks about how individual differences in personality change across the lifespan typically manifest. The answer choices are:
A. Increase over time, as people age.
B. Decrease over time, as people age.
C. Are steadily maintained across the lifespan.
D. Are not distinguishable from mean-level change.

Option A: Increase over time, as people age. This would mean that individual differences in how people change become more pronounced with age. In personality research, however, most evidence suggests that people tend to converge in their change trajectories as they get older, and the variation between individuals in how they change tends to diminish. Therefore, this statement overstates the divergence of trajectories and is not consistent with established patterns of aging in personality.

Option B: Decrease over time, as people age. This aligns with the common finding that rank-order consistency of personality increases with age and that individual differences in change (i.e., who changes more or less) tend to shrink over the lifespan. In other words, as people age, their unique paths become more similar in terms of direction and amount of change, leading to smaller individual differences in trajectories.

Option C: Are steadily maintained across the lifespan. If individual differences in change were steady across all ages, it would imply no attenuation or amplification of how people change over time. However, empirical work typically shows that the magnitude of variation in change tends to decrease with age rather than staying constant, making this option unlikely.

Option D: Are not distinguishable from mean-level change. This would claim that individual differences in change cannot be separated from average (mean-level) change across the group. In personality research, researchers do distinguish between mean-level change (how the average person changes) and interindividual differences in change (how different people differ in their rates or directions of change). Therefore, this statement mischaracterizes the analytic distinction commonly made in longitudinal personality studies.

In summary, option B correctly reflects a well-supported pattern: as people age, the variability among individuals in how their personality changes tends to decrease, leading to smaller differences in change trajectories over time. The other options misstate or misinterpret the nature of change in personality across the lifespan, either by suggesting increasing divergence, constant differences, or conflating individual differences with mean-level change.

PSYC20009_2025_SM2 Exam: Personality and Social Psychology (PSYC20009_2025_SM2)- Requires Respondus LockDown Browser

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