Posted: 11/29/06 Section: News

Media Credit: John Paul Goguen Psychology professor Brent Roberts was quoted in an issue of Psychology Today concerning his research linking personality development and aging. [Click to enlarge]

Here is a conversation starter for your next dinner party: If someone offered you $5,000 today or $10,000 next year, which would you choose? The answers might reveal something about your friends' personalities or impulse control, but do not put too much stock in them. People's responses could be completely different in a few years.

Brent Roberts, associate professor of psychology at the University, was recently referenced in a Psychology Today article due to his research on personality traits and aging. The article detailed how readers could achieve a level of "healthy hedonism."

"It's OK to be the center of attention," Lia Nower, associate professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, told "Psychology Today." "But if you have a solid self-concept and know who you are, you aren't constantly looking for people or experiences to define you."

According to Roberts' research, it may get easier to achieve a balance between show-boating and self assurance as you age.

Roberts told the magazine that "counter-hedonistic qualities such as impulse control and traits increase in young adulthood (ages 20 to 40), midlife and old age."

Roberts' research goes beyond the observation that a middle-aged housewife might have more impulse control than a college student. He studied how people's personality traits change throughout a lifetime.

"Some people claim that people stop changing once you reach adulthood per se, with the age of adulthood being something of a moving target, most recently located by some colleagues at age 30, so we were curious to see whether personality traits continue to change after that age," Roberts said.

The American Psychology Association cited a study by researchers Sanjay Srivastava, Ph.D., and Oliver P. John, Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, which said, "average levels of personality traits changed gradually but systematically throughout the lifespan, sometimes even more after age 30 than before. Increasing conscientiousness and agreeableness and decreasing neuroticism in adulthood may indicate increasing maturity - people becoming on the average better adapted as they get older, well into middle age."

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