Against all odds – is a more differentiated view of personality development in emerging adulthood needed? The case of young apprentices

Abstract

Personality development in emerging adults who do not attend college after high school has been largely overlooked so far. In this study, we investigated personality development in emerging German adults (N = 1,886, M = 18.01 years, 29% female) undergoing vocational education and training (VET). The trainees were assessed at the start of VET, 1.5 years later, and another 1.5 years after that, just before graduation. Longitudinal latent change score analyses were applied. Bivariate analyses investigated life satisfaction and job strain as social and work-related aspects that are potentially reciprocally related to personality development. Mean-level personality changes included increases in neuroticism and decreases in agreeableness and conscientiousness in the first interval. In the second interval, neuroticism decreased and conscientiousness increased. Simultaneously, trainees reported a gradual decrease in extraversion and openness across the 3-year time span. Personality, especially agreeableness and conscientiousness, emerged as a stronger predictor of changes in job strain and life satisfaction than vice versa. For example, more agreeable and more conscientious trainees subsequently showed increases in life satisfaction. Trainees reporting higher job strain subsequently showed decreases in agreeableness. Trajectories of personality development partly support the maturity principle that has been established in many college student samples.

Testing Competing Hypotheses on the Interplay of Importance and Support of the Basic Psychological Needs at Work and Personality Development with Response Surface Analysis

“…Contrary to previous studies, the emerging adults working at their first job decreased in all of the Big Five personality traits and, thus, they did not develop according to the maturity principle in the first 1.5 years of their first job experience (Deventer et al, 2019). This is a surprising finding because the context of a person's first job has been associated with development toward more emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (e.g., Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007;Specht et al, 2011).…”

“…That is, the emerging adults reported that they had become less emotionally stable (d = -0.34), less extraverted (d = -0.30), less open (d = -0.09), less agreeable (d = -0.41), and less conscientious (d = -0.49) on average. Personality consistency was moderate with values of r = .50 for emotional stability, r = .65 for extraversion, r = .58 for openness and agreeableness, and r = .57 for conscientiousness, indicating that extraversion was most and emotional stability least stable which has been shown in a previous study on mean-level personality change and individual differences in change with this sample (Deventer, Lüdtke, Nagy, Retelsdorf, & Wagner, 2019). With respect to initial correlations, the importance of BPN support was more strongly related to perceived BPN support (autonomy: r = .38; competence: r = .41; relatedness: r = .48) than the personality traits were to either BPN support (.15 < r < .30) or importance of BPN support (.13 < r < .30).…”

“…The final conclusions were drawn after considering the area of data, interpreting the full model if included in the confidence set, and identifying common effects of the models in the confidence set. Donnellan, 2011; Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001) whereas studies with shorter time spans elaborated on comparable results (e.g., Deventer et al, 2019;Leikas & Salmela-Aro, 2015;Milojev & Sibley, 2017). Regarding the effect of BPN support and the importance of BPN support on subsequent personality change, almost identical results for autonomy, competence, and relatedness were revealed for a given personality trait.…”

“…A framework that describes environmental contexts from a psychological perspective and has been shown to be important for behavioral and emotional outcomes is basic psychological needs theory (BPNT; Deci & Ryan, 2000). Deventer, J., et al (2019). Testing Competing Hypotheses on the Interplay of Importance and Support of the Basic Psychological Needs at Work and Personality Development with Response Surface Analysis.…”

Towards an Integrative Model of Sources of Personality Stability and Change

“…Moreover, work and career investments can lead to increases in agreeableness and conscientiousness (Hudson & Roberts, 2016). However, the evidence is less robust regarding several other work-related factors such as the transition into the first job (Deventer et al, 2019) or retirement (Schwaba & Bleidorn, 2018). Even less is known about conditions of developmental paths within the working context such as transactional processes between work-role demands and personality change across the adult lifespan (Denissen et al, 2013).…”