Age Differences in the Big Five Personality Domains, Facets and Nuances: A Replication across the life span

Abstract

This replication and extension of Mõttus and Rozgonjuk (2019) compared the extents of age-related information captured by different levels of the personality trait hierarchy (domains, facets and nuances, indexed by individual items) in several samples (N = 51,524) of different age ranges and cultural backgrounds, and tested with different instruments. Across samples and measures, lower trait hierarchy levels (especially nuances) tended to contain substantially more age-sensitive information than higher levels; most of the unique age-sensitive information was in nuances. Besides showing the need for more nuanced personality (development) research, the findings suggest ways of testing novel hypotheses that rely on systematic between-trait variance in age differences.

Investigating general and specific psychopathology factors with nuance‐level personality traits

“…Our results underline that nuance-level analyses are an important supplement to higher level analyses when the goal is prediction (Hang et al, 2021;Mõttus & Rozgonjuk, 2019) even though the incremental predictive value of nuances may depend on the psychopathology factor that is predicted. However, nuance-level analyses also offer an opportunity to answer inconsistencies in the literature, for instance, in terms of the association between personality traits and life outcomes, which could have been due to personality instruments sampling different nuances (Mõttus, 2016).…”

“…To date, personality– p ‐factor associations have generally been investigated at the level of broad personality domains such as the Big Five: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, with neuroticism usually sharing the most prominent links with mental health problems (Kotov et al, 2010) as well as co‐occurrence of disorders (Khan et al, 2005). But some have also began to examine the psychopathology's with facets, given that facets within the same domain often show different, even opposite associations with the same outcomes (Mõttus et al, 2019; Vainik et al, 2019), allowing facets to explain considerably more variation in them (Hang et al, 2021). However, studies into psychopathology associations with facets have mostly been limited to personality disorders and antisocial behaviour (Samuel & Widiger, 2008; Vize et al, 2018), or internalising problems (Khoo et al, 2019; Naragon‐Gaine & Watson, 2014; Walton et al, 2018), and have not considered the generalised risk for mental health issues captured by the p factor.…”

“…However, even facets fail to capture all of personality trait variance. Instead, facets split into nuances—in practice operationalised as individual questionnaire items (McCrae, 2015)—that capture valid (e.g., partly stable, discoverable with different methods, heritable and developing in distinct ways) unique variance beyond the variance captured by the facets and domains that they belong to and track outcomes in distinct ways (Hang et al, 2021; Mõttus et al, 2019; Revelle et al, 2021; Seeboth & Mõttus, 2018; Vainik et al, 2019). Not considering these narrower traits can result in attenuated associations as well as lower specificity, or discriminant validity, of observed personality–outcome associations.…”

Social expectations as a possible mechanism for adult personality change: Limited empirical evidence for the social investment principle

“…Lower levels of the personality hierarchy (facets and nuances) usually contain unique personality variance above and beyond domains (Jang et al, 1998). For example, facets show varied developmental age trajectories compared to their domains (Mõttus et al, 2015; Mõttus & Rozgonjuk, 2021; Soto et al, 2011; Terracciano et al, 2006), and nuances also show age trends different from their facets (Hang et al, 2021; McCrae, 2015; Mõttus et al, 2015; Mõttus, Soto, & Slobodskaya, 2017).…”

“…Besides potentially a more refined description of the population‐level patterns of personality development (Hang et al, 2021), nuance‐level analyses allow us to study systematic variations between personality traits in their developmental trends and intersections with other trait‐level features such as social expectations for them (Mõttus et al, 2020; Mõttus & Rozgonjuk, 2021). For example, Hang et al (2022) capitalized on variations between traits to investigate whether social expectations and ability to catch up with these expectations (self‐regulatory ability to adapt to social expectations) can explain the personality changes during childhood and adolescence.…”