An Idiographic Approach to Personality Development: Examining Change and Consistency in Self-Concept

Abstract

The field of personality development almost exclusively relies on nomothetic measures (i.e., measures that are designed to capture universal, shared characteristics). Over-reliance on nomothetic measures can neglect important, individualized aspects of personality that are not captured with standard nomothetic measures. The current study takes an individual, idiographic approach to studying personality development by examining the development of one's selfconcept. Participants (N = 507) provided 20 answers to the question "who am I?" four times across a four-year period in college. These self-defining statements were categorized into seven categories (loci, activities and interests, traits, self-evaluation, goals, ideology, and student), and their change and consistency were examined in multiple ways-using rank-order consistency, mean-level change, individual differences in change, and ipsative consistency. Analyses revealed that self-concept is moderately consistent across time, but that mean-level changes occurred in six of the seven categories. Further, mean-level change in self-complexity, or the number of categories used, was also found. Mean-level changes were qualified by significant individual differences in change as well as by a wide distribution of ipsative consistency. The results suggest that young adults are both changing and maintaining the ways they describe themselves over time, some more than others. The diverse content and consistency at the individual-level demonstrates the need for more individual, idiographic assessments to thoroughly examine personality development.

Consistency and change in idiographic personality: A longitudinal ESM network study.

“…With the exception of studies of ipsative change that test the consistency of profiles of personality traits within a person over time (e.g., Block, 1971; De Fruyt et al, 2006; Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2001; Roberts et al, 2006), few studies take an individual, idiographic approach to personality development where the assessment of personality is based on within-person associations (although see Jackson, Lord, Strube, & Harms, 2018). Idiographic techniques (where the sample size is one person or N = 1) refer to methods used for measuring and modeling individuals where the individual is considered truly only relative to him or herself—that is, where personality is defined as the ordering of variables within a person rather than the ordering of people across a single trait dimension.…”

Idiographic personality coherence: A quasi experimental longitudinal ESM study

“…Investigations that have done so have revealed that individuals do reach for unique descriptors for themselves and that these show consistency over time (e.g. Jackson et al., 2019).…”

“…In other words, idiographic assessment does not require or assume that individuals will share in which phenomena capture their experiences. Investigations that have done so have revealed that individuals do reach for unique descriptors for themselves and that these show consistency over time (e.g., Jackson, Lord, Strube & Harms, 2019).…”

Detecting Idiographic Personality Change

“…Recently, there have been calls for an idiographic approach to change, where a person's personality is assessed and modeled relative to only him or herself (Beck & Jackson, 2020ab;Cabrieto, Tuerlinckx, Kuppens, Hunyadi, & Ceulemans, 2018;Jackson, Lord, Strube & Harms, 2019;Wright et al, 2019). In regard to studying personality change, an idiographic approach alleviates concerns over how well broad, nomothetic models of personality capture individuallevel personality structure.…”