Personality in the age of industry: Structure, heritability, and correlates of personality in middle childhood from the perspective of parents, teachers, and children

Abstract

Middle childhood is a crucial juncture in the lifespan where children work towards achieving a sense of competence foundational for future development. However, middle childhood has historically been underrepresented in the personality literature. The current study provides a comprehensive examination of personality in middle childhood using a large (N = 2510), longitudinal sample of 10- to 12-year-old twins. The structure, heritability, and correlates of personality in this period were investigated using personality ratings of parents, teachers, and children. Results showed that personality in middle childhood has a coherent structure, is heritable, and is relevant for developmentally salient outcomes such as externalizing behavior, substance use, and academic engagement. Results emphasize the importance of investigating personality in middle childhood across multiple informants.

Internalizing Symptoms and Personality Traits Color Parental Reports of Child Temperament

“…The Effortful Control dimension is generally indicated by four CBQ scales: Attentional Focusing, Inhibitory Control, Low Intensity Pleasure, and Perceptual Sensitivity (Clark, Listro, et al, ; Rothbart et al, ).…”

“…The Negative Affectivity dimension is typically indicated by five CBQ scales: Sadness, Anger/Frustration, Discomfort, Fear, and Soothability (Clark, Listro, et al, ; Rothbart et al, ). The unconditional trifactor model for Negative Affectivity was specified using the same approach as Effortful Control.…”

“…The Surgency dimension is typically indicated by five CBQ scales: Impulsivity, High Intensity Pleasure, Smiling and Laughter, Shyness, and Positive Anticipation (Clark, Listro, et al, ; Rothbart et al, ). As was the case with Negative Affectivity, trivial loadings on one scale factor (impulsivity) were fixed to 0.…”

“…Specifically, not all scales loaded meaningfully on the consensus factor. This is not inherently problematic from an interpretive standpoint, especially as it is expected that parental agreement will be lower for more internalizing behaviors (Funder, ), and the Surgency dimension of the CBQ tends to have the least robust factor structure and internal coherence (Clark et al, ; Rothbart et al, ). However, Eid, Geiser, Koch, and Heene () have shown that negligible loadings in bifactor models, especially on the general factor, might be attributable to the use of “fixed” as opposed to “random” indicators (i.e., indicators from theoretically limited vs. unlimited pools).…”

“…The canonical approach to specifying these higher‐order traits was used in the present study . Importantly, there is evidence that measurement invariance largely holds in the CBQ across maternal and paternal informants (Clark, Listro et al, ).…”