In Your Eyes Only? Discrepancies and Agreement Between Self- and Other-Reports of Personality From Age 14 to 29

Julia Rohrer (), Boris Egloff (), Michal Kosinski (), David Stillwell () and Stefan Schmukle ()
Additional contact information
Julia Rohrer: University of Leipzig
Boris Egloff: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Michal Kosinski: Stanford University
David Stillwell: University of Cambridge
Stefan Schmukle: University of Leipzig

No 1702, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability), and this pattern was generally also reflected in other-reports, albeit with discrepancies regarding timing and magnitude. Age differences found for extraversion were similar between the self- and other reports, but the increase found in self-reported conscientiousness was delayed in other reports, and the curvilinear increase found in self-reported openness was slightly steeper in other-reports. Only emotional stability showed a distinct mismatch with an increase in self reports, but no significant age effect in other-reports. Both the self- and other-reports of agreeableness showed no significant age trends. The trait correlations between the self- and other-reports increased with age for emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; by contrast, agreement regarding extraversion remained stable. The profile correlations confirmed increases in self-other agreement with age. We suggest that these gains in agreement are a further manifestation of maturation. Taken together, our analyses generally show commonalities but also some divergences in age-associated mean level changes between self- and other-reports of the Big Five, as well as an age trend towards increasing self-other agreement.

Keywords: personality maturation; other-reports; self-other agreement; Big Five; personality cross-ratings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-neu
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_1702.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1702

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Research Unit IPP ().