The DOI matches its Crossref record; 88 of the 90 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Personality trait development from age 12 to age 18: Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and cross-cultural analyses
Abstract
Three studies were conducted to assess mean level changes in personality traits during adolescence. Versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992a) were used to assess the 5 major personality factors. A 4-year longitudinal study of intellectually gifted students (N = 230) was supplemented by cross-sectional studies of nonselected American (N = 1,959) and Flemish (N = 789) adolescents. Personality factors were reasonably invariant across ages, although rank-order stability of individual differences was low. Neuroticism appeared to increase in girls, and Openness to Experience increased in both boys and girls; mean levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stable. Results extend knowledge of the developmental curve of personality traits backward from adulthood and help bridge the gap with child temperament studies.
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“Openness to experience, relative to other major personality traits, increases dramatically between ages 12 to 16 (McCrae et al., 2002), driven primarily by an increased appreciation of aesthetics and alternative value systems.”
From Incentive Motivation, Cognitive Control, and the Adolescent Brain: Is It Time for a Paradigm Shift? (2012) · cites this paper as McCrae et al., 2002
Citations
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“…rank-order position relative to other persons, increases with age from adolescence through adulthood (Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000), mean neuroticism scores peak in late adolescence and decline moderately through adulthood (Costa et al., 1986; McCrae et al., 2002; Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., Parker, W. D., Mills, C. J., De Fruyt, F., & Mervielde, I.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Ghent University (BE)
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 2002
- Volume
- 83
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1456-1468
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- OpenAlex
- W2069214083
- Cited by
- 499
- References
- 90
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 57 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 33 · 2015: 30 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 30
- FWCI
- 12.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (Z99 AG999999)
- National Institute on Aging (ZIAAG000180, ZIAAG000183)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- adolescence, Big Five personality traits, neuroticism, openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, rank-order stability, gender differences, cross-cultural comparison, Flemish adolescents
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Analysis of Variance, Belgium, Child, Child, Gifted, Cross-Sectional Studies, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Personality Development, Personality Inventory, United States, Age Distribution, Sex Distribution
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Personality trait development from age 12 to age 18: Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and cross-cultural analyses. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1456
- The paper
- McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., Parker, W. D., Mills, C. J., De Fruyt, F., & Mervielde, I. (2002). Personality trait development from age 12 to age 18: Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and cross-cultural analyses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1456
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
