Longitudinal Stability of Personality

Abstract

Estimates of the longitudinal stability of the normal adult personality decrease with increase in the length of the assessment-reassessment interval over which stability is measured, regardless of the method employed. This randomness in the evolution of personality is attributed to the inherent indeterminacy of the global dynamics of the normal human brain. The predictive power of theories of personality is fundamentally constrained. Explanatory personality theories should not be evaluated in terms of the proportion of the total variance that they predict over time but rather on the proportion of the predictable variance they account for.