Agreeableness - Agreeableness From Childhood To Adulthood

Agreeableness From Childhood To Adulthood

Agreeableness is of fundamental importance to psychological well-being, predicting mental health, positive affect, and good relations with others. In both childhood and adolescence agreeableness has been tied to externalizing issues. Along with this it has also been implicated in outcomes to conflict management skills, school adjustment, peer-social status and self-esteem. Some work has been done looking into whether agreeableness levels through childhood have effects on adjustment and agreeableness into adulthood. Among young adults, individuals that have been diagnosed with either externalizing as well as internalizing disorders present lower levels of agreeableness and communion, and higher levels of negative emotionality, than those young adults without such disorders. Agreeableness also is reported to mediate links between anger and depression in young adults. Among college students, agreeableness is often associated with self-reports of emotional experience and control along with psycho-physiological responses to affectively charged stimuli. Across adulthood, low agreeableness has been found to be a health risk. High agreeableness, especially trust and honesty, has been linked to longevity.

A study done by Caspi, Elder, and Bem (1987) found that explosive and ill-tempered children were found to have higher rates of divorce as adults when compared with their even-tempered peers. Further, ill-tempered men had lower educational attainment, occupational status, and work stability, and ill-tempered women married men with similar low achievement profiles A second and more recent study by Shiner (2000) found that composite variables describing middle-childhood agreeableness and friendly compliance predicted adolescent academic performance, behavioral conduct, and social competence 10 years later

Most recent is a study done by Larsen, Pulkkinen, and Adams (2002) in which they looked at many different levels of childhood behavior and emotion and the correlation into adulthood agreeableness. In their first analyses, structure coefficients showed that childhood compliance, aggression, and self-control discriminated high-agreeableness from low-agreeableness in adults better than did activity versus passivity, constructiveness, and anxiety. In their second analyses, structure coefficients indicated that adulthood socialization and impulsivity discriminated high-agreeableness from low-agreeableness in adults better than did inhibition of aggression and anxiety. In linking childhood behavioral profiles to adulthood personality profiles, high-compliant, high-self-control, and low-aggressive children were most likely to become high-agreeable, high-socialized, and low-impulsive adults. These children were more unlikely to become low-agreeable, low-socialized, and high-impulsive adults. Further, low-compliant, low-self-control, and high-aggressive children were likely to become low-agreeable, low-socialized, and high-impulsive adults and these children were unlikely to become high-agreeable, high-socialized, and low-impulsive adults. In addition to this, children classified as low-compliance, low-self-control, low-aggression types and children classified as high-compliance, high-self-control, low-aggression types had a greater probability of becoming adults with high-agreeableness, high-socialization, high-impulsivity profiles. Looking at stability of agreeableness they found results that indicated that stable low agreeable individuals reported less career stability and more depression when compared with stable high agreeable individuals and low to high agreeable individuals. Further, stable high agreeable individuals reported lower levels of alcoholism than did the other groups and fewer arrests than did stable low agreeable individuals.