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Personality Trait Differences Between Young and Middle‐Aged Adults: Measurement Artifacts or Actual Trends?
Author(s) -
Nye Christopher D.,
Allemand Mathias,
Gosling Samuel D.,
Potter Jeff,
Roberts Brent W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12173
Subject(s) - psychology , personality , trait , big five personality traits , equivalence (formal languages) , measurement invariance , developmental psychology , context (archaeology) , comparability , alternative five model of personality , confirmatory factor analysis , big five personality traits and culture , social psychology , structural equation modeling , statistics , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , computer science , biology , programming language , combinatorics
A growing body of research demonstrates that older individuals tend to score differently on personality measures than younger adults. However, recent research using item response theory (IRT) has questioned these findings, suggesting that apparent age differences in personality traits merely reflect artifacts of the response process rather than true differences in the latent constructs. Conversely, other studies have found the opposite—age differences appear to be true differences rather than response artifacts. Given these contradictory findings, the goal of the present study was to examine the measurement equivalence of personality ratings drawn from large groups of young and middle‐aged adults (a) to examine whether age differences in personality traits could be completely explained by measurement nonequivalence and (b) to illustrate the comparability of IRT and confirmatory factor analysis approaches to testing equivalence in this context. Self‐ratings of personality traits were analyzed in two groups of Internet respondents aged 20 and 50 ( n = 15,726 in each age group). Measurement nonequivalence across these groups was negligible. The effect sizes of the mean differences due to nonequivalence ranged from –.16 to .15. Results indicate that personality trait differences across age groups reflect actual differences rather than merely response artifacts.