Both an individual's personality and well-being are important throughout their lives. This book explores the current research on links between personality predictors of well-being and social adjustment using empirical studies to suggest that their influence can vary depending on the key developmental stage.

Personality Development across the Lifespan examines the development of personality characteristics from childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood, and old age. It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives, methods, and empirical findings of personality and developmental psychology, also detailing insights on how individuals differ from each other, how they change during life, and how these changes relate to biological and environmental factors, including major life events, social relationships, and health. The book begins with chapters on personality development in different life phases before moving on to theoretical perspectives, the development of specific personality characteristics, and personality development in relation to different contexts, like close others, health, and culture. Final sections cover methods in research on the topic and the future directions of research in personality development. - Introduces and reviews the most important personality characteristics - Examines personality in relation to different contexts and how it is related to important life outcomes - Discusses patterns and sources of personality development

Personality factors have long been implicated in how individuals manage and cope with circumstances to maintain well-being and health across the lifespan (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Mroczek & Spiro, 2007; Wrosch & Scheier, 2003). However, personality factors have also been shown to change over time in both situational and normative contexts (Caspi & Roberts, 1999; Crocker & Wolfe, 2006; Robins et al., 2002; Roberts, Walton & Virchtbauer, 2006). These changes in personality can provide important information about how individuals adapt to and navigate life events and challenges. We investigate self-esteem as a personality factor that changes across the lifespan and identify age-related differences in the impact of self-esteem levels and changes on indices of well-being. This line of research combines personality and lifespan developmental literature to address the question whether levels of and changes in self-esteem can predict well-being and whether there are age-related effects as self-esteem changes across the lifespan. The present dissertation had three main goals: 1) To examine the impact of self-esteem changes and levels across the adult lifespan; 2) to examine changes in self-esteem in different ways - intraindividual changes in self-esteem, normative changes in self-esteem and experimental changes in self-esteem; 3) to investigate the moderating role of self-esteem changes. In order to address these goals, data was collected to examine within-person changes in self-esteem among older adults, data from Statistics Canada was analyzed to examine normative changes in self-esteem, and finally an intervention study was developed to examine experimental changes in self-esteem among young and older adults, and data on psychological and emotional well-being were collected. Three manuscripts were then written based on this data and are included as part of this dissertation. The first manuscript examined the potential moderating role of self-esteem on older adults' perceived stress and regret intensity, over 10 years in a sample of 167 community dwelling older adults. This study examined the within-person associations between older adults' perceived stress and regret intensity, and the moderating role of levels of, and within-person changes in, self-esteem. Within-person results indicated that older adults reported higher levels of regret intensity when they reported higher than their average levels of perceived stress, and that within-person increases of self-esteem, but not between-person levels, moderated this association. The results suggest that within-person changes in self-esteem may be more important than individual differences of self-esteem in protecting older adults from experiencing greater regret intensity under stressful circumstances. The second manuscript, revised and re-submitted for publication in Social Science and Medicine, examines normative changes in self-esteem across the adult lifespan in a 16-year longitudinal sample of 14,117 adults from the National Population Health Survey (NPHS). The study examines whether changes in self-esteem and chronic disease exert reciprocal effects on subsequent changes in self-esteem and chronic disease, and whether individuals' age would moderate these associations. The findings from this paper suggest that there are reciprocal age-related associations between changes in self-esteem and chronic disease. Only among young adults, but not middle-aged or older adults, initial decline in self-esteem predicted subsequent increases in chronic disease, and initial increases in chronic disease predicted subsequent declines in self-esteem. The results from this study highlight that adverse changes in both self-esteem and physical health may be particularly problematic for young adults, and have comparably less impact among middle-aged and older adults. The third and final manuscript included in this dissertation attempted to improve young and older adults' self-esteem through a brief writing intervention. The study examines whether self-esteem can be improved, whether baseline levels of self-esteem and naturally occurring changes in self-esteem play an adaptive role in mitigating consequences of stress, and predict psychological and emotional well-being, and whether these associations are moderated by age. The study examines 106 young and older adults, randomized into control and intervention groups, who were asked to engage in three consecutive days of writing. All participants completed an in-lab stress task, and cortisol data were also examined. The results of the study suggest that our writing intervention did not work. In addition, the results suggest that high levels of self-esteem and naturally occurring increases in self-esteem (and not experimental changes), predicted positive outcomes, only for older, but not younger, adults. Consistent with previous research, our results highlight age differences in the association between self-esteem and psychological and emotional well-being, which may also suggest that future self-esteem interventions could be more tailored to each specific age group.

In the past fifty years, scholars of human development have been moving from studying change in humans within sharply defined periods, to seeing many more of these phenomenon as more profitably studied over time and in relation to other processes. The Handbook of Life-Span Development, Volume 2: Social and Emotional Development presents the study of human development conducted by the best scholars in the 21st century. Social workers, counselors and public health workers will receive coverage of the social and emotional aspects of human change across the lifespan.

Work Across the Lifespan coalesces theoretical and empirical perspectives on aging and work. This volume examines a collection of human development theories that explain trajectories of change, including patterns of growth, maintenance, and decline across the adult lifespan. At its core, the lifespan perspective assumes a focus on aging as a continuous process of intraindividual change and goal-based self-regulation. In this text, the lifespan perspective serves as a lens for examining the complex relationship between aging and work. Integrating research from the fields of developmental psychology as well as industrial, work, and organizational psychology, this authoritative reference brings together the collective thinking of researchers who study work, careers, organizations, and aging.

First published in 1987. There is a wide gap between life-span research and mainstream social psychology, and this book strikes a bright spark between these poles. promising as a corrective to narrowness and sterility. The chapters reflect a wide variety of approaches in social psychology, as well as considerable breadth in the range of ideas from life-span human development that are brought to bear.

The final volume in this significant series, this publication mirrors the broad scientific attention given to ideas and issues associated with the life-span perspective: constancy and change in human development; opportunities for and constraints on plasticity in structure and function across life; the potential for intervention across the entire life course (and thus for the creation of an applied developmental science); individual differences (diversity) in life paths, in contexts (or the ecology) of human development, and in changing relations between people and contexts; interconnections and discontinuities across age levels and developmental periods; and the importance of integrating biological, psychological, social, cultural, and historical levels of organization in order to understand human development.

The field of emotions research has recently seen an unexpected period of growth and expansion, both in traditional psychological literature and in gerontology. The Handbook of Emotion, Adult Development, and Aging provides a broad overview and summary of where this field stands today, specifically with reference to life course issues and aging. Written by a distinguished group of contributing authors, the text is grounded in a life span developmental framework, while advancing a multidimensional view of emotion and its development and incorporating quantitative and qualitative research findings.The book is divided into five parts. Part One discusses five major theoretical perspectives including biological, discrete emotions, ethological, humanistic, and psychosocial. Part Two on affect and cognition discusses the role of emotion in memory, problem solving, and internal perceptions of self and gender. Part Three on emotion and relationships expands on the role of emotion in sibling and parent/child relationships, as well as relationships between friends and romantic partners, and the emotional reaction to interpersonal loss across the life span. Part Four on stress, health, and psychological well-being treats issues of stress and coping, religion, personality, and quality of life. The final part on continuity and change in emotion patterns and personality discusses emotion and emotionality throughout the life span.An ideal reference source for professionals across a wide range of disciplines, the text summarizes recent important developments in this fast growing area of psychology and proposes many new directions for future research. - Provides a biopsychological view on emotion in adulthood from a life span context - Presents the new perspective on emotion in older adults actively engaged in emotion self-regulation - Describes the intimate connection between emotion and the structure of personality - Demonstrates a new perspective on what emotion is, its importance across the life span, its connections with cognition, its role in interpersonal relation, and the way it influences both stability and change in adulthood - Illustrates the interpersonal nature of emotion - Provides theoretically based, leading edge research from international authors - Five areas of coverage include: - Theoretical perspectives - Affect and cognition - Emotion and relationships - Stress, health, and psychological well-being - Continuity and change in emotion patterns and personality Coverage includes: - Five major theoretical perspectives, including biological, discrete emotions, ethological, humanistic, and psychosocial - The role of emotion in memory, problem-solving, and internal perceptions of self and gender - The role of emotion in sibling and parent/child relationships, relationships between friends and romantic partners, and the emotional reaction to interpersonal loss across the lifespan - Issues of stress and coping, religion, personality, and quality of life - Emotion and emotionality throughout the lifespan

Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Personality and Socialization presents papers on personality and socialization. The book discusses the history, theory, and psychological approaches of developmental psychology, with focus on socialization and personality development through the life span; personality dimensions; and theories of socialization and sex-role development. The text also describes the life-span perspective of creativity and cognitive styles; continuities in childhood and adult moral development revisited; and issues of intergenerational relations as they affect both individual soc.

This is the third book in a series of Across the Life Span volumes that has come from the Biennial Life Span Development Conferences. The authors--well known in their fields--present theoretical and research issues important for the understanding of temperament in infancy and childhood, as well as personality in adolescence and adulthood. Current findings placed within theoretical and historical contexts make each chapter distinctive. The chapter authors focus on their work and its implications for temperament and personality issues across the life span. In addition, they include summaries of research by other investigators and theorists, placing their work and that of others in a lifespan perspective.