We are most neurotic in our thirties, and honest in our forties - and our personalities keeping developing until we are in our fifties, researchers say
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It is great news for those in their thirties and forties worried life is over.
Researchers say that in fact, our personalities develop until well into our fifities.
They say our personality becomes most stable during middle age - but then begins to decline again.
Researchers say our personalities develop into our fifties - and that middle age in peak time for them.
Experts found that the stability of personality increases through youth, peaks in mid-life and then gradually reduces again into old age, presumably in response to the variations in social and biological pressures we experience at the different stages of life.
Petar Milojev and Chris Sibley at the University of Auckland in New Zealand recruited 4,000 men and women aged 20 to 80 to complete a personality questionnaire twice, with a gap of two years in between.
The survey measured a person's honesty-humility factor as well as five major personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience.
They compared how people's scores varied between years, and analyzed how all of the participants personalities related to one another, depending on age.
Most people's personalities were generally stable, they found, but the stability of those trait followed a bell curve over time, peaking at middle-age and then dropping again.
For certain traits—conscientiousness, openness to experience, and honesty-humility, the oldest participants' personality stability matched those of the youngest.
Extraversion was the most stable trait, and agreeableness the least, according to the British Psychological Society's Research Digest.
People in their 30s, for example, showed high levels of neuroticism, but by the time they reached their 50s that had been replaced by conscientiousness, openness and honesty-humility.
People in their 30s, for example, showed high levels of neuroticism, but by the time they reached their 50s that had been replaced by conscientiousness, openness and honesty-humility.
The researchers said these "domain specific" variations in personality stability point to different environmental and social demands influencing different personality traits to varying degrees at slightly different times of life.
"This report further highlights the need to test ... the effects of events that might cause the lower stability [of personality] in younger and older adulthood," the researchers said.
"In addition our finding of systematically different peaks in stability between different personality dimensions suggest the need to further investigate age-specific changes in environmental and social pressures that are associated with such domain-specific effects."
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