How Children and Adults Differ in Personality

Personality Traits in Childhood and Adolescence: Structure, Development, and Outcomes

In many instances, youth are described by their personality trait. Particularly during puberty, students are attempting to find themselves in an unknown environment. The article attempts to provide an explanation on the behavioral of youth tendencies and their relationships to broader traits. The article also provided example of both similarities and differences between youth and their adult counterparts. It is interesting how both youth and adults have evolved over the past half century in regards to their relationship and ability to cope with uncertainty. Recently, we have seen an influx of school shootings, murders and suicides by high school students dealing with adversity. We have also witnessed instances of student and teacher sexual relationship which correlate directly to personality traits. Even more intriguing is how students deal with these issues in the context of society overall.

In general the article describes how personality ultimately shapes a person life. It is these personality traits that allow certain events to occur, that to society seem somewhat outrageous. The second concept discuss in the article is that personality becomes inherently stable overtime. During an individuals younger years however, personality can be easily influenced.

First the article discusses how personality traits have a hierarchy to them. Generally speaking, broad higher order traits subsuming narrow, lower-order traits. The article also discusses the big five trait dimensions, which consist of extroversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness. Both adults and children experience these two concepts but in varying degrees. In most cases the big five can be measured with both child and adolescents. What is different is how the five interact with each other at varying stages of an individual's life. Studies have should that agreeableness and conscientiousness correlates well to each other. In particular the relationship between these two elements is much stronger in adolescents than in adults. In adults however, there is a much stronger correlation of openness and conscientiousness than with their younger counterparts. The reason being is that higher order self-regulation traits are much more prominent in teens than in adults. These traits are often found in the rebellious nature of adolescents relative to their much order parents. These children also want to fit in with their peers, which correlates directly to the agreeableness trait. Teens in particular, are more likely to follow the herd and agree with the masses as oppose to being their own individual. This can be attributed to the conscientiousness trait also being very high on a child's personality hierarchy.