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I'm not 100% sure, but I think personality isn't set like plaster after all. Rather, it continues to normatively develop with age, and this development has key implications. However, personality also changes in idiosyncratic ways that are not captured by typical mean-level trends, thereby requiring approaches beyond the simple linear model to capture these more complex forms of development. For this type of work, I am often interested in topics & research questions such as:
Using multiple metrics to explore development
How do individuals' personalities develop across the lifespan, beyond mean levels of single traits?
Is there person-specific heterogeneity in these other-metric patterns of development, and does this heterogeneity emerge for personality traits as well as constructs like personality pathology, life goals, and temperament?
Testing assumptions about how we conceptualize and model personality change
Do people vary in the model forms that best capture their personality change?
What are the consequences of constraining developmental trajectories of personality to be equivalent for everyone in a sample?
How do patterns of personality change vary across multiple temporal resolutions?
Validating new individual difference metrics
Does heterogeneity in development mostly exist for the magnitude and direction of mean-level change, or do more complex individual differences exist?
Can we quantify how variable people are around their best-fitting trajectory of personality change, and is this a meaningful individual difference?
Selected Relevant Papers
Selected Relevant Papers
Wright, A. J., Krämer, M. D., Haehner, P., Hopwood, C. J., & Bleidorn, W. (2026). Personality traits are less stable than people think. Communications Psychology.
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2025). Longitudinal within-person variability around personality trajectories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 128(1), 211-242.
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2023). Are some people more consistent? Examining the stability and underlying processes of personality profile consistency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1314–1337.
Wright, A. J. & Jackson, J. J. (2024). Individual differences in the forms of personality trait trajectories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 127(5), 1062-1088.
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