Cultural Consistency in Late-Life Declines in Positive Personality Traits

Abstract Personality has elements of both stability and change across the adult lifespan. There has also been evidence for terminal decline—late-life decreases in positive psychological characteristics. However, many of these studies have examined these patterns in primarily Western populations. The current study examined the consistency of age differences in positive personality traits (i.e., character strengths) across cultures. I examined 2,895,051 participants ranging in age from 13 to 100 (Mage = 34.31; 65.3% women) from 90 different countries. I reproduced patterns of terminal decline across cultures. In addition to mean differences between cultures (e.g., focusing on the present is associated with more positive traits [Mr = .45]), cultural characteristics often moderated the effects of age on positive personality traits. For example, terminal decline was more dramatic among people from collectivistic cultures and flatter among people from individualistic cultures. Results will be discussed in the context of cultural variation developmental processes.

controlling for selection bias.Finally, Josh Jackson uses network psychometric techniques to examine coherence and differentiation among indicators of the Big Five from 14 to 85 in a large multinational sample, tracking age differences with consequences for the assessment of personality traits in older adulthood.We will conclude with a panel discussion of emerging issues in personality change, prediction, and assessment across adulthood, with each speaker providing unique experience and insight into the study of each area.

BIG FIVE DEVELOPMENT FROM YOUNG ADULTHOOD TO MIDLIFE: FINDINGS FROM A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF MEXICAN-ORIGIN ADULTS
Olivia Atherton, 1 Angelina Sutin, 2 Antonio Terracciano, 3  and Richard Robins, 4 1.Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States,2. Florida  A large body of research has documented how personality develops across adulthood, yet very little longitudinal work has examined whether these findings generalize beyond predominantly middle-class, highly-educated White American or Western European individuals.This pre-registered study uses longitudinal data from 1,110 Mexican-origin adults who completed a well-validated personality measure, the Big Five Inventory, up to 6 times across 12 years (median age at Wave 1 = 37.7; range = 26 to 65).Individuals generally maintained their rank ordering on the Big Five over time (rs=.66-.80), and all of the Big Five traits showed small, mean-level decreases across adulthood.These trajectories had few associations with sociodemographic factors (sex, education level, IQ) and cultural factors (generational status, age at immigration, Spanish/English language preference, Mexican cultural values, American cultural values, ethnic discrimination).Divergences between the present findings and previous research highlight the need to study personality development across diverse aging samples.

CULTURAL CONSISTENCY IN LATE-LIFE DECLINES IN POSITIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS William Chopik, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States
Personality has elements of both stability and change across the adult lifespan.There has also been evidence for terminal decline-late-life decreases in positive psychological characteristics.However, many of these studies have examined these patterns in primarily Western populations.The current study examined the consistency of age differences in positive personality traits (i.e., character strengths) across cultures.I examined 2,895,051 participants ranging in age from 13 to 100 (Mage = 34.31;65.3% women) from 90 different countries.I reproduced patterns of terminal decline across cultures.In addition to mean differences between cultures (e.g., focusing on the present is associated with more positive traits [Mr = .45]),cultural characteristics often moderated the effects of age on positive personality traits.For example, terminal decline was more dramatic among people from collectivistic cultures and flatter among people from individualistic cultures.Results will be discussed in the context of cultural variation developmental processes.Decades of studies identify prospective associations between personality characteristics and life outcomes.However, previous investigations of personality characteristic-outcome associations have not taken a principled approach to sampling strategies to ensure the robustness of personality-outcome associations.In a preregistered study, we test whether and for whom personality-outcome associations are robust against selection bias using prospective associations between 14 personality characteristics and 14 health, social, education/work, and societal outcomes across eight different person-and study-level moderators using individual participant data from 171,395 individuals across 10 longitudinal panel studies in a mega-analytic framework with propensity score matching.Two findings emerged: First, personality characteristics remain robustly associated with later life outcomes.Second, the effects generalize, as there are few moderators of personalityoutcome associations.In sum, personality characteristics are robustly associated with later life outcomes with few moderated associations.We discuss how these findings can inform studies of personality-outcome associations.Most investigations in the structure of personality traits do not adequately address age, as few studies look at the structure of personality traits a-theoretically, instead presupposing a theoretical structure e.g., Big Five.As a result, the relationship among indicators within a trait (coherence) are often highlighted but relationships across traits (differentiation) are not thoroughly examined.Using a large-scale sample of 369,151 individuals ranging in age from 14 to 90, the present study examines whether personality indicators show differential relationships as a function of age.Results indicate that coherence shows few changes across the lifespan, while differentiation weakens across adulthood into old age.These finding suggest that Big Five indicators only parallel the Big Five structure among young but not older adults.Thus, using standard Big Five personality trait assessments in older adults may, at best, not reflect reality and, at worse, undermine the predictive utility of personality traits.

COMMUNITY MOBILITY IN OLDER ADULTS: NOVEL METHODOLOGIES, RISK FACTORS, AND INTERVENTIONS
Chair: Andrea Rosso Co-Chair: Michelle Carlson Discussant: Jana Hirsch Community mobility is an individual's movement outside the home.It is essential for the completion of many instrumental activities of daily living, such as shopping and healthcare, and promotes physical function, social engagement, independent living, and quality of life.Mobility research often focuses on gait speed measured in clinical settings, a critical but not sufficient determinant of community mobility.Here we present four talks that assess community mobility and its determinants using novel methodologies to enhance our understanding of how to maintain independence in older ages.First, Andrea Rosso presents characteristics of individuals with the strongest associations between environmental walkability, as assessed by virtual audits, and walking.Second, Kyle Moored demonstrates associations of self-reported fatigability with life space among older men, independent of their physical functioning.Breanna Crane introduces GPS-based objective measures of community mobility and their associations with cognitive and physical function of older adults.Finally, Pam Dunlap presents results of a randomized clinical trial of a physical therapy intervention to improve walking in older adults on subjective and objective measures of life space.These talks will provide a better understanding of the factors related to community mobility, introduce attendees to novel methodologies in the assessment of both community mobility and risk factors associated with the loss of community mobility, and demonstrate approaches to improve community mobility in at-risk older adults.The discussant, Jana Hirsch, will provide perspectives on how these data inform our current view of community mobility and will lead a discussion with the audience.

WHAT DETERMINES VULNERABILITY TO NEIGHBORHOOD WALKABILITY IN OLDER ADULTS?
Andrea Rosso, 1 Caterina Rosano, Environmental influences are recognized as important predictors of walking behaviors in older adults.However, individuals may differ in vulnerability to low environmental walkability.We determined associations of a walkability index (factor analysis of 16 variables; range -1.65 to 2.23) from audits of online images with self-reported walking behaviors in 406 adults mean age=82 (44% male, 39% Black).Effect modification by 12 variables representing sociodemographics, physical and mental health, and neighborhood characteristics was tested in general linear models.Effect modification was evident for knee pain, marital status, and neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES) (all p-interaction<0.05);associations were present only in those with knee pain, those who were unmarried, and those in the highest race-specific tertile of nSES.For example, a 1 point higher walkability score was associated with 1.06 (CI: 0.78, 1.44) higher odds of walking in those without knee pain compared to 1.91 (CI: 1.25, 2.90) in those with knee pain.
Emorie Beck, 1 and Joshua Jackson, 2 1. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, United States, 2. Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States