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National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Baltimore, Maryland.
Address correspondence to Robert R. McCrae, Gerontology Research Center, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224-6825. E-mail: jeffm{at}irpns.grc.nia.nih.gov
Abstract
Hooker and McAdams (2003)
have expanded a structural personality model to include personality processes and the interactions among all six resulting foci. This explicit model can usefully enlarge the scope of research on aging and personality. Additional thought, however, is needed on the definition of processes and on the selection of phenomena to be studied at the level of characteristic adaptations.
IN one of those instances of parallel discovery that so often occur in science, an American Psychological Association Convention symposium (Weinberger, 1992) saw the simultaneous introduction of two new models of personality with many similarities. McAdams presented his three levels of personality, and Costa and McCrae proposed a systems model in which basic tendencies were distinguished from characteristic adaptations and the self-concept. Both models had been based on the recognition that some aspects of personality (e.g., life goals) changed with age, whereas others (e.g., traits) did not, and both models acknowledged the importance of each of these aspects of personality. By now, it is clear that traits actually change somewhat with normal aging, and that some characteristic adaptations (like regional accents) remain fixed for decades (McCrae & Costa, 2003). However, the conceptual distinction between Level 1 and Level 2 variables has proven its utility in many theoretical contexts (Allik & McCrae, 2002; McAdams & Emmons, 1995), and it can fruitfully be applied to research on aging.
The advantage of a multilevel model of personality is that it focuses attention on a wider range of phenomena than most personality psychologists ordinarily address. Trait psychologists rarely think about life narratives, unless they are interested in retrospective accounts of trait development (Reichard, Livson, & Peterson, 1962); life-span developmentalists may disdain to assess "static" traits. Multilevel models invite inquiries into all aspects of personality.
Hooker and McAdams (2003) have expanded McAdams's (1996) earlier model to include processes as well as structures. States, self-regulation, and self-narration are postulated to be processes that parallel traits, personal action constructs, and life stories, respectively. Together, the structures and processes are labeled foci. The advantage of adding processes to the original model is, of course, that it further broadens the scope of personality research. McCrae and Costa (2003) also included dynamic processes in their model to explain how the system components interact. In principle, this is a welcome addition.
I am not convinced, however, that all the bugs have been worked out of this aspect of the six-foci model. Processes are more difficult to conceptualize and measure than are the entities on which they operate, and there is a tendency to lapse back into the language of entities. For example, Hooker and McAdams cite self-efficacy as a prime example of self-regulating processes, but self-efficacy is usually seen as a trait-like attribute, not a process. Again, although there are certainly states that parallel traits, it is not clear to me that states are processes. The most intensively studied states are emotions, and there is a whole psychology of emotional regulation (e.g., Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, & Nesselroade, 2000; Forgas & Ciarrochi, 2002) that deals with the processes that govern states. (McCrae and Costa would regard states, like behaviors, as aspects of the objective biography, the output of the personality system, and they would reverse the causal ordering that Hooker and McAdams propose.)
A second, and major, innovation in the current model is the attention paid to the interaction of foci. This is a remarkable development on the part of McAdams, who in the past has resisted relating different levels, lest the higher levels be reduced to the lower ones (McAdams, 1996; McCrae, 1996). Perhaps his success in interesting the field of personality psychology in the topic of life narratives has given him more confidence in their ability to hold their own in such comparisons. Table 1 in Hooker and McAdams (2003) provides some excellent examples of the heuristic value of relating different components. Personality psychologists pride themselves on studying the whole person, and that requires an examination not just of all foci of personality but of their interactions. And those interactions should be traced over time: Ideally, research would ask not only if energy level is related to life story coherence but how stories deteriorate as energy wanes, and how long it takes to recover. A complete theory of personality would show the system in operation.
McCrae and Costa's (2003) model of the person (see chapter 10) differs from the six-foci model of Hooker and McAdams (2003) in its scope. The former authors attempted to define categories into which all psychological characteristics could be classified, even though their chief interest was in personality traits and their manifestations. Basic tendencies, their category corresponding to Level 1, includes cognitive abilities, artistic talents, and physiological drives as well as personality traits, because all of these can be thought of as biologically based dispositions and capacities. For McCrae and Costa, the self-concept includes life stories but also self-esteem and discrete information about the self. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two models occurs on Level 2, characteristic adaptations, which, for Hooker and McAdams, consists of personal action constructs and self-regulatory processes, and which, for McCrae and Costa, consists of all acquired psychological attributes. Personal strivings are among these, but so are habits, attitudes, interests, roles and relationships (insofar as they are internalized), skills, and the sum total of one's knowledge and beliefs about the world. All of these diverse attributes are linked because they are developed over time to reflect both the enduring core of the individual and the ever-changing demands of the environment.
An agenda necessarily involves priorities, and Hooker and McAdams's decision to focus on personal action constructs is one way to make the study of the vast realm of characteristic adaptations manageable. Certainly, adult developmentalists have already given much attention to cognitive skills and knowledge structures, and these need not be a priority for students of aging and personality. However, before embracing Hooker and McAdams's agenda wholeheartedly, perhaps we should give more thought to other characteristic adaptations (such as roles and relationships) whose examination across the life span might have a higher payoff.
Received for publication June 23, 2003. Accepted for publication July 17, 2003.
References
This article has been cited by other articles:
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  K. Hooker and D. P. McAdams Personality and Adult Development: Looking Beyond the OCEAN J. Gerontol. B. Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci., November 1, 2003; 58(6): P311 - 312. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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