Personality Set For Life By First Grade, Study Suggests

Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we’re over the hill, according to a new study report on LiveScience.com.

The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.

“We remain recognizably the same person,” said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. “This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts.”

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 – 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

They examined four personality attributes – talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one’s importance).

Read the complete article, including the study’s findings, here.