Concurrent and prospective relationships between social engagement and personality traits in older adulthood.

During older adulthood, individuals typically deinvest in social roles such as work and parenting while transitioning into new social roles such as being involved in community activities and pursuing hobbies. The aging literature suggests that those individuals who remain socially engaged during older adulthood have better physical health (Tucker, Schwartz, Clark, & Friedman, 1999) and cognitive functioning (for a current comprehensive review see Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson, & Lindenberger, 2009). A similar line of research has shown that certain personality traits are related to better functioning in old age. For example, personality traits are linked to physical health (Hill, Turiano, Hurd, Mroczek, & Roberts, 2011; Mroczek & Spiro, 2007) and cognitive function (Duberstein et al., 2011; Williams, Suchy, & Kraybill, 2010) in old age. Despite parallels between social engagement and personality traits in their ability to predict important life outcomes, little is known about how these individual differences are related in older adulthood. This is a particularly important issue to address as the current literature on personality trait development suggests that not only do social role changes occur in older adulthood but personality traits undergo meaningful, normative changes during the aging process (Mroczek & Spiro, 2003; Small, Hertzog, Hultsch, & Dixon, 2003; Lucas & Donnellan, 2011; Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). However, normative change is only that - a general characterization of change in the population as a whole - and aging research has a strong history of addressing not just normative change but individual differences in change (i.e., Baltes & Nesselroade, 1973; Small et al., 2003) and the importance of individual differences in change as meaningful predictors in their own right (i.e., Mroczek & Spiro, 2007). The present research builds on recent findings that suggest the occurrence of major life events can both be predicted by personality traits and can themselves predict individual differences in personality trait change over time in adulthood (Specht, Egloff, & Schmukle, 2011). Specifically, the current research addresses how personality traits prospectively relate to engagement in social roles and, conversely, how engagement in social roles prospectively relates to personality trait change during older adulthood. The Current Research The current research investigates the relationship between social engagement and personality traits during older adulthood within a randomly selected sample of 100 Illinois residents age 60 to 86 assessed twice over a two and a half year period. The present study focuses on how traits most consistently linked to social engagement relate to subjective commitment to roles central to the lives of many American older adults. Specifically, evidence from broad ranges of age groups suggests that three traits from the Big Five personality trait taxonomy, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability, are linked to engagement in romantic relationships, children, and community (Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007). To date, few studies have linked social engagement to personality traits in a longitudinal sample of older adults. Accordingly, we test the relationship between these two domains using a dual-score latent change model to examine all aspects of the longitudinal relationship. At Wave 1, we examine correlations between social engagement and personality traits. Then, we test the prospective associations between Wave 1 standing and change over time. Specifically, we use Wave 1 personality to predict Wave 2 social engagement while controlling for Wave 1 social engagement to create an indicator of the extent to which personality trait level at Wave 1 predicts change in social engagement between the two waves of assessment. Likewise, we test the relation between Wave 1 social engagement and change between Wave 1 and Wave 2 personality traits. Finally, we link changes over time in social engagement with changes over time in personality traits to determine if changes covary over time. Although some researchers emphasize the significance of cross-lagged effects in panel designs, we contend that both lagged and contemporaneous analyses of the prediction of change are important and relevant (Roberts & Bogg, 2004). Lagged paths indicate that antecedent standing propagates forward in time like a cascade model. Simultaneous or contemporaneous correlations of change reflect the idea that change is more transactional over time and that changes may reciprocate. That said, neither lagged nor contemporaneous predictors of change afford causal inferences, as the data structure of longitudinal research remains correlational. Specific Hypotheses In terms of Wave 1 correlations and prospective predictions, we hypothesize that individuals are likely to become engaged or become increasingly engaged in a given social role if it is congruent with their personality (Roberts & Caspi, 2003). This may be as simple as selecting one role over another or as complex as changing individual daily experience over time. For example, conscientious and emotionally stable individuals have longer, more stable relationships with lower divorce rates (Kelly & Conley, 1987; Roberts & Bogg, 2004; Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2002) and prosocial, helpful individuals volunteer more and are highly committed to their volunteer activities (Clary, Snyder, Ridge, Copeland, Stukas, Haugen, & Miene, 1998; Finkelstein, Penner, & Brannick, 2005; Omoto & Snyder, 1995). Therefore, we expect conscientiousness, emotionally stability, and agreeableness to not only correlate with engagement, but predict increases in engagement over time. Similarly, we expect social engagement to predict changes in personality over time. The developmental relationship between social engagement and personality traits should be in keeping with the corresponsive principle of personality development that “the effect of life experience on personality development is to deepen the characteristics that lead people to those experiences in the first place” (Roberts & Wood, 2006, p. 19). Specifically, it is our hypothesis that being socially engaged will foster higher levels of the same traits that predict greater social engagement. Finally, we expect change in social engagement to correlate with change in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability over time.