Older adults reflect less on their personality traits than younger adults, study finds

Older adults reflect less on their personality traits than younger adults, and people with lower emotional stability or extraversion tend to reflect more on these traits, according to new findings published in Self & Identity.

Self-reflection helps individuals understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and plays a critical role in personality development. While personality traits evolve throughout life, this development slows with age. One proposed reason is that older adults may reflect less frequently on their behaviors and traits.

Previous research has examined general self-reflections, like philosophical musings or repetitive brooding, but has rarely focused on trait-specific reflections such as comparing oneself to others or to one’s past self. These specific reflections may better explain how personality changes over time, particularly for traits closely linked to mental health, such as extraversion and emotional stability.

Drawing on large lifespan samples from both Germany and the U.S., Gabriela Küchler and colleagues sought to clarify how people of different ages and personalities reflect on traits like extraversion and emotional stability, and how this behavior might support or inhibit personality development over time.

The researchers recruited a diverse sample of 615 adults from Germany (n = 313) and the United States (n = 304), between ages 18-84. Participants were recruited using Clickworker, an online crowdsourcing platform, and were required to be fluent in English or German, have computer access, and be at least 18 years old. The final sample was balanced across five age groups and genders, with quotas ensuring demographic heterogeneity.

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General self-reflections were assessed using a validated scale that distinguished between explorative reflections (thoughtful, philosophical introspection) and ruminative reflections (negative, repetitive thinking). Trait-specific self-reflections focused on how often participants compared themselves to others or their past selves in terms of two personality traits, namely extraversion and emotional stability. These comparisons were measured using specific items tailored to capture social and temporal self-assessment. To assess personality, participants completed the Big Five Inventory-2, which measured levels of open-mindedness, emotional stability, and extraversion.

The researchers found that people who scored higher in open-mindedness reported engaging more in explorative self-reflection, suggesting that curiosity and a desire for self-understanding drive this form of introspection. Meanwhile, those with higher emotional stability, meaning those who experienced less anxiety and emotional volatility, reported lower levels of ruminative reflection, indicating they were less likely to dwell on negative experiences.

When it came to trait-specific reflections, individuals with lower levels of emotional stability or extraversion were more likely to compare themselves to others or to their past selves in these same traits. Interestingly, extraversion was linked primarily to social comparisons, whereas emotional stability was linked to both social and past-temporal comparisons.

Age also played a significant role in shaping self-reflection. Older adults were generally less likely to engage in both ruminative and trait-specific reflections, with these patterns holding even after accounting for their personality trait levels. However, the expected weakening of the link between personality traits and self-reflection with age did not hold.

In fact, in some cases, the associations grew stronger in older adults. For instance, older adults who were more extraverted were much less likely to compare themselves to their past selves than their less extraverted peers. Similarly, older adults who were emotionally stable were especially unlikely to compare themselves to others. These findings suggest that while younger adults may engage in more self-reflection overall, older adults’ reflection behaviors are more tightly linked to their actual personality traits.

This study only examined reflections related to two traits—extraversion and emotional stability—thus, the findings may not generalize to other personality traits.

The study, “Self-reflections across the adult lifespan: associations with personality traits in a binational sample,” was authored by Gabriela Küchler, Kira S. A. Borgdorf, Corina Aguilar-Raab, and Cornelia Wrzus.