Title: Four types of change and correlated change in personality and identity in emerging adulthood using self- and peer-reports.
Four types of change often investigated in personality literature are: mean-level, rank-order, ipsative change, and individual difference in change. This allows us to examine change from both sample-level and individual-level perspectives. Research found that although personality change exists in different life stages in different forms (Schwaba & Bleidorn, 2018; Bleidorn & Hopwood, 2018), it is most prominent during emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000; Bleidorn & Schwaba, 2017; Roberts & Davis, 2016). Nonetheless, there was a high degree of consistency observed between the beginning and end of college years, with the majority of change relating to elevation or scatter, but not in the shape or configuration of personality (Robins et al., 2001). Because personality research predominantly relies on self-report measures, there is a need to conceptually replicate the findings of trait change using different methods. We examine both self-and peer-reports in a four-wave multiple-informant dataset, which sensitively captures change over short, yet important, intervals during college years. Because stability and change also depend on the level of personality being examined (McAdams, 1994), we include personality domains and aspects as well as identity processes, which are conceptualized as the second level of personality or characteristic adaptations. We will further examine the pattern of correlations between changes on personality traits and on identity variables.