Journal
PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Volume 171, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110428
Keywords
Personality change; Divorce; Big Five; Social investment theory; Latent difference score
Categories
Funding
- Research Council of the University of Antwerp [42/FA040100/FFB150348]
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Utilizing large panel surveys from three countries, the study found that divorce is not a consistent predictor of personality change and the effects of divorce on personality were limited and not replicable across samples.
Experiencing a divorce can be challenging and have a lasting impact on people's lives, but does it change your personality? By making use of large panel surveys from Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, intra-individual change in the Big Five personality traits of those who separated during a four-year observation, was compared to that of those who remained married. We tested the replicability of divorce-induced personality change across the three country samples, while also examining gender differences and separation duration. Latent difference score models mostly indicated that divorce is not a consistent predictor of personality change, as only isolated effects were found, and these could not be replicated across samples. Aside from the overall lack of replicable effects a few isolated effects were detected that offer some support for a modified version of the social investment principle. Nonetheless, the overall finding of this study suggests that experiencing a divorce is unlikely to lead to permanent personality change.
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