Secular rise in economically valuable personality traits

Although trends in many physical characteristics and cognitive capabilities of modern humans are well-documented, less is known about how personality traits have evolved over time. We analyze data from a standardized personality test administered to 79% of Finnish men born between 1962 and 1976 (n =...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2017-06, Vol.114 (25), p.6527-6532
Main Authors: Jokela, Markus, Pekkarinen, Tuomas, Sarvimäki, Matti, Terviö, Marko, Uusitalo, Roope
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive ability
Composition effects
Data analysis
Data processing
Education
Humans
Income
Male
Parents
Parents & parenting
Personality
Personality - physiology
Personality Inventory
Personality tests
Personality traits
Physical characteristics
Physical properties
Profits
Secularism
Siblings
Social Sciences
Trends
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although trends in many physical characteristics and cognitive capabilities of modern humans are well-documented, less is known about how personality traits have evolved over time. We analyze data from a standardized personality test administered to 79% of Finnish men born between 1962 and 1976 (n = 419,523) and find steady increases in personality traits that predict higher income in later life. The magnitudes of these trends are similar to the simultaneous increase in cognitive abilities, at 0.2–0.6 SD during the 15-y window. When anchored to earnings, the change in personality traits amounts to a 12% increase. Both personality and cognitive ability have consistent associations with family background, but the trends are similar across groups defined by parental income, parental education, number of siblings, and rural/urban status. Nevertheless, much of the trends in test scores can be attributed to changes in the family background composition, namely 33% for personality and 64% for cognitive ability. These composition effects are mostly due to improvements in parents’ education. We conclude that there is a “Flynn effect” for personality that mirrors the original Flynn effect for cognitive ability in magnitude and practical significance but is less driven by compositional changes in family background.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1609994114