Beyond age and generations: How considering period effects reshapes our understanding of personality change.

Age, cohort, and period effects are three ways to explain personality trait change over time. While past research mostly focused on age differences, showing relatively consistent patterns, evidence for cohort differences is more mixed, and period differences have hardly been examined. However, age, period, and cohort are exactly collinear (age = period-cohort), such that estimates are likely confounded and always hinge on so-called identification assumptions.

Historical Consciousness: Recollections of Major Historical Events in the Personal Life Story.

How do people incorporate collective major historical events into their personal life stories? This study investigates the concept of historical consciousness, which is the extent to which individuals integrate the recollection of major historical events into their narrative identity in personally meaningful ways. A sample of 134 midlife adults were asked to describe in detail two major historical events, social movements, or societal changes that impacted them and explain their personal significance. Individual differences in the degree to which the participants incorporated these collective events into their narrative identities were coded on a dimension running from "tuning history out" (low scores) to "witnessing history" (medium) to "living history" (high).