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Personality Development in Childhood

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Disposition; Identity; Makeup; Psyche; Selfhood

Definition

Personality refers to enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Introduction

Personality refers to enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Over the last three decades, the Five-Factor Model (FFM), or the Big Five, has become the leading framework for studying personality in adulthood, and more recently, it has been used to study personality in childhood (De Clercq et al. 2012; De Pauw and Mervielde 2010). The FFM characterizes personality along five higher-order traits which are: Extraversion (vs. introversion), Agreeableness (vs. antagonism), Neuroticism (vs. emotional stability), Conscientiousness (vs. negligence), and Openness to Experiences (vs. closedness; De Pauw and Mervielde 2010). These broad traits are hierarchical such that they subsume more narrow facets. Extraversion includes facets such as sociability, assertiveness, and expressiveness. Neuroticism reflects anxiety,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT, USA

    Katharine Ann Buck

Authors
  1. Katharine Ann Buck
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Correspondence to Katharine Ann Buck .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology, Universität zu Lübeck, Lübeck, NC, Germany

    John F. Rauthmann

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Buck, K.A. (2019). Personality Development in Childhood. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1876-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1876-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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