Do you have videos of yourself at age seven? If so, you can probably see predictors of your current personality in your miniature self. A new study from a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, says that certain personality traits in elementary schoolers are linked to certain other traits in middle-aged adults.
Psychology student Christopher Nave culled his data from a (very) long-term study that began in Hawaii in the 1960s. Elementary school teachers rated 2,400 students on dozens of personality traits: Is the student adaptable (copes easily and successfully with new and strange situations)? Is the student spiteful (deliberately does or says things that annoy or hurt others)?
Forty years later, researchers started hunting down these former students. So far, they've brought back about 450 of them. (Where did everyone go?) These good sports completed various tests and interviews, and out of those, Nave compared 144 who'd ...
