The Big Five personality traits consist of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Rantanen et al. (2007) studied adults between ages of 33 and 42 and concentrated on rank-order stability, which explains a person’s position within a personality trait group in comparison to …show more content…
Grühn, Rebucal, Diehl, Lumley, and Labouvie-Vief (2008) carried out a 12-year longitudinal study that consisted of four periods. The study measured changes in empathy in individuals who were 10 to 83 years old. The results indicated that self-reported empathy did decrease with age, but the researchers’ latent growth curve analyses did not show a longitudinal decrease in empathy due to age (Grühn et al., 2008). Their data suggests that differences in birth cohorts (i.e., older people and younger people) and not differences in age affect empathy (Grühn et al., 2008). Older people and younger people have grown up in different time eras, which have shaped their personalities; in particular, younger people have been exposed to psychology topics more (Grühn et al., 2008). Consequently, younger people have tended to openly talk about their feelings, which explains why they obtained higher empathy scores than the older cohort (Grühn et al.,