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Less Mature With Age

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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Less Mature With Age

Robin Hanson
Dec 27, 2010
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Less Mature With Age

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Our personalities tend to become more “mature” as we age from teens into adults, and then into older adults. But our personalities become less mature as we age from kids into teens:

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10–65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality. (more)

Many like to think that we become more “mature” as we age because our experience with life teaches us the wisdom of mature behavior. They then presume that teens would be better off acting more maturely, and should be forced to do so if necessary.  However, this “maturity as learning” theory conflicts with the fact that we become less mature as we become teens.  An alternate theory, that better accounts for the above patterns, is that we are programmed to have different personalities and attitudes at different ages, because for our distant ancestors those attitudes were useful at those ages.  Beware too easily assuming that others would be better off if they were more like you.

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Less Mature With Age

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Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

Perhaps this is linked to the major pruning of synapses which takes place in the brain during adolescence.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

I've always thought that teens' propensity to stay up all night has an evolutionary reason. Similarly, re the propensity of the elderly to sleep lightly and restlessly at night. These habits make it more likely that, at night, there is someone vigilantly guarding the campsite or village. They also enable the most productive adults to rest as much as possible to work the next day, so a division of labor as well.

Somewhere on the savannah lie the bones of a family whose teenagers went to sleep "at a reaonable hour".

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