Personality Change Across Four Years in World Trade Center Responders

Domain-level findings of personality change are fairly consistent across middle to older age; however, less agreement exists on personality change at the lower-order facet-level for this age group. The present study investigated personality change at both the domain and facet-level over the course of a four-year longitudinal study in N = 452 older adults who responded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (Mage = 55 years, SD = 0.41). Participants completed the Faceted Inventory of the Five-Factor Model (FI-FFM, Watson et al., 2019) and the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2, Soto & John, 2017) at four waves across four years. Latent growth modeling showed significant mean level decreases in Openness, Neuroticism, and Extraversion at the domain level. At the facet-level, significant decreases were found for Aesthetic Sensitivity, Creative Imagination, Intellectual Curiosity, Anxiety, Anger Proneness, Positive Temperament, Venturesomeness, Ascendence, Empathy, Trust, and Achievement Striving. Regressions from exposure level, age, and sex on personality change were examined and significant effects were also observed. Results highlight the importance of facet-level analysis, as significant change was found only for certain facets within domains—sometimes when the domains showed no change. WTC responders have a shared unique trauma and personality change findings may allow for clinically useful information on the mental health problems that responders experience.