Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Personality development in reaction to major life events

Major life events are abrupt changes in the status of individuals that may impact thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This chapter provides a review of studies that examined the impact of major life events on the development of the Big Five personality traits. First, theoretical perspectives are introduced on why personality may (or may not) change in reaction to major life events. Second, methodological ...

The Benefits of Believing in Chance or Fate: External Locus of Control as a Protective Factor for Coping with the Death of a Spouse

The death of a spouse is an extremely stressful life event that consequently causes a large drop in life satisfaction. Reactivity to the loss, however, varies markedly, a phenomenon that is currently not well understood. Because lack of controllability essentially contributes to the stressful nature of this incident, we analyzed whether individual differences in the belief in external control influence ...

Stability and Change of Personality Across the Life Course: The Impact of Age and Major Life Events on Mean-Level and Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five

Does personality change across the entire life course, and are those changes due to intrinsic maturation or major life experiences? This longitudinal study investigated changes in the mean levels and rank order of the Big Five personality traits in a heterogeneous sample of 14,718 Germans across all of adulthood. Latent change and latent moderated regression models provided four main findings: First, ...

Everything Under Control? The Effects of Age, Gender, and Education on Trajectories of Perceived Control in a Nationally Representative German Sample

Perceived control is an important variable for various demands involved in successful aging. However, perceived control is not set in stone, but rather changes throughout the life course. The aim of this study was to identify cross-sectional age differences and longitudinal mean-level changes as well as rank-order changes in perceived control with respect to sex and education. Furthermore, changes ...

Examining Mechanisms of Personality Maturation: The Impact of Life Satisfaction on the Development of the Big Five Personality Traits.

Individuals are expected to mature with increasing age, but it is not yet fully understood which factors contribute to this maturation process. Using data of a representative sample of Germans (N = 14,718) who gave information about their Big Five personality traits twice over a period of 4 years, the authors identified satisfaction with life, which was reported yearly, as an important variable for ...

On the consistency of personality types across adulthood: Latent profile analyses in two large-scale panel studies

Consistency and change in personality were analyzed by examining personality types across adulthood and old age using data from 2 nationally representative panel studies from Germany (N = 14,718; 16-82 years) and Australia (N = 8,315; 15-79 years). In both samples, the Big Five personality traits were measured twice across a period of 4 years. Latent profile analyses and latent profile transition analyses ...

Some Aspects of the Social Transition Processes in Hungary and East Germany - Income Inequality and Poverty

Child Support Policy: An International Perspective (Chapter 1)

Explaining Gender Convergence in Housework Time: Evidence from a Cohort-Sequence Design

This study connects two lines of research—trend studies on social change in housework time and life-course studies on individual- and couple-level change in housework time. This novel approach allowed us to link the macro-level trend of gender convergence in housework time to the micro-level mechanisms underlying it. Using long-running panel data (SOEP), we implemented a cohort-sequence design that ...

New evidence on the relationship between risk attitudes and self-employment

This paper analyses the impact of risk attitudes on the decision to become selfemployed among individuals who grew up under the communist regime in Ukraine, which banned self-employment so that individuals could not observe what it is like to be self-employed. Since the intra-family transmission of self-employment experiences was largely shut down, the observed correlation between risk preferences ...