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An Anonymous Coward writes:
The study begins with data from a 1950 survey of 1,208 14-year-olds in Scotland. Teachers were asked to use six questionnaires to rate the teenagers on six personality traits: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of moods, conscientiousness, originality, and desire to learn. Together, the results from these questionnaires were amalgamated into a rating for one trait, which was defined as "dependability." More than six decades later, researchers tracked down 635 of the participants, and 174 agreed to repeat testing.
In previous studies covering a decade or two, personalities could be recognized as roughly similar. Not this time!
Full paper here, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5144810/ and a longer review here https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/02/07/longest-ever-personality-study-finds-no-correlation-between-measures-taken-at-age-14-and-age-77/
Next (tongue in cheek) question, is this result unique to Scots, or does it apply to non-miserly groups as well?
(Score: 1) by MiserlyScot on Friday March 10 2017, @11:48AM (2 children)
"Next (tongue in cheek) question, is this result unique to Scots, or does it apply to non-miserly groups as well?"
Well this may be tongue in cheek but it really needs answering!
Funny how cliches have an eternal life even when they are no longer true (or were untrue in the first place).
The UK is consistently in the top 10 giving nations (see World Giving Index) and Scotland is consistently the most giving of the four UK nations.
Just google "how generous are the Scots?".
Maybe we should apply the statement to the Lithuanians or the Chinese who are at the bottom of the list.
So for everyone who agreed with or laughed at the statement on first reading, does this mean that your personality has remained static over the decades
or are you one of those people who question everything and are therefore a completely different person from when you were 14?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 10 2017, @12:53PM
I wonder what the correlation is between personality type and willingness to be retested, or ability to be found after all the years in the first place?
They could run a followup and offer a significant incentive for retesting, at least some of those who declined for the voluntary retest would accept, and the fact that they did those two things (decline, then accept with incentive) is probably a stronger, more reliable datapoint than any answers they may give to questions in the test itself.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday March 10 2017, @03:07PM
Funny how cliches have an eternal life even when they are no longer true (or were untrue in the first place).
Which would provoke the question what your username was meant to communicate in relation with the group of scots?
The UK is consistently in the top 10 giving nations (see World Giving Index) and Scotland is consistently the most giving of the four UK nations. Just google "how generous are the Scots?".
The world giving index might not be a good indication of generousness. Some countries factor out their social security into charities (US, UK, ...). The (relative) comparison within the UK should stand though.