European Journal of Personality

Eur. J. Pers. 23: 509–530 (2009)

Published online 23 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.731

*2

C

Linking Personality States, Current Social Rolesand Major Life Goals

WIEBKE BLEIDORN*

Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany

Abstract

Employing an experience-sampling design, the interplay between personality states, social

roles and major life goals was examined as it unfolds in the stream of people’s daily lives.

Multilevel analyses revealed a considerable amount of both within- and between-person

variability in state expressions of personality traits justifying further examination of

predictors at both levels of analyses. Roles proved as predictors of current personality

states albeit effects differed significantly between individuals. Life goals accounted for

between-person differences in average personality states but were not effective in pre-

dicting differences in relations between personality states and roles. Altogether, findings

testify to the viability of the employed research strategy to analyse the interplay between

both dispositional and fluctuating influences on individuals’ trait expressions in behaviour.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: Five-Factor Model of Personality; multilevel analysis; social roles; goals;

experience-sampling

INTRODUCTION

The longstanding boundaries between trait and process approaches to personality have

blurred in the service of building up ‘an integrative science of the person’ (Mischel, 2004;

p. 1), since both sides have widely conceded that intra- and interindividual differences are

not mutually exclusive (e.g. Fleeson, 2004; Funder, 2001; Mischel, 2004). Structures and

processes should be considered as two sides of the same system that are mathematically

independent but probably interrelated to produce both consistency as well as variability in

behaviour (Fournier, Moskowitz, & Zuroff, 2008; Mischel & Shoda, 1998). According to

Funder (2001), a comprehensive study of personality should thus encompass all three

elements of the ‘personality triad’: The person, the situation and the behaviour, as

knowledge about any two of these should lead to an understanding of the third.

Correspondence to: Wiebke Bleidorn, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Universitatsstrasse5, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany. E-mail: wiebke.bleidorn@uni-bielefeld.de

opyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 26 November 2008

Revised 5 May 2009

Accepted 5 May 2009

510 W. Bleidorn

However, the post-war period of the person-situation debate is still characterized by an

imbalance in the study of this triad (Funder, 2001). On the one hand, a lot of research has

been done to identify variables defining stable differences between individuals in terms of

cross-situational consistencies. One of the most popular models among these attempts is

the Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM; McCrae & John, 1992) assuming that the

structure of personality could be comprehensively described through five dimensions,

namely Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to experience (O), Agreeableness (A)

and Conscientiousness (C). On the other hand, comparative little is empirically known

about the dynamic interplay of personality with situations and behaviours, that is, the

differences within individuals in terms of cross-situational variability in personality

(Funder, 2001, Fournier et al., 2008).

The present study aimed to make a further contribution to the desired integration

between structure and process approaches to personality (e.g. Epstein, 1994; Fleeson,

2001; Mischel & Shoda, 1998). Specifically, employing an experience-sampling design

and multilevel modelling procedures (MLM; e.g. Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002), the

associations of FFM personality states with current social roles and major life goals were

examined as they unfold in the stream of people’s daily lives.

Assessing the five factors as states

A promising way to integrate structure and process approaches to personality has

been proposed by Fleeson (2001). In his density-distributions approach to personality,

behavioural manifestations of traits are described as frequency distributions of their

corresponding states. Emphasizing a certain degree of isomorphism between personality

states and traits, personality states are considered as trait-content manifestations in short-

term, continuous and concrete ways of acting, feeling and thinking that could be described

in the same way as traits (Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002). That is, just as individuals

can be described by means of their general level in N, E, O, A and C, similarly an

individual’s behaviour can be described as anywhere between low and high in N, E, O, A

and C. This approach does not describe specific actions or movements but is still an

assessment of how the person is behaving with regard to trait expression. Personality states

are thus characterized by both the relative consistency of the corresponding trait as well as

the variability of behavioural acts (Fleeson, 2001, 2007).

Empirical support for this approach has been obtained from a number of experience-

sampling studies in which participants repeatedly rated their current behaviour over a

couple of days by means of adjectives commonly used for describing Big Five traits

(Fleeson, 2001, 2007). Findings suggest that individuals express nearly all levels of all

traits in their everyday behaviour but are also characterized by unique behavioural

frequency distributions for each of the five domains. Despite the sizeable within-person

variability in personality states, the means and standard deviations of density distributions

turned out to be relative stable individual differences characteristics. Thus, by using

adjectives as descriptors of the trait content of behaviour, this approach accounts for both

processes within as well as structural differences between individuals (Fleeson, 2001). This

paves the way for further research into the mechanisms of personality functioning by

focusing on both varying factors that trigger within-person changes in personality states

and enduring dispositions accounting for stable between-person differences in personality

states.

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 511

Current social roles and personality states

Reconfirming that intraindividual variability in trait-relevant behaviour is meaningful and

predictable, Fleeson (2007) has shown certain situational characteristics, such as task

orientation, to be significant predictors of the within-person variation in personality states.

These systematic ‘situation-based contingencies’ (Fleeson, 2007, p. 825) were not

universal but differed reliably between individuals. This finding is in line with the

Cognitive Affective Personality System approach (CAPS, Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 1998,

1999) assuming individuals to be characterized by distinct if. . .then situation-behaviour

profiles.

Fleeson’s study may be viewed as a first effort to examine the rather abstract hypothesis

that variation in personality states is due to variation in situations, since this work has been

exploratory with regard to the wide range of situational features studied. Further research is

needed to examine more theoretically driven hypotheses about specific contextual

characteristics that may play a functional role in the prediction of personality states. Such

hypotheses are difficult to deduce as there is no consensus regarding the most important

‘psychologically active features of situations’ (Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 1994, p. 685).

Regarding the plethora of potential predictors, it seems reasonable to start off research

with the focus on one discrete class of contextual characteristics that potentially matter to

trait-relevant behaviour. Recent research related to the assessment of contextualized

personality suggests that the social role a person is fulfiling might be an interesting

candidate that matter to personality differences at both levels within and between persons

(Roberts, 2007; Heller, Watson, Komar, Min, & Perunovic, 2007; Roberts & Pomerantz,

2004; Wood, 2007; Wood & Roberts, 2006). A social role can be defined as a ‘set of

behavioural expectations attached to a position in an organized set of social relationships’

(Stryker, 2007; p. 1083). That is, social roles refer to positions in society that are associated

with specific expectations, goals and behaviours defining the way an individual relates to

his or her environment. A case in point might be the manager who is expected to act in an

assertive, tough-minded way but yet is expected to act very differently in her role as a

mother (Heller et al., 2007).

There are several features of social roles that qualify them as reasonable predictors of

trait-relevant behaviour. First, social roles can be considered as ‘conglomerations of

situations that all share a common thread of expectations and behavioural signatures’

(Roberts, 2007; p. 1073). Hence, in contrast to specific situational settings, such as ‘dorm’,

‘party’ or ‘lecture hall’, social roles are conceptualized at a breadth that is focused enough

to capture important aspects of the situation but not too narrowly defined as it would

diminish their predictive power. Second, since social roles are defined by certain

expectations, they offer a kind of behavioural guidance. As long as people confirm to role

expectations they will be accepted and rewarded by the relevant social group, while failing

to meet the given expectations might lead to negative sanctions (Roberts, 2007).

The links between social roles and personality have been subject to several studies in

which participants were explicitly asked to rate their personality separately across several

different roles by means of standard questionnaires (e.g. Roberts & Donahue, 1994; Wood,

2007; Wood & Roberts, 2006). Using these contextualized ratings, findings suggest that the

role-specific personality (e.g. personality at work) is a better predictor of role-specific

criteria (e.g. job satisfaction) than global personality (Heller et al., 2007).

In a first attempt to detect associations between current social roles and personality

states, Theakston, Heller, Komar, and Lee (2006, as cited in Heller et al., 2007) have shown

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512 W. Bleidorn

that personality states vary across roles in predictable ways. By aggregating experience-

sampling records on personality states within role contexts, the authors have demonstrated

that undergraduates report higher degrees of E, A and O in the friend role compared to

higher degrees of C in the student role. N did not differ significantly between friend and

student roles, although there was a trend of being more neurotic in the student than in the

friend role. However, the employed aggregation technique to reveal mean-level differences

in personality across different roles was not suitable to examine the universality of these

effects. One purpose of the current study was thus to examine both the average within-

person associations of student and friend roles with personality states as well as the

individual differences in these within-person relationships.

Instead of exploring a wide range of contextual features likely to affect personality

states, the current study purposely focused on only two social roles as potential contextual

determinants of within-person variability. It was assumed that student and friend roles

differ in how adaptive or functional different personality states are. Individuals were

expected to adjust their behaviour when the role context changes in order to increase the

adaptiveness of their behaviour (Allport, 1937; Cantor & Fleeson, 1994; Fleeson, 2007;

Mischel, 2004). This is not to argue that social roles are the only or even the most powerful

contextual features that predict trait-relevant behaviour. There are several approaches that

have proposed quite different strategies to link personality with situational features in order

to provide a more comprehensive picture of the situation-dependent nature of personality

(e.g. Bem & Funder, 1978; Denissen & Penke, 2008; Fournier et al., 2008; Saucier,

Bel-Bahar, & Fernandez, 2007). The present study did not intend to sample the domain of

contextual characteristics that matter in terms of their relevance to trait-relevant behaviour

comprehensively. Rather, this research aimed to study specific hypotheses about the

within-person relationships between FFM personality states and the perceived role context

considered as one type of potentially relevant if–then contingencies.

Analyses were intended to examine both within-person effects holding for the average

person as well as between-person differences in these if–then contingencies. The latter

would suggest that individuals react differently to the same contextual demands; for

example, reflecting a differential responsivity to given role demands. Revealing such

Person� Situation interactions (e.g. Endler & Parker, 1992; Magnusson & Endler, 1977),

that is substantial variation in how people act while occupying social roles, would suggest

that personality state expressions in role contexts can be considered as an individual-

differences variable. Extending previous research, a further issue of the current study thus

concerns the exploration of person-based dispositions that may help predict between-

person differences in both average personality states as well as in within-person

relationships between social roles and personality states.

Major life goals and personality states

In search of relevant person-based influences on personality states, a promising approach to

elucidate the dynamics of personality functioning may be to treat persons as active,

dynamic and future-oriented agents who utilize situations to pursue personally relevant

goals (Fleeson & Cantor, 1995). Yielding a conception of the person as agentic and

proactive recognizes that though personality interacts with features of the social world, the

individual is not a helpless victim of the circumstances. Within the framework of the

CAPS, Mischel and Shoda (1995, 1998, 1999) account for the fact that individuals do not

always merely react to situations but rather select, construct and transform them more or

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 513

less actively. Specifically, individuals are assumed to be characterized by a number of

relative stable dispositions (e.g. beliefs, competencies, goals) that interact with

psychologically relevant features of situations to generate patterns of behaviour.

Following this proactive approach, the current study aimed to examine the links between

long-term goals and personality states in different role contexts. As they provide a person’s

day-to-day activities with structure and meaning, goals were assumed to play a

fundamental role in both driving and guiding individuals’ behaviour (Austin & Vancouver,

1996; Maier & Brunstein, 2001; Pohlmann & Brunstein, 1997). It is generally agreed that

goals can be described along a hierarchical framework in which rather stable higher order

goals embrace several contextualized subgoals which in turn can be broken down into

specific goals relating to immediate actions (Austin & Vancouver, 1996).

Among the higher-order goal concepts, the class of major life goals was chosen for the

purpose of investigating the links between goals, personality states and social roles. Major

life goals can be defined as ‘a person’s aspirations to shape his or her life context and

establish general life structures such as having a career, a family and a certain kind of

lifestyle’ (Roberts, O’Donnell, & Robins, 2004, p. 542). In contrast to more contextualized

mid-level goal units, major life goals have greater generality and are relative stable over

time. The mental representation of the desired status and the actions that help achieve them

should guide behaviour while pursuing major life goals. Hence, individuals were assumed

to adapt their personality states more or less flexibly toward the achievement of their

leading life goals.

There are only a few studies that have aimed at the link between the content of goals and

the Big Five. Little, Lecci, and Watkinson (1992) have examined the links between the Big

Five and ideographically generated personal projects, which are conceptualized at a mid

level of the goal hierarchy. They have found personal projects in the academic domain to be

more related to C, while A and E were stronger associated with interpersonal projects.

More relevant to the present study are the findings reported by Roberts and Robins (2000),

since they have used normative importance ratings of different clusters of major life goals

in order to examine their relationships with the Big Five. They have found C and E to be

positively related to economic goals, such as goals for achievement or wealth. In contrast,

A has been strongly associated with aspirations to ‘get along’ as represented in social goals.

Subsequently, Roberts et al. (2004) have found meaningful links between long-term

changes in goal importance and personality traits over a period of 4 years. For example,

changes in social goals have been associated with changes in E, A and C.

The question arises whether the revealed associations of personality traits with major life

goals can be applied to the stable aspects of personality states, too. In that case, one would

expect different life goals to be associated with the average levels of specific personality

states. Major life goals may also moderate people’s behavioural reactions to different

contexts and, thus, help predict between-person differences in contingencies of personality

states on current social roles. That is, individuals striving strongly for a certain goal should

adapt their trait-relevant behaviour to the demands of a role context which they suppose to

be relevant for achieving this goal.

The present study

Employing an experience-sampling design in conjunction with MLM procedures, the

within- and between-person relationships among personality states, current social roles and

major life goals were examined. Four issues guided this research: First, the utility of the

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 23: 509–530 (2009)

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514 W. Bleidorn

FFM to describe temporal variation in personality states which is closely related to the

psychometric properties of the personality state measure. That is, FFM personality states

should reliably differentiate within and between persons. Furthermore, the intercorrela-

tional structure of the five states at the within-person level should at least approximate the

structure obtained at the between-person level.

Second, since social roles differ in their immanent expectations, different roles were

expected to provoke different sets of personality states. The current analyses focused on

two roles undergraduates frequently occupy: Student and friend. Without doubt, there are

further roles students take over (e.g. club member), but these are likely to be relevant for

only some subset of students. In contrast, the roles considered in this study were assumed to

encompass two important arenas in which virtually every student strives (Sheldon & Elliot,

2000). Furthermore, these roles represent prototypic exemplars of two broader dimensions

around which most social roles can be organized, namely affiliation and power which are

closely related to the fundamental human needs of belonging and status (Roberts, 2007).

Being a friend is clearly an affiliation role, while the student role is primarily associated to

achievement. Since academic achievement is usually associated with a successful career

and higher status in later life, this role context should be closer related to the dimension of

power. As these two roles have been also employed in other recent research related to the

assessment of contextualized personality (e.g. Roberts & Donahue, 1994; Theakston et al.,

2006, as cited in Heller et al., 2007; Wood & Roberts, 2006), it was possible to deduce

concrete hypotheses about their associations with different personality states: The friend

role was expected to be associated with higher values in E, A and O, while the student role

should be primarily related to higher values in C. Definite hypotheses about the relations

between the two role contexts and N were more difficult to deduce. However, according to

the results reported by Theakston et al. (2006), higher values in N were expected to be

positively related to the student role.

The third issue of this paper concerns the universality of these effects. According to the

CAPS approach (Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 1998, 1999), there should be considerable

differences in individuals’ if–then contingencies suggesting that individuals react

differently to the same role context. In line with previous findings (e.g. Fleeson, 2007),

participants were thus expected to differ substantially in their within-person links between

role contexts and personality states.

Finally, major life goals were expected to predict between-person differences in both

average personality states as well as within-person links between roles and personality

states. The present analyses focused on two different categories of major life goals

hypothesized to have a differential impact on personality states, namely achievement and

affiliation goals. These two goal categories were assumed to be relevant for the role

contexts considered in this study. Just as roles can be organized around the broader

dimensions of affiliation and power, similarly goals can be scaled along these dimensions

that have been also characterized as communion and agency (Bakan, 1966; Pohlmann &

Brunstein, 1997; Sheldon & Cooper, 2008). Achievement goals, representing agency-

orientation, contain aspirations to improve one’s competencies and to broaden one’s mind

(Pohlmann & Brunstein, 1997). In line with previous research into the relations between

personality traits and major life goals, this category was expected to be positively related to

O and C (e.g. Roberts & Robins, 2000). Affiliation goals comprise community-oriented

endeavours and refer to social ambitions, such as being with others or having a lot of friends

(Pohlmann & Brunstein, 1997). Positive associations were primarily expected to be found

with E and A (Roberts & Robins, 2000; Roberts et al., 2004). It should be noted that this is

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 515

the first attempt to detect cross-level interactions between relative stable dispositions of the

person and within-person links between contextual variables and personality states. Thus,

with regard to the moderating influence of goal content, this study was rather explorative

and intended to examine the more abstract hypothesis that major life goals do moderate

within-person relationships between social roles and personality states.

METHOD

Participants

Participants were 52 undergraduate psychology students (33 females, 19 males) attending

Bielefeld University who participated in partial fulfilment of curricular requirements. All

participants completed the study and could be included in the analyses. Age of participants

ranged between 19 and 28 years (M¼ 22.40, SD¼ 2.44).

Procedure

The study started with an introductory session in which object and procedure of the

experience-sampling method was explained to the participants who also completed a set of

standard personality questionnaires. Each participant received a Palm Z22 handheld

computer programmed with version 4.0 of the Experience-Sampling Program (ESP, Barrett

& Feldman Barrett, 2000) in order to run a first practice trial (this was subsequently deleted

from the master data file).

During the subsequent experience-sampling period, participants were asked to rate their

behaviour and the degree to which they occupied different social roles during the previous

hour, six times per day for 10 consecutive days according to a regular schedule (12, 2, 4, 6,

8 and 10 pm). To ensure compliance and prevent loss of data, participants were instructed

to contact the research office immediately in case of any problems. After five days and after

the whole period of 10 days, all participants came to the research office for data upload,

where they also received feedback about their response rates. If these were below 90%,

participants were invited to extend the sampling period for one further day. At the end of

the study, participants answered a few questions about their participation. Using a 1 to 5

scale ranging from 1¼ not at all to 5¼ very much, participants reported that participating

in the study did not considerably changed their natural behaviour as pointed out by

M¼ 1.72 (SD¼ 0.90). Besides, participants indicated that they would again agree to

participate in such an experience-sampling study suggested by M¼ 4.04 (SD¼ 0.86).

Since reports were automatically date and time stamped, recordings not completed at

the six specified times could be excluded from analyses. The overall response rate was

quite satisfying. Across all participants and assessments, a total of 2962 of 3120 possible

recordings were collected. Across the 52 participants, the mean number of reports was

56.96 (SD¼ 2.04) of 60 possible (95%), with a range of 50 to 60 reports.

Measures

Experience-sampling reports

Following Fleeson’s density-distribution approach (2001), adjectives were used to measure

the five broad dimensions of the FFM as states. In the present study, personality states

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516 W. Bleidorn

should represent the five domains of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R;

Costa & McCrae, 1992) instead of reverting to taxonomical based adjective lists. Initially, a

total of 90 bipolar adjectives were selected from the authorized German manual of the

NEO-PI-R (Ostendorf & Angleitner, 2004) which provides an extensive list of German

adjectives as exemplary descriptors of both opponent poles of the 30 facet scales. Only

those items were chosen that were easily used to describe concrete momentary behaviour.

To reduce the initial item pool to a manageable but reliable set of items suited for

experience-sampling designs, a pre-study was conducted on a sample of 166 undergraduate

students. Using the same instruction and rating scale as scheduled for the experience-

sampling, participants of the pre-study rated their behaviour by means of the 90 bipolar

adjectives in a standard one-occasion questionnaire. That is, respondents were instructed to

describe how they are at the moment rather than what they are like in general. Finally, those

30 bipolar adjectives were chosen that loaded most highly on the correct factor but

negligible on all other factors. As a result, each domain scale of the FFM state measure was

represented by six bipolar items which were standardized as T-scores (M¼ 50, SD¼ 10).

A complete list of the 30 adjective pairs is shown in the Appendix.

During the experience-sampling phase, participants were asked to rate their behaviour

during the previous hour on the basis of these 30 bipolar adjectives by means of a 5-point

bipolar rating scale (e.g. ‘Which of the two terms is better suited for describing your

behaviour during the previous hour: Responsible or irresponsible?’). Besides the 30

adjective pairs, participants also rated the degree to which different roles (student, friend,

romantic partner, employee, family member, club member) predominated their situational

setting during the previous hour by means of a 5-point Likert format ranging from 1¼ not

at all to 5¼ very much. The present analyses were exclusively based on the student and

friend roles which were also the two most frequently reported roles and showed the largest

within-person variation. A dimensional measurement approach was chosen since social

roles are not mutually exclusive, that is, an individual can be a friend at the same time he or

she is a student. Compared to the usual categorical classification of roles, there are further

advantages of the dimensional assessment of role contexts: ‘A dimensional approach

analyzes situations into their psychologically relevant characteristics, treats situations as

having degrees of characteristic, allows situations to have multiple characteristics at once,

studies characteristics independently, and produces situation-state contingencies with

coefficients that have direction and graded magnitude’ (Fleeson, 2007, pp. 829–830).

Major life goals

Achievement and affiliation goals were assessed by GOALS (Pohlmann & Brunstein,

1997), a standard questionnaire administered in the introductory session among other

inventories (not discussed here). GOALS consists of 24 life-goal descriptions pertaining to

six broad domains, namely Power, Variation, Intimacy, Altruism, Achievement and

Affiliation. All items start with ‘I want to. . .’ followed by the particular life goal.

Participants were asked to rate the importance of each of the 24 life goals according to its

relevance to their long-term or lifetime orientation on a 5-point Likert format ranging from

1¼ not important to 5¼ very important. The four items indicating the domain of

achievement were: ‘Broaden my horizons’, ‘develop my skills’, ‘improve my education

continuously’ and ‘continuously improve myself’. Affiliation goals were marked by ‘spend

a lot of time with other people’, ‘be friends with many people’, ‘engage in a lot of activities

with others’ and ‘have a large circle of friends’ (according to translations by Hofer, 2003;

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 517

Hofer & Chasiotis, 2003). Cronbachs alpha was .83 for achievement and .88 for affiliation

goals, respectively.

Data analysis

As each measurement occasion can be considered nested in a person as higher order level,

MLM procedures were employed using the program HLM (Version 6; Raudenbush, Bryk,

Cheong, & Congdon, 2000). MLM can be understood as a series of nested regressions in

which the coefficients from one level of analysis become the dependent variables at the

next level of analysis (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). To address the issues of the current

study, a series of multivariate three-level models were estimated with the five personality

states as multiple dependent variables (Hox, 2002; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002;

Raudenbush, Rowan, & Kang, 1991; Nezlek, 2007; Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Level 1

represented variation among the item scores within each measurement occasion, level 2

represented variation among occasions within each person and level 3 referred to the

variation among persons. While level 1 served exclusively as a measurement model, levels

2 and 3 may be viewed as a multivariate two-level model for the latent true scores.

This multivariate approach is associated with a number of advantages (e.g. Hox, 2002;

Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002; Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Of particular importance for the

present study, multivariate analyses (a) allow to investigate the structural relationships of

the latent state constructs with predictors at the within- and between-person levels of

analysis simultaneously, (b) avoid the danger of chance capitalization which would arise

when separate univariate analyses were performed, (c) exploit the associations between

personality states to provide more accurate standard errors and more powerful tests of the

within- and between-person effects and (d) allow to examine the psychometric properties

of the FFM state measure at both the within- and between-person level simultaneously.

Prior to testing the structural relationships between personality states, roles and goals, an

unconditional model (Model 1) was estimated (no predictors were specified at either level 2

or 3) which can be appropriately represented in three stages, starting at level 1:

Level 1 : Yijk ¼ d1ijk p1jk þ d2ijk p2jk þ d3ijk p3jk þ d4ijk p4jk þ d5ijk p5jk þ eijk; (1)

where Yijk is the score on item i at measurement occasion j for person k; dpijk is a dummy-

coded indicator variable taking on the value of 1 if item Yi belongs to scale p and 0

otherwise for the five personality state scales; ppjk is the latent true score for person k

at measurement occasion j, and eijk is a measurement error assumed to be normally

distributed with a mean of zero and a variance s2 (in the current study of about 100 due to

T-standardization). The error variance in each scale s2e results from s2 divided by the

number of items constituting each scale p (Raudenbush et al., 1991). Level 1 can be thus

compared to a restrictive confirmatory factor analysis with loadings constrained to be equal

for items belonging to the same scale and one common error variance (Raudenbush &

Bryk, 2002; Raudenbush et al., 1991). To account for the rather strong assumption of a

common error variance at level 1, items were rescaled to have approximately equal error

variances according to a procedure suggested by Raudenbush et al. (1991).1

1Prior to MLM analyses, items of the FFM state measure were rescaled to have approximately equal errorvariances according to the procedure described by Raudenbush et al. (1991, p. 304). For each scale, estimates ofthe pooled item variance were computed across the total number of measurement occasions. T-scores of itemsbelonging to the same scale were then divided by the square root of the pooled item variance of this scale to arriveat comparable error variances.

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518 W. Bleidorn

At level 2, the true scores of the five personality state scales pp were assumed to vary

across occasions within persons:

Level 2 : ppjk ¼ bp0k þ rpjk (2)

where bp0k is the true score mean in scale p of person k, and rpjk is a random effect on scale p

associated with occasion j in person k. For each measurement occasion, the five random

effects were assumed multivariate normal with means of zero and a 5� 5 variance–

covariance matrix Tp.

At level 3, the person mean scores on the five latent states vary around the respective

grand means gp00:

Level 3 : bp0k ¼ gp00 þ up0k (3)

For each person, the random effects up0k were assumed multivariate normal with means of

zero and a 5� 5 covariance matrix Tb. Please note that there were five equations on levels

2 and 3 a time, namely one for each of the five personality state scales.

As can be seen from Equations 1 to 3, the fixed part of this unconditional three-level

model contains p regression coefficients for the indicator variables, which are the five

overall means for the personality state scales. The random part contains two variance–

covariance matrices, Tp and Tb, and one level-1 variance s2. This model describes the

error-free variability in personality state scores that is to be explained at the within- and

between-person level in subsequent analyses providing baseline estimates that can be used

to estimate effect sizes (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). A well-known effect-size concept in

ordinary multiple regression analysis is R2 representing the proportional reduction in

observed outcome variance. In MLM, the interpretation of this concept can become more

complicated, since there is unexplained variance at several levels to account for (Hox,

2002; Snijders & Bosker, 1999). In the current model, there were two variance components

of interest, namely within- and between-persons. Thus, two Pseudo-R2 values were

estimated: The level-2 Pseudo-R2 as an approximate value for the within-person

variance modelled by level-2 predictors, while the level-3 Pseudo-R2 should approximate

the between-person variance modelled by level-3 predictors2.

The model also allows a simultaneous consideration of the level-specific intercorrela-

tions of scales, which can be easily estimated on the basis of the variance–covariance

matrices Tpand Tb. Furthermore, the reliability of the FFM state measure can be estimated

at both levels of analysis simultaneously3 (Raudenbush et al., 1991).

To examine the structural relationships among personality states, social roles and

major life goals, Model 1 was gradually extended by employing predictor variables at

2These values should be considered approximate, because some specifics can arise when calculating theseparameters in MLM (Hox, 2002; Roberts & Monaco, 2006; Snijders & Bosker, 1999). Specifically, due totechnical reasons implicit in the maximum likelihood procedure, it is possible that some of the variancecomponents increase rather than decrease when adding predictor variables. Thus, it is possible to obtain negativevalues for the Pseudo R2 which is not possible in ordinary regression analysis. Though, there are attempts toprovide alternative effect size statistics that will not produce negative values for two-level models, there are norecommendations for multivariate three-level models yet. Thus, in the present analysis the well-establishedPseudo R2 was employed and interpreted according to the introduction by Raudenbush & Bryk (2002).3The within-person internal consistency is given by app¼Tppp/(Tpppþ s2

e) and depends on the number of itemsper scale and the degree of intercorrelation among them within each measurement occasion. The between-personinternal consistency is given by abp¼Tbpp/(Tbppþ (Tpppþ s2

e)/Jk). Although affected somewhat by the number ofitems and the degree of intercorrelations among them, this reliability depends more heavily on the number ofmeasurement occasions sampled per person and the degree of intercorrelation among them (Raudenbush et al.,1991).

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 519

levels 2 and 3. At level 2, each state was regressed on the student and friend role scores

represented by coefficients referred to as level-2 slopes (Model 2). Social role scores were

group-mean centred4 (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002), while group refers to individual

participants as distinct level-3 units. Besides, number of measurement occasion was added

at level 2 in order to control for linear time trends in the expression of personality states5.

At level 3, the coefficients estimated at the within-person level (intercepts and slopes)

become the dependent variables and were regressed onto major life goals (grand-mean

centred) represented by regression coefficients referred to as level-3 slopes (Model 3).

At each step of this model building process, nonsignificant predictors were omitted from

the final model. Please note that predictors at both levels entered analyses as observed

variables. Hence, correction due to random error was only achieved on part of the criterion,

that is, the five personality states.

RESULTS

The state quality of FFM dimensions

Within- and between-person variation in personality states

Estimates of both within- and between-person variances for each of the five latent

personality state scores were significantly different from zero (Table 1). The substantial

within- and between-person variance in each of the five states justified subsequent analyses

including predictors at both levels 2 and 3, that is the shifting role contexts as well as the

enduring goals of the person.

Reliability of personality state scales

Table 1 also shows the internal consistencies at levels 2 and 3 representing average

reliabilities over measurement occasions and persons, respectively. At the between-person

level, internal consistencies ranged between .82 for E and .97 for O indicating that the

employed adjectives provide highly reliable measures of the five personality dimensions

(for the average person across measurement occasions). The internal consistencies at the

within-person level were also satisfying, particularly with regard to the fact that they are

each based on six items only. This indicates that the reliabilities were still substantial when

FFM state scores were computed for single measurement occasions from which the stable

between-person variation had already been removed.

4In order to detect and estimate the variation of level-2 slopes properly, Raudenbush and Bryk (2002, p. 143) haverecommended group-mean centering in cases where predictor means may vary across the higher-level units.Hence, the five intercepts represented the unadjusted means for person k and the variances described the variationamong the participants’ unit means across measurement occasions. Level-3 predictors, on the other hand, werecentred around their grand means. That is, with regard to the two major life goals, the five intercepts can beinterpreted as adjusted means for person k.5Intensive repeated assessment is at risk to result in reactivity caused bias over time. In order to check for time-related trends in the expressions of personality states, the unconditional model was gradually extended by twolevel-2 predictors: Number of measurement occasion (per person, counting from zero) was included as a singlepredictor to check for linear change, while both number of measurement occasion and squared number ofmeasurement occasion were included to test for quadratic time trends (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002; Hox, 2002).There were no systematic time trends in the states of N, O and C. There was, however, a small linear decrease in Eand a small linear increase in A throughout the study interval. Although these effects were rather small (accountingfor less than 2% of the within-person variance in these states), number of measurement occasion was considered asa control variable in all further analyses.

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Table 1. Variance components and reliability coefficients at the within- and between-person level(Model1)

Scale

Within-person (level 2) Between-person (level 3)

Variance (%) Reliability Variance (%) Reliability

N: Neuroticism 31.84 (67) .66 15.84 (33) .95E: Extraversion 56.48 (90) .77 6.08 (10) .82O: Openness 28.46 (53) .63 24.86 (47) .97A: Agreeableness 30.88 (63) .65 18.00 (37) .96C: Conscientiousness 57.26 (78) .77 16.29 (22) .93

Note: N¼ 52 individuals, N¼ 2917 measurement occasions; percentages of within- and between-person variance

in the latent personality variables are in brackets.

520 W. Bleidorn

Correlational structure at the within- and between-person level

The latent variable covariance matrices, Tp and Tb, supply estimates of the true-score

correlations among the five personality states at each level (Table 2). Correlations at the

between-person level (above the diagonal) varied in a range between �.21 for N and C to

.57 for E and A. At the within-person level (below the diagonal), correlations ranged

between .11 for E and C and .69 for E and O. Although the pattern of correlations obtained

at the within-person level largely mirrored the between-person pattern, there were some

notable differences, particularly regarding the dimension of E. While the between-person

relationship between E and O was only moderate, the respective within-person correlation

was considerably higher. In contrast, the correlation between E and C obtained at the

between-person level was moderate in size but rather negligible at the within-person level.

Personality states as a function of current social roles

In order to explain part of the within-person variation in personality states, the

unconditional model (Model 1) was extended by incorporating social roles as level-2

predictors whilst taking into account linear time trends in E and A. The correlation between

the two social roles predictors was rather low (r¼ .12). The first five columns of Table 3

summarize the results of this conditional model in which each of the five personality states

was simultaneously predicted from the student and friend role scores (Model 2). At this

step, variation in states was exclusively modelled at the within-person-level. That is, Model

2 was still unconditional at level 3.

Table 2. Correlations among Five-Factor Model personality states at the within- and between-person level (Model 1)

N E O A C

N: Neuroticism �.42 �.22 �.31 �.21E: Extraversion �.47 .27 .57 .31O: Openness �.36 .69 .42 .45A: Agreeableness �.53 .54 .46 .43C: Conscientiousness �.30 .11 .27 .26

Note: N¼ 52 individuals, N¼ 2917 measurement occasions. Between-person correlations are given above the

diagonal; within-person correlations are given below the diagonal.

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Table 3. Multivariate multilevel regressions of Five-Factor Model personality states on currentsocial roles (Model 2) and major life goals (Model 3) with control for time trends

Model parameter

Model 2

(conditional at level 2)

Model 3

(conditional at level 2 and 3)

Fixed (MLM

regression coefficients) N E O A C N E O A C

Intercept, gp00 50.01 50.65 49.99 49.10 49.99 50.01 50.65 49.99 49.11 49.99

Student role, gp10 0.39 �1.12 �0.48 �0.63 1.93 0.39 �1.12 �0.50 �0.66 1.90

Friend role, gp20 �0.45 2.62 0.88 1.01 — �0.45 2.61 0.88 1.00 —

Linear changea, gp30 — � 0.02 — 0.03 — — � 0.02 — 0.03 —

Achievement goals, gp01 — — — — — �3.65 1.47 3.37 1.95 3.59

Affiliation goals, gp02 — — — — — — 1.34 — 2.74 —

Random(variance components)

L2-Intercept, rpjk 29.86 33.47 24.48 24.38 42.80 29.86 33.47 24.48 24.38 42.80

L3-Intercept, up0k 15.88 9.36 24.94 15.65 16.57 11.85 6.42 19.99 11.46 11.08

L3-Student role, up1k 0.25 0.74 0.27 0.25 1.95 0.25 0.74 0.26 0.25 1.75

L3-Friend role, up2k 0.36 1.23 0.66 0.37 1.30 0.36 1.23 0.66 0.37 1.29

L3-Linear change, up3k — 0.01 — 0.01 — — 0.01 — 0.01 —

Modelled varianceb

L2-Pseudo R2 .06 .41 .14 .21 .25 .06 .41 .14 .21 .25

L3-Pseudo R2 — — — — — .25 .31 .20 .27 .33

Note: N¼ 52 individuals, N¼ 2917 measurement occasions. L2¼ level 2, L3¼ level 3. N, E, O, A, C¼Five-

Factor Model personality states (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness).

MLM¼Multilevel modelling. Model 2¼Multivariate multilevel regressions of Five-Factor Model personality

states on current social roles with control for time trends (Model 2, only conditional at level 2). Model

3¼Multivariate multilevel regressions of Five-Factor Model personality states on current social roles and major

life goals with control for time trends (Model 3, fully conditional at level 2 and 3).Cross-level interactions

involving the level-2 and level-3 predictors were not presented as none of these effects was significant.aNumber of measurement occasion (per person, counting from zero). bProportional reductions in the variance

components of personality states (N, E, O, A, C). At the within-person level (L2-Pseudo R2), proportional

reductions in variance were estimated in comparison to the unconditional model (without any explanatory

variables, see Table 1); at the between-person level (L3-Pseudo R2), proportional reductions in variance were

estimated in comparison to Model 2 (only conditional at level 2). Values in boldface are significant at p< .01;

values in italics are significant at p< .05.

Personality states, social roles and major life goals 521

The fixed part of the model (see the upper part of Table 3) contains the unstandardized

multilevel regression coefficients which can be interpreted the same as standard regression

coefficients. The intercepts (gp00) represent the average levels in the dependent variables,

which are all about 50 due to T-score standardization. The slopes for student (gp10) and

friend role (gp20) reveal the direction and magnitude of associations between these level-2

predictors and the variation in FFM states for the average participant. As hypothesized,

there were significant relationships between the two roles and each of the five personality

states. Analyses revealed negative effects of the student role on E, O and A, but positive

effects on N and C. The friend role, on the other hand, showed fixed effects on all states,

except C. Being in the role of a friend was positively related to the states of E, A and O. For

instance, there was an increase of 2.62 T-score points in state E for every one-point-increase

in friend role scores (holding the student role constant).

The bottom part of Table 3 shows the random part of the model, that is, the variance

components. Comparing the variance components of Model 2 with those estimated in the

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522 W. Bleidorn

unconditional model (Table 1), it becomes apparent that entering the level-2 predictors has

consistently decreased the within-person variance in the five personality state scales (rpjk).

By comparing these values with the level-2 variances in the unconditional model, an index

for the proportion of latent variance explained at level 2 (L2-Pseudo R2) was estimated

(Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). The largest amount of variance could be explained in state E

as about 41% of the within-person variance was due to changes in the degree the person

acted as a friend or a student. In contrast, the two social roles only accounted for 6% of the

latent variance in N indicating that state N did not vary effectively as a function of being in

the student or the friend role.

Variance in the level-3 intercepts (up0k) refers to the between-person differences in

mean-levels of personality states and was actually supposed to remain unchanged, since

there were no level-3 predictors in Model 2. However, the estimation and interpretation of

variance components in MLM is more complex than in ordinary regression analysis

(e.g. Hox, 2002). As can bee seen in Table 3, also the between-person variance in the five

personality states has changed. In fact, variances in all personality states, but A, increased

slightly to rather appreciably when level-2 predictors were added to the model. According

to the recommendation of Hox (2002), these conditional between-person variance

components (up0k) were used as the baseline model to evaluate the effects of level-3

predictors (major life goals) in subsequent analyses.

Level-3 variances in student role (up1k) and friend role (up2k) slopes indicate the amount

of variation in these within-person effects across participants. Effects of both student

and friend role differed significantly between participants. For example, while some

individuals acted increased conscientiously when occupying the student role, others only

marginally changed their level of state C in this role context. Since the fixed effect of the

slope for the relationship between friend role and state C was not significantly different

from zero, the significant variance of this slope point to between-person differences in the

direction of the effect. As shown in Figure 1, there were both individuals who increased and

individuals who decreased in state C when being in the role of a friend.

Figure 1. Predicted T-score values of state C for individuals who were one standard deviation above and onestandard deviation below the fixed within-person effect of friend role on state C.

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 523

Personality states as a function of current social roles and major life goals

The final step of analyses sought to build up an explanatory model to account for the

between-person variability in both average personality states and the within-person links

between roles and states. For that purpose, the previous model was extended towards a full

three-level model (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) in which parameters at the within-person

level were treated as outcomes to examine how they vary as a function of measures at the

between-person level, namely achievement and affiliation goals (Model 3, see the last five

columns of Table 3). The correlation between the level-3 variables was moderate (r¼ .26).

The intercepts (gp00) and the fixed effects of the level-2 predictors (gp10, gp20, gp30)

obtained from Model 3 closely resembled the results of Model 2. The last two rows of the

upper part of Table 3 refer to the fixed effects of achievement (gp01) and affiliation goals

(gp02), indicating the expected difference between mean-levels in personality states of two

persons who differ by one unit in their importance ratings of these goals. As expected,

the effects of achievement and affiliation goals differed among personality states.

Achievement goals were significantly related to each of the five states suggesting that

participants with high achievement goals acted on average in a more extraverted, open,

agreeable and conscientious but less neurotic way. Regarding affiliation, findings also

support the present hypotheses, as this goal category was significantly related to the states

of E and A. That is, participants striving stronger for affiliation acted on average in a more

extraverted and agreeable way compared to those scoring low in this goal category.

Cross-level interactions involving the role predictors at level 2 and the two goals at level

3 were not presented in Table 3 as none of these effects was significant. That is, the goal

categories considered did not account for a substantial amount of the between-person

variance in the within-person links between social roles and personality states.

The bottom part of Table 3 also shows the random effects of the final model. As this

model was exclusively expanded by incorporation of level-3 predictors, additional variance

was solely explained at the between-person level. Thus, solely the variance components of

the level-3 intercepts (up0k) had changed notably compared to the previous model (Model

2, see the left part of Table 3). By comparing the between-person variances across Models 2

and 3, an index of the variance explained at level 3 (L3-Pseudo R2) was estimated. Results

show a considerable reduction in between-person variance in all five personality states.

Specifically, participants’ long-term strivings for achievement accounted for 25 and 33% of

the between-person variance in persons’ average levels of state N and C, respectively. Both

affiliation and achievement goals explained 31% of the between-person variance in

persons’ mean-level of state E, 20% of the between-person variance in the mean-level of

state O, and 27% of the between-person variance in the mean-level of state A.

As there were no significant cross-level interactions, incorporation of level-3 predictors

only marginally reduced variances in slopes. In essence, though achievement and affiliation

goals proved to be effective predictors of average personality states, they did not help

considerably to account for the between-person differences in the within-person

associations between social roles and personality states.

DISCUSSION

A comprehensive understanding of personality functioning requires knowledge of both the

stable structures and the dynamic processes relevant to the system. This research aimed at

expanding our understanding of the stable and dynamic aspects of personality by focusing

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524 W. Bleidorn

on the interplay between FFM personality states, current social roles and major life goals as

it becomes apparent in the stream of people’s daily lives.

Using FFM dimensions to measure personality states

Providing further support for the density-distribution approach to personality, results

indicate that variability in trait-relevant behaviour can be reliably assessed by bipolar

adjective pairs relevant to the FFM as represented in the NEO-PI-R. Personality states

varied substantially within and between individuals. At least half of the total latent variance

was the result of variation within persons supporting the state quality of the five broad

dimensions (Fleeson, 2001).

With a few exceptions, the intercorrelational patterns among the five states obtained at

the within- and between-person levels closely resembled each other. That is, the structural

arrangement of personality states within persons largely parallels the organization of these

characteristics when they are conceptualized as generalized individual differences.

However, there were also some notable differences suggesting that some personality states

closely related at the within-person level (i.e. frequently expressed at the same time) are not

necessarily related to the same degree at the between-person level and vice versa. For

instance, acting extraverted at a given moment is strongly related to acting openly whereas

the between-person relationship between the average levels of these states is considerable

weaker. Thus, although personality variables relevant to within-person processes seem to

share many properties with their between-person counterparts, there are still not the same.

Integrated research into both structures and processes is necessary to explain personality

adequately (Fleeson, 2004; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Nezlek, 2007).

Although this study mainly focused on the comparableness of the within- and between-

person structures of intercorrelations among personality states, the magnitude of the

correlation coefficients may demand some further comments. Regarding both within- and

between-person correlations, it becomes apparent that the five state dimensions are not

perfectly orthogonal. On the face of it, this finding seems to stand in contrast with the

conceptual assumptions of the FFM. However, it should be noted that orthogonality among

the five personality states was not predicted. Actually, also the FFM of personality traits

does not postulate orthogonality as a defining characteristic but rather as a theoretical

heuristic. There are a number of studies suggesting that the five broad domains assessed

by the NEO-PI-R are not completely independent but rather interrelated in a systematic

manner (e.g. McCrae, Zonderman, Costa, Bond, & Paunonen, 1996). For instance, McCrae

et al. (1996) reported substantial correlations among the five NEO-PI-R factors, partly

exceeding j.50j, when simple structure models were tested by means of confirmatory factor

analysis.

Within-person links between personality states and social roles

Student and friend roles turned out to be substantial predictors of different sets of

personality states supporting the assumption that the social role with its immanent demands

is a reasonable concept for contextualizing personality (Heller et al., 2007; Roberts, 2007;

Wood, 2007). Individuals show different personality states in different role contexts,

conceivably adapting their trait-relevant behaviour to the given role demands. However, the

social roles examined in this study did not explain a reasonable amount of within-person

variance in the state of N. There might be other role contexts for which changes in state N

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 525

are more likely to arise. Referring to studies into long-term changes in trait N and social

relationships (Neyer & Asendorpf, 2001), being in the role of a romantic partner might

induce decreases in state N. Regrettably, most of the participants in the current study were

singles and consequently did not take over the role of a romantic partner. Hence, further

studies examining associations of personality states with other role contexts in different

samples are required to test this hypothesis systematically. Furthermore, future research is

desired in order to reveal the psychological components of roles that operate as proximal

determinants of personality states. Along these lines, Heller et al. (2007) considered roles

as higher order constructs and specified some subordinate features worthy of study, such as

short term goals pursued while occupying a role, expectations, characteristics of the people

with whom one enacts the role, or the ease of termination of a role.

It should be also noted that current findings did not allow causal conclusions. Although

theoretical arguments speak for the role context causing changes in personality states, the

reverse association is possible, too. For instance, it is reasonable to assume that individuals

who are generally high in C are more inclined to take over the student role, while occupying

the student role might in turn affect the trait-relevant behaviour shown in this role context.

These mutually influencing processes could be interpreted in line with the corresponsive

principle (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005; Roberts & Wood, 2006) which was originally

formulated to explain the coexistence of stability and change of personality traits over the

life span in transactional theories of personality development. This principle proposes that

people select environments that are correlated with their personality, while the subsequent

environmental experiences should affect particularly those characteristics that have led

them to those experiences in the first place. That is, contextual demands do not impinge

themselves on people in a random fashion. At least in part, people seem to construct and

modify their contextual experiences themselves in accordance to their personalities

(Mischel & Shoda, 1995).

A further issue of the current study concerned the universality of the within-person

relationships between roles and personality states. Consistent with predictions, within-

person associations were not universal but differed significantly between individuals

(Fleeson, 2007; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Considering the relationship between state C and

the friend role, there were even both individuals who increase in C and individuals who

decrease in C when being in the role of a friend. These differences might reflect the

differences in how individuals encode, interpret and evaluate a given role context. Even

two individuals who are similar in their average levels of personality states will display

distinctive and probably predictable patterns of states when they are occupying the same

role at a given moment. Thus, in line with interactional positions, findings emphasize that it

is necessary but not sufficient to know the contextual demands in order to predict an

individual’s trait-relevant behaviour adequately. How an individual will act in a given role

context is also a function of the person and the unique way how the person responds to the

perceived role demands (Allport, 1937; Magnusson & Endler, 1977; Mischel & Shoda,

1995).

Linking personality states, current social roles and major life goals

The final step of the present analyses was to incorporate person-based variables supposed

to predict the between-person differences in the within-person effects. Major life goals

were assumed to be important determinants of average personality states and the within-

person links between roles and states, since goals are conceptualized as motivational

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526 W. Bleidorn

constructs that interact with contextual features to give rise to trait-relevant behaviour

in the service of pursuing and achieving the intended aims. Individuals’ striving for

achievement and affiliation actually proved as reasonable predictors of between-person

differences in mean-levels of FFM states. As hypothesized, those individuals with high

affiliation goals acted in an increased extraverted and agreeable way. Individuals with high

achievement goals acted on average more openly and conscientiously. Moreover, they

exhibited higher mean-levels in the states of E and A and lower mean-levels in state N.

Though the latter associations were not predicted, it seems plausible to assume that

students are also more inclined to act in an extraverted, agreeable and emotional stable way

in order to accomplish their achievement goals in the academic environment. To sum up,

long-term aspirations to shape one’s life seem to channel an individual’s average trait-

relevant behaviour across different role contexts. This is line with the conception of persons

as future-oriented agents who not only react to environmental stimuli but also shape their

lives proactively (Mischel & Shoda, 1995, 1998, 1999).

The associations between goals and personality states largely mirrored the relations

previously revealed between goals and personality traits (Roberts & Robins, 2000; Roberts

et al., 2004). Hence, these findings may also shed further light on the processes through

which major life goals and personality traits are related at the between-person level. In

terms of the corresponsive principle, the associations between personality traits and major

life goals should reflect the fact that people choose goals that reinforce existing traits

(Roberts et al., 2004). This reinforcement of traits might be initiated by an increased

enactment of the respective states (Fleeson et al., 2002). In order to deepen our

understanding of the concrete mechanisms underlying these links, further research into the

long-term relations between micro- and macro-level structures and processes would be

desirable (Mroczek, Almeida, Spiro, & Pafford, 2006).

While achievement and affiliation goals proved to be effective predictors of average

personality states, they did not effectively help to account for the between-person

differences in the within-person links between personality states and current social roles.

Maybe, major life goals were defined at a level which is to abstract to explain individual

differences in varying within-person contingencies effectively. Goals which are situated at

a somewhat lower level of the goal hierarchy may be more effective predictors of context-

specific dynamics. Thus, future research might focus on mid-level units of the goal

hierarchy that are somewhat more specific and contextually embedded in one’s life

situation.

Furthermore, one should also consider methodical specifics with regard to the detection

of cross-level interactions. Since on average 57 records of daily behaviour were collected

from 52 participants, this study clearly exceeds common rules of thumb concerning

adequate sample sizes in multilevel models, when interest is mostly in the fixed parameters

(e.g. Hox, 2002). However, the number of persons (level-3 units) might have been still too

small to detect cross-level interactions with sufficient power. Thus, one should not

definitely rule out cross-level effects of major life goals on the within-person links between

social roles and personality states unless further studies have re-examined these effects

with larger sample sizes.

Limitations

The experience-sampling design provides an ecologically valid access to study personality

functioning in the ongoing stream of people’s daily behaviour (Heller et al., 2007).

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Personality states, social roles and major life goals 527

Combined with MLM procedures, it offers the opportunity to integrate nomothetic and

idiographic-oriented research into personality functioning (Fleeson et al., 2002). However,

despite this study exhibits a number of strengths, it is not without limitations. First, as

already discussed above, the present analyses identified associations only and cannot

support causal conclusions.

Second, this research purposely focused on social roles and major life goals

exemplifying only two types of variables that determine individuals’ personality states.

Trait-relevant behaviour is undoubtedly caused by several changing sources beyond social

roles, including other features of the context, the goals an individual has active at the

moment, or time-based processes such as cycles or internal physiological processes, to

name just a few examples (Fleeson, 2007; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). There are also other

stable units of the personality system, such as expectancies or competencies, which

probably interact as individuals select, encode, or modify their environment (Mischel &

Shoda, 1995). The current study might encourage continued research into further variables

underlying daily fluctuations in personality states in order to complete the overall picture

successively.

Regarding the rather strong restrictions of the multivariate multilevel regression

approach chosen to analyse the current experience-sampling data, it must be admitted that

multilevel structural equation modelling (e.g. Muthen, 1994) is more flexible and less

restrictive. However, multilevel structural equation modelling does not model raw scores

and therefore, does not produce the estimated scores on the latent variables, that is, the

fixed effects of social roles and major life goals on personality states (Hox, 2002).

Finally, future studies on more representative samples over longer time periods are

required to back up the robustness of the current findings. In this regard, it would be

desirable to implement additional methods beyond self-reports, such as other reports or

observational methods.

CONCLUSION

The present work demonstrates a flexible strategy to study relationships at the within- and

between-person levels of personality simultaneously. It thus presents a promising avenue to

proceed with integrated research into personality structures and processes as two

interrelated sides of the same behaviour-producing system. Pointing to the intraindividual

changeability of personality, present analyses revealed a substantial amount of within-

person variability that can be systematically related to varying role contexts. On the other

hand, long-term goals accounted for between-person differences in individuals’ average

levels of personality states. This study might encourage further research into the

relationships among personality structures and dynamics which will gradually enhance our

understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying personality functioning.

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APPENDIX ITEMS OF THE FFM STATE MEASURE

Scale

Copyright # 2009 John Wi

Item

N: Neuroticism

N1 Relaxed

ley & Sons, Ltd.

vs.

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DO

Strained

N2 Even-tempered vs. Irritable N3 Confident vs. Unconfident N4 Stable vs. Labile N5 Unconcerned vs. Concerned N6 Self-controlled vs. Impulsive

E: Extraversion

E1 Unhurried vs. Vivid E2 Restrained vs. Frolicsome E3 Reserved vs. Cordial E4 Silent vs. Talkative E5 Withdrawn vs. Sociable E6 Unventuresome vs. Venturesome

O: Openness

O1 Fanciless vs. Fanciful O2 Unpoetic vs. Poetic O3 Unimaginative vs. Imaginative O4 Lacking in ideas vs. Full of ideas O5 Inartistic vs. Artistic O6 Unfeeling vs. Feeling

A: Agreeableness

A1 Ungentle vs. Gentle A2 Hard-hearted vs. Kind-hearted A3 Unforbearing vs. Forbearing A4 Uncooperative vs. Cooperative A5 Altruistic vs. Egoistic A6 Unfrank vs. Frank

C: Conscientiousness

C1 Undisciplined vs. Disciplined C2 Unmotivated vs. Motivated C3 Unsystematic vs. Systematic C4 Ineffective vs. Effective C5 Thoughtless vs. Deliberate C6 Irresponsible vs. Responsible

09–530 (2009)

I: 10.1002/per