Assertiveness, sociability, and anxiety: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 1928-1993.

Abstract

Using a meta-analytic approach, this thesis analyzes historical trends and birth cohort differences in college students' self-reports of personality traits during the Great Depression and war era (1928-1945), the postwar era (1946-1967), and the contemporary era (1968-1993). Three of the most widely cited personality traits were examined: assertiveness/dominance, sociability/extraversion, and anxiety/neuroticism. All three have been studied and measured since the 1920s, and all three may be interpreted within the rubric of the Five Factor Model of personality traits. PsycInfo, the Social Sciences Citation Index, Dissertation Abstracts International, and a manual search were used to locate 385 studies reporting means on popular personality measures of assertiveness, sociability, and anxiety. As hypothesized, women's assertiveness scores mirror their social status and gender roles in each era: scores increase prewar, decrease postwar, and rise again in the contemporary era. There were no consistent changes in men's assertiveness scores. Again as hypothesized, men's and women's sociability/extraversion scores show a marked and linear increase in the contemporary era. Finally, women's anxiety scores increase during both the postwar and contemporary eras, while men's anxiety scores increase only after 1968. Correlations between personality mean scores and social statistics indicate that specific aspects of the social context in childhood and adolescence are related to personality traits in predictable ways. For example, overall figures on women's educational attainment are positively correlated with women's assertiveness scores. Suicide rates are positively correlated with anxiety scores for both sexes. Overall, these results suggest that changes in women's assertive traits are related to their changing status in society. Furthermore, sociability and anxiety have increased in response to the pressures and requirements of post-industrial American society.