Chmielewski Michael, Watson David
Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009 Jul;97(1):186-202. doi: 10.1037/a0015618.
Temporal instability can reflect either true psychological change or transient measurement error, and it is important that trait psychologists be able to distinguish one from the other. The authors report results from large retest studies of Big Five, trait affectivity, and personality disorder measures across time frames (2 months and 2 weeks) over which these constructs should show little or no true change. On average, nearly 25% of the variance in the measures was a product of transient error rather than true change; however, the proportion of error varied widely-but consistently-across measures. In addition, a reexamination of long-term longitudinal data demonstrated that ignoring transient error can lead to inaccurate conclusions. Most notably, a substantial portion of the observed instability in the Big Five and trait affectivity is due to transient error; thus, these traits are even more stable than commonly thought. The present data further suggest that previous reports of differential stability between the Big Five and trait affectivity are due, in part, to differential levels of transient error in measures of these constructs.
时间上的不稳定性可能反映真实的心理变化，也可能反映短暂的测量误差，特质心理学家能够区分这两者很重要。作者报告了在不同时间框架（2个月和2周）内对大五人格、特质情感和人格障碍测量进行的大型重测研究结果，在这些时间框架内，这些构念应显示很少或没有真实变化。平均而言，测量中近25%的方差是短暂误差而非真实变化的产物；然而，误差比例在不同测量中差异很大但具有一致性。此外，对长期纵向数据的重新审视表明，忽略短暂误差可能导致不准确的结论。最值得注意的是，在大五人格和特质情感中观察到的大部分不稳定性是由于短暂误差；因此，这些特质比通常认为的更加稳定。目前的数据进一步表明，先前关于大五人格和特质情感之间差异稳定性的报告，部分归因于这些构念测量中短暂误差水平的差异。
