Stability of Cloninger’s temperament traits in adulthood: A study of major life events in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966

Non-cognitive skills, particularly personality measures, are increasingly utilized as predictors for various outcomes in economic literature. The prevailing assumption in this literature is the stability of non-cognitive skills. We scrutinize this assumption by combining population-based Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 data with highly reliable data from multiple Finnish registers and assessing the stability of Cloninger’s temperament traits (n = 2897) and active coping (n = 3006) between ages 31 and 46. We find mean-level changes in all traits to be marginal, except for a moderate decline in novelty seeking. Family, income- or employment-related life events do not generally correlate with trait changes. However, health-related changes are associated with altered harm avoidance. Some associations also exist between health changes and active coping alterations. Studies exploring these traits’ impact on life outcomes should consider their interplay with health to mitigate potential endogeneity bias. Given the similarity between the Big-Five trait neuroticism and harm avoidance, our results suggest future research to explore the connection between health changes and neuroticism.