Paul Costa
American personality psychologist associated with the National Institute on Aging
American personality researcher who, with Robert McCrae, developed the NEO Personality Inventory and helped establish the five-factor model of traits, and who studied adult personality stability and change at the National Institute on Aging.
Why this person matters
The NEO PI-R, built with McCrae, became a widely used measure of five broad trait domains. The model draws on earlier lexical and factor-analytic work by many others. Costa and McCrae share credit for it, and their findings on adult personality change remain debated.
Main contributions
NEO inventory and NEO PI-R
With McCrae he described a three-factor NEO model in 1978 and published the NEO PI in 1985. The NEO PI-R (1992) added agreeableness and conscientiousness; it has 240 items and six facets for each of five domains.
The five-factor model as a shared project
The model built on earlier lexical work by Allport and Odbert (1936), Cattell, Tupes and Christal, Norman and Goldberg. Costa and McCrae first met in Boston in 1975 and have published more than 250 papers together on traits and the five-factor model.
Stability and change in adult personality
In 1988 Costa and McCrae concluded that personality is stable after age 30. By 2003 McCrae and Costa allowed for continuing declines in neuroticism, extraversion and openness after 30. A 2005 Baltimore Longitudinal Study analysis co-authored with Terracciano, McCrae and Brant found adult changes of about one T-score point (0.1 standard deviations) per decade.
Context and limits
Critics say factor analysis alone is too limited a basis for conceptualising personality (Block), that there is no agreed basis for choosing the number of factors, and that much of the evidence relies on self-report. The NEO's construction method has been scrutinised, and some critics call the instrument proprietary. Cheung and colleagues (2011) suggest Openness is poorly supported in Asian samples, and HEXACO (2004) adds a sixth factor. The Baltimore sample is not representative of the United States population, and the theory does not predict which changes occur.
In your introductory course
Personality.The five-factor model and NEO PI-R appear in the personality chapter as a leading trait approach. Students also meet the debate over whether personality is stable across adulthood and across cultures.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 11.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1978
Described the three-factor NEO model with Robert McCrae.
- 1985
Published the NEO PI with McCrae.
- 1992
Published the NEO PI-R with McCrae, adding agreeableness and conscientiousness.
- 2005
Co-authored a Psychology and Aging analysis of NEO PI-R scores from 1,944 Baltimore Longitudinal Study participants.
Sources
- SAGE Encyclopedia of Counseling, Costa, Paul T., 1942 and McCrae, Robert R., 1949Publisher. Reference article inspected.
- PubMed Central (NIH author manuscript), Terracciano, McCrae, Brant and Costa, Hierarchical Linear Modeling Analyses of NEO-PI-R Scales in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Psychology and Aging 20(3)Original work. Text passages inspected.
- Guilford Press, Paul T. Costa, Jr., author biographyPublisher. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Big Five personality traitsReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Revised NEO Personality InventoryReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Paul Costa Jr.Reference work. Reference article inspected.