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Personality and social change: Individual differences, life path, and

importance attributed to the women's movement

Article in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · July 1998

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 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1998, Vol. 74, No. 6, 1545-1555 0022-3514/98/S3.00

Personality and Social Change: Individual Differences, Life Path,

and Importance Attributed to the Women's Movement
Gail S. Agronick Lauren E. Duncan
University of California, Berkeley Harvey Mudd College

This article identifies antecedent characteristics of individuals who found the women's movement
important and then shows how finding it important was associated with personality change. Eighty-
six women provided personality and life data as college seniors in 1958 or 1960, prior to the onset
of the women's movement, and in 1981, after the movement gained momentum. A combination of
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

openness, ambition, and dissatisfaction, as assessed by the California Psychological Inventory (CPI;
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

H. Gough, 1957/1996) in college, and subsequent life path from ages 28 to 43 significantly predicted
importance attributed to the women's movement (IWM). On CPI scales, IWM was associated
with significant increases on scales including Dominance, Self-Acceptance, Empathy, Psychological
Mindedness, and Achievement via Independence. Correlates of IWM with self-reported feelings at
ages 33 and 43 and observer-based personality ratings at age 43 supplemented analyses of personality
change. Findings support the utility of examining the impact of social change on personality.

The women's movement that emerged in the mid-1960s sig-
nificantly shaped the socioeconomic, political, and psychologi-
cal terrain of the United States (Buechler, 1990; Chafe, 1991;
Evans, 1979; Fitzgerald, 1973). Although such social move-
ments span a number of years and create climates with wide-
spread effects, some individuals are more affected by cultural
change than others. Which individuals are most affected, and
what is the nature of the influence?
Age, or more precisely, cohort membership, is one factor
that affects which individuals are most influenced. By common
definition, a cohort is a group of individuals of about the same
biological age who experience the same social events within the
same social context (Mannheim, 1928/1952; Rosow, 1978).
The same event often influences different cohorts differently.
Elder (1979, 1981) found, for example, that the Great Depres-
sion affected children and adolescents in divergent ways.
Building in part on Elder's (1979, 1981) work, Mannheim's
(1928/1952) writings on cohorts, and Erikson's (1968, 1975)
theory of development, Stewart and Healy (1989) proposed a
conceptual framework to study the links between social change
and individual lives. They posited that the same social event has
Gail S. Agronick, Institute of Personality and Social Research, Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley; Lauren E. Duncan, Department of Humani-
ties and Social Sciences, Harvey Mudd College.
This research was supported by Grant MH-43948 from the National
Institute of Mental Health. Portions of this article were presented at the
103rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association,
New York, New York, August 1995.
We thank Ravenna Helson for the use of her data set and invaluable
advice; Abigail Stewart, Jill Morawski, Christina Maslach, and Kenneth
Craik for comments on the article; and Brent Roberts, Eva Klohnen, and
Oliver John for statistical consultation.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gail
S. Agronick, Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of
California, Berkeley, California 94720-5050. Electronic mail may be
sent to agronick@uclink4.berkeley.edu.
1545
effects on behavior and identity formation that vary systemati-
cally with life stage, \bung adults in the process of forming an
identity, for example, are more receptive to change than more
established adults, whose commitments to young children or
building a career reduce the degree to which they are influenced
(Stewart & Healy, 1989). Stewart and Healy's model has found
empirical support (Duncan & Agronick, 1995; Stewart & Gold-
Steinberg, 1990).
In this article, we investigated influences within a cohort
that affected responsiveness to a specific social movement, the
women's movement. There are many factors that might lead
members of the same cohort to "experience and derive personal
meanings from the same social experiences differently" (Stew-
art, 1994, p. 248). We are particularly interested in two such
factors: individual differences in personality and role configura-
tion, or lifestyle.
Personality characteristics such as openness or flexibility
would be expected to make an individual more receptive to
new ideological possibilities engendered by social movements
(Costa & McCrae, 1992). Role configuration might be expected
to contribute to receptivity if the values of the movement sup-
ported the lifestyle or to make a person less receptive if the
values seemed threatening or irrelevant (Stewart & Healy,
1989). Jennings and Niemi (1981) found that women with
young children were the least receptive to cultural changes of
the 1960s and 1970s.
In addition to the question of which individuals were most
and least receptive to social change, we were interested in the
nature of a movement's influence on personality over time. We
assumed that personality change associated with social move-
ments would be greater for those persons who consider a move-
ment personally important and that the general nature of this
influence is to move the individual in the direction of the move-
ment's values. In making this assumption, we kept in mind that
such change would be shaped by the personality characteristics
and life experiences that an individual brings to movement
involvement (Magnusson, 1990; Scarr & McCartney, 1983).
 1546 AGRONICK AND DUNCAN
Does personality change beyond young adulthood? Major di-
mensions of adult personality show considerable rank-order con-
sistency over time (McCrae & Costa, 1990). However, this con-
sistency is not absolute nor does it imply the absence of mean-
level change. Although the measurement of change presents
many problems (Cronbach & Furby, 1970), much evidence indi-
cates that personality does change through the adult years (e.g.,
Haan, Millsap, & Hartka, 1986; Helson & Stewart, 1994; How-
ard & Bray, 1988) and that social roles and cultural shifts are
among the factors implicated (Helson & Picano, 1990; How-
ard & Bray, 1988; Roberts, 1997; Roberts & Helson, 1997;
Stewart & Vandewater, 1993).
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
We explored the interplay among lifestyle, personality, and
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
social change within one cohort of women, members of the
Mills Longitudinal Study (Helson, 1967; Helson, Mitchell, &
Moane, 1984; Helson & Wink, 1992). This sample was particu-
larly useful for our purposes because of its place in social his-
tory. Graduating from college in 1958 or 1960, participants
entered the adult world prior to the profound societal changes
of the 1960s and 1970s. Plans for the future were initiated within
a social context that shifted radically within a very short period
of time. Some women adhered to traditional values, whereas
others saw the opportunity to develop in new ways. In our earlier
work, we found a wide range of responses to the women's
movement in this cohort—one third of the sample found the
movement not at all personally important, another third found
it somewhat personally important, and the remaining third found
the women's movement very personally important (Duncan &
Agronick, 1995).
Women who graduated from college just a few years after
the Mills sample launched their adult lives within a world with
dramatically different views about women's roles and were more
likely to find the movement personally important. Within one
such cohort of women, less than one tenth of the sample found
very little personal importance in the movement, whereas over
two thirds of respondents found it very personally important
(Duncan & Agronick, 1995). With the wider range of reactions
represented in the Mills sample, we were able to examine indi-
vidual differences in the receptivity to and the impact of this
cultural change on individual lives.
Tested initially during their senior year of college, the Mills
women were contacted several times subsequently. Participants
were asked about the personal importance of the women's move-
ment in 1981, when they were, on average, 43 years old. Person-
ality and life path data are consequently available both prior to
and well after the movement gained momentum in mainstream
American society.
Two main issues were addressed in this research. First, do
college-age personality and early adult life path distinguish
women who found the movement personally important from
those who did not? Second, is there psychological change associ-
ated with having found the women's movement personally
important?
In using the term personally important, we acknowledged,
and tried to capture, the complexity of assessing the influence
of social change. The women's movement, like other social
movements, may be personally important in a variety of ways.
Some women were never receptive to the women's movement,
but for those who were receptive, expression of feelings about
and participation in the movement varied. Some women were
active as early as the mid-1960s; others became involved later.
Still others did not participate in organized activities or protests
per se, but supported movement ideology, acknowledging the
role it played in their life choices and sense of self. Then there
were women who recognized the movement's influence on them
and their life course but did not embrace the label feminist. In
assessing the personal importance of the women's movement,
we were interested in this full range of responses.
Characteristics of Supporters of the
Women's Movement
A number of articles, primarily cross-sectional studies pub-
lished in the 1970s, delineated characteristics of supporters or
advocates of the women's movement. Advocates in these studies
were usually members of women's movement groups affiliated
with universities, but most studies left unclear the nature of
these organizations (e.g., whether participants were engaged
primarily in political activism, consciousness raising, or both).
Questionnaires were usually used to assess attitudes toward the
women's movement in undergraduate student samples, though
Cherniss (1972) conducted unstructured interviews with gradu-
ate students, working women, and full-time mothers, and Usher
and Fels (1985) sampled married women between the ages of
40 and 50. This body of research informed our hypotheses about
characteristics to be expected in women who found the women's
movement personally important.
Support for the women's movement has been associated with
high levels of ambition, autonomy, and assertiveness (Cherniss,
1972; Goldschmidt, Gergen, Quigley, & Gergen, 1974). Re-
ported to have high self-esteem, middle-aged women involved
in the movement were found by Usher and Fels (1985) to be
comfortable with themselves but unhappy with socioeconomic
and personal opportunities open to them. Many women's move-
ment participants believed that if discrimination were elimi-
nated, women would be able to achieve their full potential (Sto-
loff, 1973).
Eager to succeed professionally, supporters may have been
actively searching for a life path different from that traditionally
pursued by their female contemporaries (Goldschmidt et al.,
1974). In fact, involvement with the women's movement was
reported to follow a period of questioning of the conventional
modes of female development (Cherniss, 1972; Usher & Fels,
1985). Not surprisingly, supporters of the movement favored
changes in traditional sex roles (Mahoney, 1975).
Behavior advocated by the women's movement presented a
risk to which some may have had trouble accommodating:
Women opposed to the movement, feminism, or feminists have
been found to score higher on measures of authoritarianism,
anxiety, and harm avoidance than those who supported it (Dun-
can, Peterson, & Winter, 1997; Haddock & Zanna, 1994; Sarup,
1976; Worell & Worell, 1977). Consistent with this picture,
women's movement advocates were found to value being broad-
minded and imaginative, to have higher levels of ego develop-
ment, and to be more self-actualizing than women who did not
support the movement (Mahoney, 1975; Rozsnafszky & Hendel,
1977).
These findings are somewhat hard to reduce, but some are
 IMPORTANCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
more applicable to our study than others. We selected openness
to change (lack of rigidity), dissatisfaction, and ambition as a
core of characteristics that would have been likely antecedents
to interest in the women's movement and to finding it personally
important. We did not make hypotheses about some traits men-
tioned in the literature review because we lacked measures of
them at age 21 (e.g., ego development). Though measures of
dominance and autonomy were available, previous research in
the Mills sample showed that individual differences in these
characteristics (in relation to nontraditional life paths) were
minor in college and only became important after our first as-
sessment between young adulthood and midlife (Helson & Pi-
cano, 1990).
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Life Path and Receptivity to Social Change
Although personality characteristics may contribute to indi-
vidual differences in finding the women's movement personally
important, divergent life priorities and commitments within the
sample may have affected receptivity as well. People whose
interests and lifestyle are reflected in the ideology of a social
movement are more inclined to advocate or take part in the
movement than those who do not see their ideas or life commit-
ments supported (Jennings & Niemi, 1981; Stewart & Healy,
1989). In addition, individuals considering a shift in commit-
ments, such as a homemaker reentering the workforce, may be
particularly receptive to social change:
For example, women [slightly older than the Mills participants]
who raised children at home during the 1950s and early 1960s were
sometimes moved by the women's movement of the later 1960s
and 1970s to reconsider the structure of their lives—to go back to
school, abandon a marriage, or find a career. These women some-
times reconstructed their worldviews, and their personal identities,
in radical ways. (Stewart & Healy, 1989, p. 33)
Previous researchers classified the Mills participants into life-
path groups on the basis of cohort-specific patterns in the timing
and focus of commitments to family or career (Helson, Mitch-
ell, & Moane, 1984; Helson & Moane, 1987). Two main life
paths were labeled the feminine social clock (FSC) and the
masculine occupational clock (MOC). The FSC adherent's pri-
mary focus was on the family. The MOC adherent's focus was
on maintaining an upwardly mobile career (though most women
had families as well). Within these two main life paths, distinc-
tions were made on the basis of time of initiation (early or late)
and maintenance of adherence to a respective life path. Among
patterns that these distinctions identify are those of women who
maintained a primary focus on family from ages 28 to 43, those
who maintained a primary commitment to building an upwardly
mobile career from ages 28 to 43, and those who began with a
primary focus on family but shifted after age 28 to an increased
emphasis on work, establishing an upwardly mobile career tra-
jectory and orientation by age 43.
These life-path variables enabled us to test the receptivity to
the women's movement of adherents to the homemaker and
career patterns, as well as of those who shifted from a predomi-
nantly homemaker lifestyle to a careerist trajectory during the
1970s. We expected that those maintaining a commitment pri-
marily to family would be least likely to find personal meaning
1547
in the women's movement, perhaps because they were unlikely
to find their life commitments validated. In addition, those in-
volved in raising young children may have found that the issues
raised by the women's movement (e.g., sexual freedom and
equal pay) were removed from their day-to-day concerns. In
contrast, we expected that those with a focus on maintaining a
career between ages 28 and 43 would be receptive, in part
because movement activists advocated increased employment
opportunities for women. Women working in upwardly mobile
careers (largely dominated by men) would have found support
and validation for their career choices and work experiences in
the women's movement. Finally, we expected that women whose
focus shifted from family to building an upwardly mobile career
in the 1970s, when the influence of the women's movement was
quite strong, would be the group who found the movement most
personally important of all. Whether finding personal impor-
tance in the movement induced a shift in life priorities or
whether a change in life focus prompted finding the movement
important, women with newly established priorities in the paid
labor force would have found much meaning in a movement that
fostered questioning of traditional gender norms and advocated
women's increased presence outside the home.
Effects of Participation in the Women's
Movement on Personality
Although there has been little longitudinal study of the effects
of engagement with the women's movement on personality,
cross-sectional studies using personality measures and retro-
spective reports suggest that those who found the women's
movement meaningful changed psychologically through activi-
ties such as consciousness-raising groups. The movement em-
powered its advocates and provided opportunities for personal
growth and self-actualization (Cherniss, 1972; Mahoney, 1975;
Rozsnafszky & Hendel, 1977). Personal insights and reforma-
tion of self were attributed to critical evaluation of traditional
gender role expectations, attitudes, and behavior (Cherniss,
1972; Stoloff, 1973). Activists reported feeling an increased
solidarity with, and a greater understanding of, other women;
they also reported increased self-esteem and reduced self-blame
as a result of movement activity (Cherniss, 1972). In addition,
supporters may have changed through taking advantage of the
increased opportunities to develop high-status careers outside
the home during the 1960s and 1970s. Such work is known to
be associated with increased gender consciousness (Gurin,
1985) and successful functioning (Helson, Elliott, & Leigh,
1990; Kohn & Schooler, 1978; Roberts, 1997), including skills
necessary to achieve in work environments requiring initiative
and autonomy.
Why did involvement in the movement spur personality
change? One potent factor may be the group processes inherent
in much movement activity (Cole & Stewart, 1996). The goal
of consciousness-raising groups, for example, was to shift the
cognitive focus from passive acceptance, self-blame, and feel-
ings of isolation from other women to self-development, social
support, and group action (Brodsky, 1973; Downing & Roush,
1985; Peskilis, 1970). Interpersonal trust was developed on the
basis of the view that a woman's struggles in society were not
primarily the result of her individual intrapsychic difficulties but
 1548 AGRONICK AND DUNCAN
rather a result of the challenges she faced in a limiting social
structure. Sharing experiences with others and reading feminist
writings empowered women to develop a more differentiated
view of the factors that motivated others to maintain the status
quo, to persevere and show initiative in the face of discrimina-
tion, and to resist social norms and expectations. In conjunction
with this perspective, women were encouraged to develop a
sense of self beyond the social roles of mother and wife (Brod-
sky, 1973). We expected, then, that women who found much
personal meaning in the women's movement would have in-
creased in social poise and assurance, resistance to social norms,
and complexity of outlook, which includes a greater understand-
ing of other women and gender roles.
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Overview
This study investigated two questions. The first asked what
antecedent personality characteristics and life-path factors were
associated with finding the women's movement personally im-
portant at midlife. On the basis of the literature on supporters
of the movement, Mills participants who were ambitious and
capable, open to new ideas, and dissatisfied with the opportuni-
ties available to them upon college graduation were expected
to have been most affected by the women's movement. The life
path a woman followed is also expected to have influenced the
degree to which she found personal meaning in the women's
movement—women who focused on family should show the
least influence, those who maintained a career path between
ages 28 and 43 should show more influence, and those who
switched from commitments primarily in the home to a career in
the workforce during the 1970s should show the most influence.
The second question addressed whether finding the women's
movement personally important was associated with personality
change. We expected finding the women's movement personally
important to be associated with personality change in the direc-
tion of increased confidence, initiative, self-esteem, and com-
plex understanding of others. We also expected it to be associ-
ated with an increased questioning of social norms, and for
those in upwardly mobile careers, increased high-level achieve-
ment skills, such as the desire and ability to work independently.
To complement our change analyses, we studied feelings
about life experienced by participants in their early 30s and 40s,
especially feelings regarding gender roles. We also presented
observer-based personality descriptions of the women as they
were perceived at midlife, expecting individuals who found the
women's movement personally important to have been viewed
by others as open, ambitious, and dissatisfied as they were at
age 21 and as confident, connected, and engaged by the ideas
and the possibilities of the movement as they became over time.
Method
Participants and Overall Design of Study
In 1958, and again in 1960, a representative two thirds of the senior
class (N = 141) at Mills College participated in a study of personality
characteristics and plans for the future among college women (Helson,
1967). They were contacted again, primarily by mail, at approximately
ages 27, 43, and 52 (Helson et al., 1984; Helson & Wink, 1992). The
women were predominantly White, Protestant, and middle-class.
The two times of testing included in this study are labeled ages 21
and 43, respectively. The sample consisted of 86 women who completed
personality inventories at both ages 21 and 43 and extensive question-
naire material regarding their work, relationships, attitudes, and feelings
at age 43.
Analyses have shown that attrition effects tend to be small in the
Mills sample. Women who completed the CPI at both ages 21 and 43
differed at age 21 from those who would drop out of the study after
this first assessment on only 1 of the 20 scales: They had higher scores
on the Communality scale, f(137) = 2.04, p < .05. Dropouts thus felt
more marginal or alienated than women who stayed in the study. These
two groups did not differ at age 21 in work or family plans for the
future, though the women who dropped out had lower SAT scores and
lower grade point averages.
We also compared women who, at age 43, completed both the CPI
and the section of materials that included the women's movement ques-
tion with those who completed the CPI but did not answer this specific
part of the questionnaire (which came late in the battery and was some-
what optional). The 86 women who provided responses to the women's
movement question differed on only 1 of the 20 CPI scales from those
who did not: They scored higher on the Socialization scale, ((105) =
2.77, p < .01. Presumably, women who completed all of the materials,
were more conscientious than those who did not complete the entire
assessment packet. No differences were found in marital status, number
of children, total amount of time spent in the labor force, or status level
of paid employment among women who did and did not answer the
section that included the question about the women's movement.
Measures
Importance attributed to the women's movement (IWM). As part
of the age-43 questionnaire, the women were asked to respond to the
following question: "Have you taken part in the women's movement?
If so, in what ways? If not, are there ways in which you think that you
have been affected by it?" Responses were coded on a 3-point scale.
A reply was scored as a 1 (no personal importance) if there was evi-
dence that the women's movement had no impact on the person's life.
For example, one woman wrote, " [ I ] have not taken part in it. I think
that all the ballyhoo is silly." A response was coded as 2 (some personal
importance) if there was evidence that the women's movement had
some, but not extensive, impact on the person's life. If the woman
considered the movement significant, but was not actively involved, she
received a score of 2. For example, a participant replied, " I have not
taken part, but the results [of the women's movement] have given me
more self confidence." To receive a score of 3 (much personal impor-
tance), a response had to state that the woman was quite affected by
the movement or to mention political activity related to women's rights.
For example, one individual wrote, " I have been active in establishing
a Women's History Week. . . . My relationships with women have
changed—we have a support group. I have also changed my ideas on
rearing children as a result of the women's movement. I want my daugh-
ter to have the choices I felt I didn't!"
As reported by Duncan and Agronick (1995), 30 women (34.9%)
received a score of 1; 28 women (32.5%) received a score of 2; and 28
(32.5%) received a score of 3. The mean rating for the sample was
1.97. Interrater reliability for the two coders was .93.
The California Psychological Inventory (CPI). The CPI (Gough,
1957/1996) is a widely used inventory that includes 20 scales with
themes of social poise and assurance, norm adherence, and achievement
potential. Among these are several that were particularly suitable to test
our hypotheses. First, we expected that women who found the women's
movement important would have been open to new ways of thinking,
alert to new opportunities for success, and dissatisfied at age 21. The
CPI Flexibility scale is an appropriate measure of desire for change,
 IMPORTANCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
variety, and new ways of thinking (which should include an openness
to alternative roles and modes of behavior). The Capacity for Status
scale assesses ambition, breadth of outlook, and skills leading to increase
in status. The Well-Being scale, which assesses an individual's current
life satisfaction and future outlook, as well as her sense of emotional
and physical health, was used to test dissatisfaction. Those who score
moderately low on this scale are described as " . . . not entirely comfort-
able with themselves or their social supports" (McAllister, 1986, p. 14).
For the second question in our research, we constructed expectations
about how IWM was related to personality change from ages 21 to 43.
It is best to use caution when hypothesizing that particular CPI scales
will show change and others will not—much depends on the initial
scores of the women and their intervening experiences and environments,
both those common to most of the sample and those affecting subgroups.
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In general, we expected increases on measures of social poise and assur-
ance, decreases in some aspects of norm adherence, and increases on
measures of complexity of understanding others and high-level achieve-
ment skills. Among measures of social poise and assurance, the most
obvious choices were Dominance, which assesses initiative, confidence,
assertiveness, and sense of direction; Self-Acceptance, which measures
self-approbation; and Empathy, which is not a measure of sympathetic
attitudes, but of sophistication and active involvement in understanding
others.
Among measures of norm adherence, some scales assess deeply in-
grained characteristics, whereas others measure more fluid orientations
that are more likely to change. A decrease in Good Impression (concern
with presenting oneself favorably) from 1958/1960 to 1981 would re-
flect a resistance to norms about women's self-presentation as agreeable
and accommodating. To assess complexity and objectivity in understand-
ing others, we chose Psychological Mindedness, and to appraise high-
achievement skills, such as the ability and desire to work independently,
we chose Achievement via Independence.
Life path variables. Previous work by Helson and her collaborators
described a set of life-path trajectories (social clock projects; see Helson
et al., 1984; Helson & Moane, 1987) in the Mills sample. Two main
projects were labeled the Feminine Social Clock (FSC) and the mascu-
line Occupational Clock (MOC). Adherents to the FSC had partners
and children by age 28, intact marriages at age 43, and if these partici-
pants worked, low-status or temporary jobs rather than upwardly mobile
careers. Followers of the MOC were women who had an upwardly
mobile career at both ages 28 and 43 (though most had families as
well). Another pattern consisted of FSC-MOC shifters, participants
who started out in traditional roles (adhering to the FSC) but initiated
a career after age 28 and were maintaining an MOC project at age 43.
Of 86 women, 22 were coded as FSCs (primary focus on family), 18
as MOCs (central commitment to career), and 8 as FSC-MOC shifters.
The other 38 participants started a family later than the sample norm,
initiated a family or career project but did not maintain it, or never
established either of these projects. Clear predictions about IWM could
not be made for these remaining participants. For example, women who
began families late did so for divergent reasons (such as waiting for
their partner to finish professional school, having problems with fertility,
or delaying children in the interest of their own career), which had
different implications for their vested interest in the women's movement.
Status level in work. To assess career success, we used ratings of
status level in work (Helson, Elliott, & Leigh, 1989). Ratings of the
amount of autonomy, responsibility, training, and talent required in the
woman's work were made on a 7-point scale. Interrater reliability for
the two coders was .96.
Feelings about life. At age 43, the women rated each of 40 character-
istic "feelings about life" on a 3-point scale (3 = very descriptive, 1
= not at all descriptive). In addition, they rated these same feelings
retrospectively, as they had experienced them about 10 years previously
(Helson & Moane, 1987). The items were selected from theories of
1549
adult development, including those of Gould (1972), Levinson (1978),
and Neugarten (1968), and some were intended to reflect attitudes asso-
ciated with the women's movement.
Previous work (Helson & Moane, 1987) has shown that the Mills
sample as a whole reported feeling more confident and effective (e.g.,
"feeling more confident," "influence in my community or area of inter-
est") and less vulnerable (e.g., "feeling weaker and less competent than
others"; "feeling I will never get myself together") in their early 40s
than 10 years previously. Though this perceived change in social and
personal empowerment was relevant to the present study, the 3-point
scale imposed a ceiling effect, which makes it difficult to discriminate
the influence of the women's movement from that due to broader pro-
cesses of normative development.
Some items in the set of feelings about life concerned gender roles
specifically, and more variation in response to these items was repre-
sented within the sample. Here, our general expectations were that IWM
would be related to negative attitudes toward traditional gender roles
("feeling angry at men and masculinity"), increases between the early
30s and early 40s in feeling a connection with women ("feeling women
are more important to me than they used to b e " ) , and experiencing an
expanded consciousness (e.g., "discovering new parts of myself").
CAQ personality descriptions based on archival data. The Califor-
nia Q-sort (CAQ; Block, 1978) consists of 100 items that provide a
comprehensive description of personality functioning. The items are
sorted by raters, using a forced normal distribution, to describe an
individual. In the Mills study, judges based their ratings on extensive
questionnaire data collected at age 43. Reliability of the Q-sorts was
satisfactory (Wink, 1991). The raters saw no inventory scores, but their
material did include responses to the question about the importance of
the women's movement. Because there were about 35 pages of informa-
tion on the participants' lives since college, including responses about
partners, divorces, children, parents, work, and health, the influence of
a paragraph or two about the women's movement on the raters' place-
ment of Q-sort items was quite minor.
We expected that the raters' descriptions of the women in their early
40s would be consistent with a picture of women who were open,
ambitious, and dissatisfied as college seniors, subsequently stimulated
by the ideas and the possibilities of the women's movement, and able
to use its influence to raise their consciousness and gain a sense of
empowerment.
Analyses
To study personality and lifestyle predictors of importance attributed
to the women's movement (IWM), ratings of IWM were first correlated
with CPI Capacity for Status, Weil-Being, and Flexibility scale scores
at age 21 and with each of the social clock project patterns. A hierarchical
multiple regression analysis was then performed to show the combined
effects of antecedent personality and life path on reported importance
of the women's movement at age 43. Capacity for Status, Well-Being,
and Flexibility scores were entered together in Step 1, and three dummy
variables used to code for life path were entered together in Step 2 of
this analysis. These dummy variables were used to code for the three
life paths for which we had hypotheses in comparison with a fourth
group of trajectories for which clear predictions could not be made. The
three variables were computed as follows: traditional lifestyle (FSC =
1; otherwise = 0 ) ; career commitment between ages 28 and 43 (MOC
= 1; otherwise = 0 ) ; and shift from traditional lifestyle to career com-
mitment (FSC at age 28 to MOC by age 43 = 1; otherwise = 0 ) .
To study personality change associated with IWM we again used
hierarchical multiple regression to determine whether reported impor-
tance of the women's movement was associated with personality change
from ages 21 to 43. Scores at age 43 on the six CPI scales considered
most likely to show change were the criterion variables. To assess person-
 1550 AGRONICK AND DUNCAN

ality change associated with IWM controlling for the influence of age- Table 2
21 personality, we entered scores on the respective CPI scales at age 21 Change in Personality From Ages 21 to 43 Associated With
in Step 1; we then entered IWM in Step 2. In secondary analyses, we
Importance Attributed to the Women's Movement
controlled for both age-21 personality and status level of work before
entering IWM in a third step. 0*
IWM was correlated with two sets of the women's self-report of
feelings about life; the first set was descriptive of themselves in their Age-21 Women's R2
early 40s, and the second recalled at that time as having been descriptive Age-43 CPI scale CPI scale movement R change
10 years earlier. Finally, to show distinctive features of personality asso-
ciated with IWM as the women were viewed by others, IWM was Social poise and assurance
Dominance .52 .27 .61 .07**
correlated with the items of the Q-sort descriptions made by file raters.
Self-Acceptance .26 .34 .45 .11**
Because hypotheses related to feelings about life and Q-sort descriptions
Empathy .43 .38 .61 .14**
were stated somewhat abstractly, we used the .01 level of significance Norm adherence
in reporting results. Good Impression .45 -.14 .48 .02
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Other scales
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Achievement via
Results Independence .34 .25 .43 .06*
Psychological Mindedness .35 .25 .42 .06*
Who Found Personal Meaning in the Women's
Movement? Note. R2 change indicates the additional percent of variance explained
by entering importance of the women's movement in Step 2 of the
IWM was significantly correlated with CPI Flexibility at age analyses. N = 84. CPI = California Psychological Inventory.
21 (r = .22,p < .05, N = 85) and showed correlations signifi- • Beta weights from the final equations are reported.
cant at the trend level (p < .10) with Capacity for Status and *p < .05. **p < .01.
Weil-Being (rs = .21 and - . 1 8 , respectively). In addition, IWM
showed correlations of -.24 (p < .05, N = 86) with having
initiated and maintained a traditional lifestyle and of .25 (p < The addition of the social clock project variables, introduced
.05) with having shifted from a traditional lifestyle to a career at Step 2, significantly increased the multiple regression coeffi-
commitment. Correlations with other social clock project pat- cient from .38 to .47. These results indicate that antecedent
terns, including a continuous career commitment between ages personality and subsequent life path each significantly predicted
28 and 43 (r = .15) were not significant. who reported the women's movement to be personally important
Table 1 reports the regression analysis used to predict IWM and that the combination of these two variables was a stronger
from age-21 personality and the life-path variables. Scores from predictor of reported importance of the movement than either
the Capacity for Status, Well-Being, and Flexibility scales, en- variable alone.
tered together in Step 1, produced a significant multiple regres-
sion coefficient of .38. These results provide support for the Was Finding the Women's Movement Important Related
hypothesis that women who found the movement personally to Personality Change?
important would have been open to new ideas, ambitious, and
dissatisfied at age 21. The combination of these three character- Change on the CPI from ages 21 to 43. Table 2 reports the
istics predicted reported importance of the women's movement results from hierarchical regression analyses to predict changes
much more strongly than any one characteristic considered in personality associated with reported importance of the wom-
separately. en's movement. The six scales on which change was predicted
are shown in Table 2. Age-21 personality, entered in Step 1 of
each analysis, was a significant predictor of age-43 personality
Table 1 on all scales, reflecting the stability of personality between these
Antecedent Personality and Life Path as Predictors of two age periods.
Importance Attributed to the Women's Movement IWM was entered in Step 2 of each analysis. The R2 change
column in Table 2 shows the percent change in the total amount
Variable r ? R R2 change of variance explained by the addition of IWM. Significant
change in personality attributable to IWM (after controlling for
Step 1 .38 .14**
the influence of age-21 personality) was shown by increases on
Flexibility .22* .15
Well-Being -.24 Dominance, Self-Acceptance, and Empathy, the scales we had
-,18t
Capacity for Status •21t .18 selected from the social poise and assurance category. Psycho-
Step 2 .47 .08* logical Mindedness and Achievement via Independence also
Traditional lifestyle (FSC) -.24* -.12 showed significant increases after IWM was entered in Step 2.
Career commitment (MOC) .15 .12
Shift to career from traditional
However, the hypothesis that decrease on the Good Impression
lifestyle .25* .22 scale would show a significant association with IWM was not
supported.
Note. Scale scores are from the California Psychological Inventory The relative contribution of antecedent personality and IWM
(CPI, Gough, 1957/1996) obtained from the sample at age 21. N = 85.
FSC = feminine social clock; MOC = masculine occupational clock. to age-43 personality for each of the CPI scales is reflected in
a
Beta weights in final equation. their respective beta weights, as reported in the final regression
t p < .10 (marginally significant). * p < .05. ** p < .01. equations. Antecedent personality and reported importance of
 IMPORTANCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
the women's movement each significantly contributed to age-
43 personality on five of the six scales.1
We speculated that the relation between IWM and decrease
in norm adherence was not significant because the demands of
challenging careers were leading many women to increase rather
than decrease on such measures (Roberts, 1997). (Status level
of work shows a correlation of .30, p < .01, with IWM in the
Mills sample.) Additional regression analyses in which both
age-21 personality and status level in work were controlled
produced results that supported this hypothesis: With the influ-
ence of status level of paid employment removed, quite similar
results were obtained for Dominance (R2 change = .04, p <
.05), Self-Acceptance (R2 change = . 10, p < .01), and Empathy
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(R2 change = .11, p < .001), but there was now a significant
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association with amount of change on Good Impression (R2
change = .04, p < .05). However, the relations between IWM
and increases on Achievement via Independence no longer
reached significance, and Psychological Mindedness was only
significant at the trend level {R2 change = .03, p < .10). Thus,
the pattern of personality change that was associated with IWM
depended, in part, on the work experiences of subgroups within
the sample.
Feelings about life in one's early 30s and early 40s. Correla-
tions between IWM and feelings about life are presented in
Table 3. As hypothesized, women for whom the movement was
most important recalled feeling angry toward men and masculin-
ity in their early 30s. In their early 40s, they reported feeling
powerful, connected to other women, still dissatisfied with men
and masculinity, and engaged in processes of self-discovery and
expanded horizons.
Q-sort descriptions of the women at age 43. Correlations
between IWM and CAQ items are presented in Table 4. As
expected, descriptions by raters were consistent with a picture of
women who were open (e.g., negative correlation with "favors
conservative values in a variety of areas"), ambitious ("has
high aspiration level for s e l f ' ) , and dissatisfied (negative corre-
lation with "is subjectively unaware of self-concern; feels satis-
fied with self"), all characteristics associated with IWM at age
21. High scorers on IWM showed evidence of an ability to have
Table 3
Correlations of Importance Attributed to the Women's
Movement With Feelings in Participants' Early 30s
(Retrospective) and Early 40s (Concurrent)
Women's
Feelings about life movement
Retrospective
Feeling angry at men and masculinity .48
Concurrent: Empowerment and gender issues
Feeling powerful .41
Feeling women more important to me than they
used to be .40
Feeling angry at men and masculinity .33
Concurrent: Self-discovery and change
Discovering new parts of myself .32
Anxiety that I won't live up to opportunities .31
Interest in things beyond my own family .29
Note. All correlations significant at p < .01 are shown. iV = 83.
1551
used the movement's influence to raise their consciousness (e.g.,
"has insight into own motives and behavior"). They had a
sense of empowerment (e.g., "values own independence and
autonomy") at midlife. Finally, raters saw those who found
much personal importance in the movement as expressive, non-
conformists (e.g., negative correlation with "is emotionally
bland, has flattened affect"; positive correlation with "tends to
be rebellious and nonconforming'').
Discussion
We asked two questions in this research. First, who found
the women's movement personally important? All Mills study
participants, regardless of subsequent life path, entered the adult
world a few years before the movement began. Yet all members
of the study were not influenced by it to the same degree.
Personality characteristics at age 21, a combination of ambition,
dissatisfaction, and openness, significantly predicted reported
IWM at age 43.
The life path a woman followed also affected the degree to
which she reported the women's movement to have been im-
portant. We found that women who were primarily homemakers
between ages 28 and 43 regarded the women's movement as
least important and that those who initiated a career after age
28, during the peak years of the movement, regarded it as most
important. The combination of antecedent personality and life
path was a much stronger predictor of reported movement im-
portance than either of these two factors alone.
Our second question examined how finding the movement
personally important was related to personality change between
ages 21 and 43. We assessed consistency and change using a
standardized inventory, first prior to the onset of the women's
movement and again well after the movement gained momentum
in mainstream American society. Antecedent scores on CPI
scales predicted personality at mid-life, reflecting the expected
rank-order consistency of these characteristics. There was also
the expected evidence of personality change. Consistent with
cross-sectional analyses of retrospective data reported in the
literature, finding the movement personally important was asso-
ciated with increases in social poise and assurance, including
increased confidence, initiative, and self-esteem, as well as with
increases sophistication and active involvement in understanding
of others. These results indicate that importance of the women's
movement was associated with increased empowerment from
college graduation to midlife.
IWM was also associated with increases in the desire and
ability to work independently and in the ability to understand
self and others from a complex, objective vantage point—skills
particularly useful in high-status careers. The expected relation
' Besides the scales shown in Table 2, IWM was associated with
significant change on all other measures of social poise and assurance:
Capacity for Status (R 2 change = .04, p < .05), Sociability (R2 change
= .05, p < .05), Social Presence (R2 change = .09, p < .01), and
Independence (R2 change = .05, p < .05), but not with change on any
other CPI scale (six measuring aspects of norm adherence and four
measuring aspects of achievement potential). These results indicate that
IWM was associated with a broad-band increase in what can be called
social empowerment.
 1552 AGRONICK AND DUNCAN

Table 4
Correlations of Importance Attributed to the Women's Movement
with Q-Sort Items at Age 43

Women's
Q-Sort item movement

Openness
Favors conservative values in a variety of areas -.48
Handles anxiety and conflicts by, in effect, refusing to recognize their presence;
repressive or dissociative tendencies —.47
Is uncomfortable with uncertainty and complexities -.35
Is concerned with philosophical problems; e.g., religions, values, the meaning
of life, etc. .31
Is moralistic -.30
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Ambition
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Has high aspiration level for self .38

Dissatisfaction
Is subjectively unaware of self-concern; feels satisfied with self -.30
Raised consciousness
Has insight into own motives and behavior .52
Able to see to the heart of important problems .41
Is introspective and concerned with self as an object .40
Evaluates the motivation of others in interpreting situations .30
Empowerment
Genuinely submissive; accepts domination comfortably -.35
Values own independence and autonomy .34
Gives up and withdraws where possible in the face of frustration and adversity -.31
Expressiveness, nonconformity
Is an interesting, arresting person .42
Is emotionally bland; has flattened affect -.42
Tends to be rebellious and nonconforming .37
Judges self and others in conventional terms like popularity, "the correct thing
to do," social pressures, etc. -.37
Thinks and associates to ideas in unusual ways; has unconventional thought
processes .33
Is verbally fluent; can express ideas well .29

Note. All correlations significant at p < .01 are shown. N = 85

between importance of the women's movement and increased
resistance to social norms over time was not supported. How-
ever, in secondary analyses which controlled for the influence
of status level of work on personality change, importance of the
women's movement was significantly associated with a de-
creased desire to present oneself favorably, and skills particu-
larly associated with career success were no longer significant.
These analyses suggest that the pattern of personality change
associated with finding the movement personally important de-
pended, in part, on the environmental presses experienced by
subgroups within the sample. Demands of challenging careers
were leading many women to increase, rather than decrease, in
norm adherence over time (Roberts, 1997).
Self-reports of feelings at age 43 (1981) and retrospectively
at age 33 (1971) add to the above mentioned personality change
findings. Women who found the movement most important de-
scribed themselves as having been frustrated with women's role
in society in the early 1970s, a time at which the movement
was quite strong. In 1981, at age 43, these women reported
feeling powerful, connected to other women, still dissatisfied
with traditional gender roles, and engaged in a process of self-
discovery and change. In addition, observers' descriptions of
the women in their early 40s were consistent with a picture of
women who were open, ambitious, and dissatisfied as college
seniors and able to use the influence of the women's movement
to raise their consciousness and gain a sense of empowerment
by midlife.
One would not necessarily expect the strength of the results
that we have reported. One potent contributor to our findings
may be the interpersonal processes central to much movement
activity (Cole & Stewart, 1996). Informal discussions and orga-
nized activities, such as consciousness-raising groups, promoted
a cognitive shift from passive acceptance of women's traditional
roles, self-blame for structural problems, and feelings of isola-
tion, to resistance to sexism, self-development, and connection
with other women (Brodsky, 1973; Downing & Roush, 1985;
Peskilis, 1970). The personality changes, feelings, and Q-sort
findings all reflect this psychosocial reorientation.
The magnitude of our findings may also rest on the fact
that the women's movement challenged the worldview of some
members of the sample, leaving others unaffected. This cohort,
women born in the late 1930s and early 1940s, entered adulthood
with clear ideas about the future that were based on the goals
and values of the 1950s. ' 'Marriage and family were the corner-
stones on which nearly every women's life plan was erected"
(Helson, 1993, p. 193). Most women expected to work after
high school or college, but usually for a limited time, until they
married or had children. Yet the lives of three fourths of the
 IMPORTANCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Mills women turned out differently from their college-age ex-
pectations (Helson, 1993). For women who entered the adult
world on the cusp of the values of the 1950s and 1960s, it was
possible to either continue to embrace the ideology of the 1950s,
or to question it.
For cohorts younger than that of the Mills sample, it became
increasingly more normative to question, and possibly eschew,
the 1950s model of women's priorities. Because the Mills sam-
ple engaged in the tasks of young adulthood during the transi-
tional years between two radically different views of women's
roles, individual differences in antecedent personality and life
path became potent predictors of IWM. Women who were open
to new ideas and alternative lifestyles, dissatisfied with norma-
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tive gender roles, and ambitious to succeed questioned women's
traditional roles and found the women's movement most im-
portant; others, who adhered to the FSC, fulfilling the expecta-
tions of the 1950s, found it least important.
Yet it is also important to recognize some limitations of this
study. The women's movement was one factor in an admittedly
complex world. Other social movements, such as the fight for
civil rights and protests against the Vietnam War; secular trends,
such as the increase in individualism; economic changes; and
demographic shifts also shaped the country's sociopolitical
landscape. We, of course, cannot account for the whole network
of influences in this research.
In addition, the longitudinal design of our study does not
allow us to draw causal conclusions from our results. One could
argue that it is possible that women who were flexible, ambi-
tious, and dissatisfied at age 21 would have shown the reported
personality changes by age 43, regardless of exposure to the
women's movement. Although the women's movement was not
the sole factor contributing to personality change within the
Mills sample, similar patterns of empowerment are not found
in all cohorts. For example, Helson, Stewart, and Ostrove (1995)
found that integrated searchers, individuals characterized by
high aspirations for self, independence, and flexibility in out-
look, did not show the same degree of realization across three
cohorts of women. Integrated searchers who were in their 40s
in the early 1950s (the oldest cohort) lacked the challenge and
outside validation from careers that became progressively more
accessible to those in the younger two cohorts.
Whereas evidence supports the general accuracy of the Mills
women's retrospections (see Harker & Solomon, 1996; Hel-
son & Wink, 1992), the ratings of the feelings that they attrib-
uted to themselves in their early 30s may show some retrospec-
tive bias (McFarland, Ross, & Giltrow, 1992; Woodruff & Bir-
ren, 1972). Even if they contain bias, these self-recollections
would seem to constitute an important part of the women's life
narratives. Because participants were in their early 30s during
the early 1970s, a time when the women's movement was quite
strong, these retrospective accounts help to assess its emotive
importance.
It should be noted that the influence of the women's move-
ment was not simply to accentuate in its adherents the increase
in social poise and assurance often associated with adult devel-
opment from young adulthood to midlife (Haan et al., 1986;
Helson & Moane, 1987). The empowerment associated with
IWM emphasized feeling good about oneself (Self-Acceptance)
and actively connecting with others (Empathy). The Mills sam-
1553
ple as a whole did not increase significantly in these two re-
spects. The largest increases in measures of self-assurance for
the sample as a whole were on Dominance (confidence, initia-
tive, and sense of direction) and Independence (self-reliance).
How general are the implications of our findings? It may
usually be open, dissatisfied, and ambitious people who are
influenced by new ideas and prospects. In addition, advantaged
individuals, such as our college-educated, primarily White, mid-
dle-class sample, may be more likely to have the socioeconomic
resources necessary to be agents and beneficiaries of social
change. Some of the studies of the student protest movements
of the 1960s reported psychological and demographic findings
similar to ours (Flacks, 1967; Keniston, 1967). On the other
hand, different social movements may attract different support-
ers. For example, although Black and White women participated
in both the civil rights and women's movements, significantly
more White than Black women participated in the women's
movement, and significantly more Black than White women
took part in the fight for civil rights (Cole & Stewart, 1996).
In addition, social movements and cultural climates differ in
the particular aspects of personality they affect. Whereas the
women's movement empowered its advocates and increased
their identification with other women, the culture of individual-
ism increased the self-focus (narcissism) of those it influenced
(Roberts & Helson, 1997). The essential point is that individual
differences do influence receptivity to social movements, and
social movements do influence personality change.
Recently, personality and social psychologists have been pay-
ing increased attention to the influence of broader societal
change on psychological processes. Some have asserted that it is
necessary to link social change to individual lives to understand
personality development more adequately (Stewart & Healy,
1989). In such analyses, attention is paid to the intertwined
nature of historical period, cohort membership, and psychoso-
cial life tasks (Duncan & Agronick, 1995; Elder, 1979, 1981;
Giele, 1993; Helson et al., 1984; Helson & Picano, 1990; Helson
et al., 1995). Yet consideration of such issues runs "counter to
the stability bias implicit in much social psychological research,
where it is frequently assumed that particular effects are applica-
ble across age groups and historical periods" (Ryff, 1987, p.
1200).
We hope to contribute to a revitalization of a societal psychol-
ogy that explicitly explores the relationship between sociohistor-
ical context and psychological processes (Himmelweit, 1990).
To our knowledge, ours is the first longitudinal study to describe
antecedent personality characteristics and lifestyle associated
with personal importance attributed to the women's movement
and to explore psychological outcomes of investment in it. We
hope that these findings underscore the feasibility and value of
including an analysis of the broader social context (political
climates) in investigations of personality consistency and
change.
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Received January 24, 1997
Revision received May 20, 1997
Accepted June 3, 1997 •