Past research that has looked at pesonality trait changes from adolescence to mid-life and mid-life to old age has shown at least some degree of stability, so you might expect to see a similar correlation from putting the two sets of data together.

This has not been the case in new research from the journal Psychology and Aging, however, which compared personality in the same participants at ages 14 and 77 and failed to find any correlation at all.

Lead researcher Matthew Harris, from the University of Edinburgh, commented that "personality in old age may be quite different from personality in childhood", although there are some methodological difficulties to fully interpreting these intriguing findings.

Read more on our Research Digest blog.