Processes of personality development: An update of the TESSERA framework

Abstract The chapter focuses on processes of personality development during adulthood. It first describes several theoretical models before detailing the TESSERA framework—a generic, comprehensive framework that includes short- and long-term processes of personality development as well as of environmental and individual influences. The two central sections describe updates of the TESSERA framework, specifically regarding processes concerning how (a) repeated TESSERA sequences develop dynamically over time and (b) associative and propositional representations are altered. For both extensions, methodological challenges are pointed out and possible solutions are discussed. Throughout, recent empirical examples are used to illustrate the concepts and assumptions.