Is personality variability associated with adjustment?

Two experience sampling studies were examined in order to replicate the key findings from Baird, Le, and Lucas (2006) which demonstrated that intra-individual variability in personality traits was not correlated with adjustment when measured with experience sampling methods after correcting for dependencies between means and standard deviations on traits. The present studies are consistent with the major findings of Baird et al.: personality variability was not consistently associated with adjustment. In addition, we found evidence of a small positive correlation between personality variability and adjustment in some cases. Lastly, we found mixed evidence for a quadratic effect of adjustment on personality variability, such that individuals reporting above average and below average levels of adjustment exhibit the greatest level of variability.