Research on personality and aging has been limited by several factors, including nomethetic assumptions about traits; overreliance on morale scales as measures of adaptation; and the confounding of cohort, time of measurement and age effects. An idiographic approach, which focuses on traits that individuals subjectively feel as important, may help clarify the patterns of change and stability in adulthood and aging as well as expedite the development of better measures of adaptation and the use of sequential research designs. (Author)