Quantifying the Importance of Change for Understanding Differences in Personal Culture

Studies in the sociology of culture have converged on a general conclusion that while people sometimes make substantial shifts in their personal culture over time, most elements of personal culture are characterized by low rates of persistent change during adulthood. Recent developments have begun to quantify change over time and initial differences, but it is unclear how to use these components to understand the relative importance of change, especially when change is modeled non-linearly. To advance this debate, we introduce a measure for quantifying the proportion of systematic variance in panel data attributable to intrapersonal change. Applying this measure to 610 items from seven surveys in five countries, we find that although intrapersonal change is common, it does not explain a large share of systematic variance.