The extreme working and living conditions at Antarctic stations cause numerous psychological changes in expeditioners. However, research on the changes in expeditioners' personality traits is virtually non-existent. Therefore, the present study aims to determine the changes in expeditioners' personality measures during 1 year Antarctic expeditions. This study examined 56 expeditioners working at the Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station (52 men, 4 women; ages 20–63 years, M = 38.12, SD = 10.01) who participated in five annual expeditions between 2016 and 2021. The Ukrainian adaptations of four measures were used: the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, the Leonhard-Schmieschek Questionnaire and the Leary Interpersonal Checklist. During 1 year Antarctic expeditions, 8 of the 26 indicators used to describe expeditioners' personality measures changed significantly (P < 0.001–0.1). These indicators belonged to three of the four measures used in the study and were assessed as personally unfavourable. They included increased psychoticism and competing, managerial-autocratic, aggressive-sadistic, responsible-hypernormal, competitive-narcissistic and self-effacing-masochistic styles and a decreased accommodating style. Based on these results, promising areas for further research that could improve psychological selection, training and work for Antarctic expedition personnel are outlined.

The diversity and resilience characteristic of the closing phases of human development are investigated by longitudinal study of change and development in about the last 30 years of the life-span. The Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA) is a population-based psychobiosocial and behavioural study of a cohort of 1,947 adults from Adelaide over the age of 70 years. Four annual waves of data collection started in 1992. At Waves 1 and 3, an extensive personal interview covered psychological, behavioural, social, biomedical, economic, and other contextuol variables. Participants also had the opportunity to provide psychological data on cognitive and psychosocial (self) dimensions through completion of a series of objective assessments and standard paper-and-pencil inventories. Data from these two waves is used to describe and explain changes in cognitive and psychosocial domains, particularly the complexity of functioning, potential gains and losses in memory and well-being, and the interplay amongst these aspects of functioning. Once a range of noncognitive and cognitive contextual factors are taken into account, individual differences in processing and intrapersonal resources contribute significantly and substantially to functioning in each domain, and the contribution from ageing per se is minimised. Furthermore, a “limited impact” hypothesis of late life development suggests that later declines may be a byproduct of rather large decrements in some subset of a population, with the majority showing stability. Insofar as heterogeneity increases with ageing, age per se is increasingly less able to predict functioning. This work identifies some key sources of heterogeneity that may be indicative of ageing well.