How Does Personality Change Throughout Life?

Do people change throughout their lives? This is possibly one of the oldest questions and one that has been most debated both in society in general, as well as in philosophy and psychology.

Although personality has traditionally been considered a rigid, stable and difficult to alter construct; A series of studies reveal that this is not entirely true. Below we analyze the details of this study and the possible causes that influence personality changes

How is personality defined?

Personality is a basic construct within the field of psychology, which is why over the years of studying it, a large number of definitions have been developed. However, most of them have a series of points in common that can help us understand what this concept is about.

Broadly speaking, the concept of personality can be summarized as the combination of thoughts, emotions and feelings that define a specific person That they are stable over time and do not vary from one situation to another.

The Big Five model

The personality traits of each person can be seen reflected in their acts and behaviors, being coherent across situations and independent of the contexts that the subject experiences or lives. Hence, personality is what makes a person unique.

These personality traits referred to are those included in the Big Five model, this being the most accepted model currently. Depending on the model, there are five major dimensions that constitute the basis of our personality These are:

Logically, these dimensions are not the same in all people, but rather These scores can vary greatly from one subject to another Hence, each individual personality is the product of infinite combinations of these traits.

In the same way, although personality remains stable across situations, this does not imply that the person will always behave in the same way, but rather that personality governs the way in which we perceive reality and interact with it, creating a series of complex and relatively flexible trends and patterns.

This flexibility finds its explanation in that the person needs to adapt to the environment that surrounds them. This does not mean that we stop being ourselves, but that our personality has the ability to fluctuate throughout the different periods of our lives.

The main theories also agree that personality accompanies the person from the moment they are born, possessing a series of its own features that will modify and change in interaction with its context and their vital experiences, being, in addition, essential for the development of the person’s social skills and consequently for their integration into society.

Can personality change throughout life?

The question about whether our personality can change more or less radically throughout our lives is a constant throughout the history of psychology. Therefore, it is logical to think that after all these debates and research, psychology would have a definitive answer, but this remains a mystery under constant investigation.

The main reason why it is so extremely difficult to solve lies in the challenge that rigorous monitoring of subjects poses for scientific studies throughout his entire life.

However, several teams of scientists have managed to carry out extensive monitoring of the participants, establishing a series of conclusions that contradict the well-known statement by psychologist and philosopher William James, according to which the personality of each individual was unable to experience significant psychological alterations after 30 years of age at least as far as our personality is concerned.

The Northwestern University study

In this research, led by psychologist Eileen Graham, the results of 14 previously published longitudinal studies were compared and combined. As a whole, obtained data from approximately 50,000 participants from different states in the United States and Europe.

After carrying out an exhaustive review, the findings obtained confirm, and even expand, the knowledge that currently exists. Establishing that personality traits tend to alter and change over time and, furthermore, in more or less predictable ways.

For the study, Graham and his team looked for long-term studies related to health and aging in which data had been collected on at least one of the five personality traits of the Big Five, already mentioned above, such as minimum on three different occasions in the participant’s life

It is necessary to specify that there was a bias in the included studies to evaluate people at older ages, but this helps to counter existing studies on lifelong personality change, which have been biased towards younger participants.

The results

The combination of the results of the studies evaluated revealed that four of the five personality dimensions showed statistically significant changes, on average, throughout people’s lives. The only exception was the “Friendliness” dimension, which overall seemed to remain relatively stable.

As for the rest of the traits, they tended to change around 1 or 2% per decade. Participants became, approximately, more emotionally stable, less extroverted, less open, less orderly, and less self-disciplined.

These results coincide with certain personality theories that hypothesize that people of advanced age tend to experience changes in their personality. in response to a decrease in responsibilities

Focusing on the results in samples of younger participants, the results also provided evidence that the traits “conscientiousness,” “extraversion,” and “openness to experience” experienced an increase in scores during early adulthood.

This fact is consistent with another theory known as the “maturity principle.” which states that personality tends to improve throughout life as we adapt to the increasing challenges of work and family responsibilities.

Finally, the study reveals that, although there is a relatively constant pattern in personality changes, there is great individual variability in these patterns. According to Graham and his collaborators, this means that not all people change at the same speed or in the same direction.

Why do we change?

As noted above, personality is a relatively flexible construct that can be affected by the events that happen to us throughout our lives. Social pressures, a change in life role or biological changes They can influence our emotional state, our way of being and of course our personality.

A very common example is that which occurs in people who have suffered very serious or traumatic losses who report “not being the same” after that stressful event.

Some other events or life events that are likely to change our personality are: