Can Personality Change?

The short version

Where somebody sits at thirty is a fair guide to where they will sit at forty. Personality is not fixed, and it is not a dial anybody can turn on a Tuesday either.

Change happens on the scale of years, and it usually follows something substantial: a long illness, a new role, becoming a parent, a decade of a particular kind of work. What it does not usually follow is a decision to be different.

Some parts move more than the rest

This is the part that gets flattened in most writing on the subject, and it is the useful bit.

Of the five traits, one moves noticeably more than the others: the one about how strongly and how quickly a person's mood responds to pressure. People who take the same questions again a year later see more movement there than anywhere else, in both directions. A difficult year shifts it. So does a settled one.

The rest are stickier. How much company somebody goes looking for, how much structure they lean on, how drawn they are to unfamiliar things: these drift rather than swing. The drift is measured over a decade rather than a season.

There is a direction, and it is gentle

Across large populations, adults tend to drift the same way with age. Structure and follow-through creep up. Volatility under pressure creeps down. Warmth in dealing with people creeps up a little.

It is a slow, common drift rather than a rule about any individual, and it is small enough that a person will not feel it happening. Somebody comparing a result taken at twenty-five with one taken at forty-five will usually recognize the same shape, slightly settled.

What about a type, or an order of strengths?

The other two shapes behave differently, and neither behaves the way a trait does.

A pattern of motivation is generally described as the thing that does not change, on the argument that what somebody is reaching for underneath their behavior was in place early. What can change a great deal is how much it costs them, and how much of it they can see. Plenty of people report the same type over decades and a completely different relationship with it.

An order over character strengths moves more freely, because an order can be rearranged by circumstances without anything underneath it changing. A year of caring for somebody will push patience and kindness up the list. That is a real result and it reflects the year as much as the person.

Reading a result taken years ago

An old result is a record of how somebody answered on one day. That makes it useful in a way people underrate: it is evidence about a past self that memory would otherwise have quietly rewritten.

The sensible thing to do with one is retake rather than reason about it. Retaking costs a few minutes, and the comparison between the two is more informative than either result alone, especially on the scales that move.

One caution worth holding. A retake after a hard month will read as a change in the person when it is a change in the month. Anybody comparing two results is better off doing it when life is ordinary, and better off treating a single large gap as a question rather than a finding.

Common questions

Can somebody deliberately change a trait?

Behaviour is much easier to change than the tendency underneath it, and behavior is what other people see. Sustained practice does appear to move traits somewhat, over months rather than weeks, and the movement is smaller than the effort suggests it ought to be.

Does a big life event change personality?

Some do, measurably: a serious illness, a bereavement, a major change in work or family. The effect is usually largest on the trait about responding to pressure, and it is not always permanent.

If it changes, is the result worth taking?

Yes, and slow change is what makes it worth taking. A result describes a real tendency for years at a time, which is long enough to be useful and short enough that retaking every few years tells somebody something new.