Merely desiring to alter your personality is not enough, and may backfire unless you take concrete action to change

By Christian Jarrett Debate about how much a person’s character can and can’t change have occupied psychologists for decades, but a growing consensus is beginning to emerge. While our traits are relatively stable, they are not fixed. Change is often passive – that is, experience leaves its mark on personality. But excitingly, initial findings suggest that we can also change ourselves. What prior research has so far not addressed, however, is whether simply desiring to change is enough (perhaps by triggering automatic, subtle shifts in our identity and behaviour), or whether we must take deliberate, active steps to change. A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explores this question. The results show once again that wilful personality change is possible, but they also indicate that the mere desire to change is not sufficient. In fact, failing to support one’s goals with concrete action appears to backfire, leading to personality drift in the opposite direction to what was desired. Nathan Hudson at Southern Methodist University and his colleagues recruited 377 psychology students to take part in a 15-week study. At the start the students were told about the “Big Five” personality traits recognised by contemporary mainstream psychology (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) and invited to select any they would like to try to change across the duration of the study. The students chose...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Personality Source Type: blogs