Can personality change?
The understanding of personality has evolved much over time, and the factors involved are typically measured via personality tests. The popularity of these tests has increased in recent decades, becoming an integral part of countless self-development programs across industries. People are fascinated about personality tests because they make the abstract idea of personality more tangible by offering descriptors. These trait descriptors are not just empty labels; they’re proven to predict important life outcomes fairly consistently (Soto, 2021), including those linked to career (Barrick & Mount, 1991) and health and well-being (Chopik, 2017). That raises the question of whether we can change our traits to better position ourselves to get to a better place in life.
Traditionally, personality traits have been conceptualized as static elements that are difficult or even impossible to change, and this view dominated mainstream personality research for a long time. There is now, however, robust evidence showing that personality traits are dynamic characteristics that continue to change across our lifespan, sometimes due to conscious actions (Roberts et al., 2017) and sometimes in response to environmental changes (Bleidorn et al., 2018). Personality appears to be influenced by both non-biological and biological factors (Kandler et al., 2010), leading to lifelong plasticity of the personality traits.
Why do we want to change?
The desire to change is as old as humanity itself, and it is commonly linked to dissatisfaction with one’s current state in life, be it financial, emotional, or social circumstances (Hudson et al., 2019). If we’re not happy with where we are and what we have, we want to change it. Most of us intuitively extract patterns from our neighborhood via observation of which personality traits have a better impact on success in life and well-being (Hudson & Roberts, 2014), naturally forming an idea about what to change in ourselves to get to a better place.
In a worldwide survey, 60.40% of participants reported that they are trying to change certain aspects of their personalities, meaning more than half of the population links their unsatisfactory circumstances to their personalities. Interestingly, there are significant differences in proportion to how many people wish to change based on geolocation. The highest percentage was measured in Thailand (81.91%), and the lowest was in Kenya (21.41%) (Baranski et al., 2021). The differences can be due to several factors, including the density of the population, the level of digital intrusion, and access to media, all of which can reinforce the idea that certain personality traits result in more success.
The context of personality scales
We use the Big5 or Five-Factor personality trait model, as a baseline approach to measure inner resources across our site, and in our tournament preparation programs.
The five personality clusters of the Big5 model:
- Openness (perceptive, knowledgeable, cultured, artistic, curious, analytical traits)
- Conscientiousness (practical, cautious, serious, reliable, organized, careful, dependable, hardworking traits)
- Extraversion (sociable, talkative, active, spontaneous, adventurous, enthusiastic, person-oriented traits)
- Agreeableness (warm, trustful, courteous, agreeable, cooperative traits)
- Neuroticism (emotional, anxious, self-conscious, self-reflective traits)
To accurately interpret the result of a personality test, it is essential to consider the context of measure. The most popular personality traits linked to a better outcome in life are the so-called socially desirable traits: high extraversion (outgoing, inviting), high agreeableness (kindness, cooperative), low neuroticism (emotionally stable), and high conscientiousness (organized, hardworking). A person with these qualities fits nicely into the corporate environment. On the other hand, the desired traits are quite different for combative arts. For example, a high score on agreeableness is not desirable for anyone in fight sports. All traits are goal-dependent and can be labeled desired or less desired only in the context of the person’s goal in life.
As another example, in the tournament preparation model, we label high compassion as something to work around. However, there is nothing to fix or work around concerning compassion in other contexts, such as building a corporate carrier or supportive relationships. The workaround for combative context merely focus on awareness and the ability to control that trait during competition. Another example is emotional stability, which is strongly desired in the context of fight sports but is less desired when picking romantic partners where passion (same exact trait) is highly valued. So even this trait cannot be labeled as disadvantageous, as it brings great joy in life in different contexts.
As seen in the above illustration, contemporary personality models describe personality traits as continuous scales. The basic concept of the Big5 model is that there is a finite set of variables (five) that exist in all humans, and we differ only in the degree to which we have that trait. Conversely, earlier models, like the Jung-Meyer-Briggs 16-factor test, tended to offer personality types, suggesting an either/or combination between the mental cards. For example, they classified someone as either extroverted or introverted. While it is a valid concept for the sake of simplicity and for a general approach toward everyday matters, for a deeper understanding of the self, this approach is less helpful as it suggests that we were built in a “set it and forget it” manner.
How valid are personality tests?
Most of the arguments around the validity of personality tests come from a somewhat unrealistic expectations about their results. These tests are rough concepts about people’s tendencies that help raise self-awareness and kickstart a deeper self-discovery journey (Stein and Swan, 2019). They’re not in any way a scientifically accurate description of someone’s mental design.
The main reason personality tests cannot be and likely never will be entirely accurate derives from the fluidity of the definition of personality itself. The currently accepted understanding views personality as the dynamic mental system of a person that serves as a motivational basis for behavior (Allport, 1961). It is in fact a dynamic, an ever-changing system with continuous interaction with the environment. Accordingly, by the time we reach the age for our personality to be measurable, it has already been adapted to the environment to a considerable degree, often referred to as characteristic adaptation (McAdams & Pals, 2016).
We cannot compare the original genetic disposition to what manifests as a personality at any given age because personality does not manifest without environmental impact. In other words, personality is inseparable from the environment that is shaping it. This also means that when it does not change, it is due to occupying relatively similar socioeconomic environment throughout life (Costa et al., 2019). Which gives a lot of credit to the saying:
To change yourself, change your environment.
There is an additional issue with stemming from the self-reported nature of personality tests. They cannot comfortably distinguish between personality traits or distress. It is possible that what is measured by the test—for example, high competitiveness—is a manifestation of a long-term unmet need for acceptance. This also makes it questionable whether the measured traits are really traits or, in some cases, just symptoms of innate dynamics, including unmet needs and distress. Distress is known to distort the person’s natural way of doing things. Consequently, when clinical treatment produces a noticeable change, registered as a personality change, in as little as six weeks, it is most likely not the personality itself that has changed, but rather the distorting effects of distress that have been eliminated. (Ferguson, 2013).
Changing by biology
An increasing amount of evidence about personality change indicates that it happens gradually with time. That includes biological factors such as age maturation. For example, agreeableness and conscientiousness commonly increase with age. This pattern has been referred to as the maturity principle (Bleidorn et al., 2013; Bleidorn et al., 2019). Conversely, a temporary dip in socially relevant traits such as conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness during adolescence (Denissen et al., 2013) tends to make teenagers withdrawn and somewhat hectic, although most research considers this life stage as a critical period for personality development (Bleidorn et al., 2020).
Another prominent example of how biology drives personality changes comes from the so-called challenge hypothesis that describes how testosterone, which is linked to mating drive, changes with the circumstances of the person. The level of testosterone decreases when a man is in a relationship and further decreases when he becomes a father, but it increases again when he gets divorced. This pattern shows that the biological process behind our traits dynamically interacts with the environment, helping us adaptively change as needed (Grebe et al., 2019).
Changing by daily experiences
Personality change also happens via the accumulation of daily experiences, making our life circumstances extremely important in terms of growth plans. Personality change can occur as a result of drastic life events, such as the death of loved ones, natural disasters like the pandemic, or falling in love, as these events take over the daily experiences (Damian et al., 2021). But personality change can also be induced by very common life events, such as a promotion, a marriage, moving, etc. that slowly changes our daily routine. More importantly, recent results show that daily moods, once considered to be fleeting, can turn into permanent states when habitual. Moods being emotional conditions, can induce change in our biology, shifting our personality traits (Hudson, 2019).
This is where things get exciting. These results show that people change with time; moreover, they change due to their daily exposure to certain experiences.
That is good news if someone desires, for example, to be more agreeable (kindness, cooperative). They will become kinder if they spend significant time in a caring position. However, it is bad news if someone in an abusive relationship, thinking hard times will fade without impact. Those times will have an impact, and the personality change could last for a while. Not forever, though, as the dynamic exchange between personality and environment will continue, and moving out brings adaptation to a new environment.
Another interesting result from recent research shows that if a person can handle the environmental pressure it could eliminate its impact. In Wrzus’ study (2021), daily hustle increased a person’s neuroticism level within a couple of years, likely due to a biological change that brought a shift. But the change only happened in the case of those participants who reacted stressfully to the hustle; the daily hustle alone did not increase neuroticism. With an effective coping mechanism in place, the impact of the environment can be buffered. In the context of combat sports and specifically for regular competitors, this is a very significant result.
First, these results show that a coping mechanism can protect you from the stress of a competitive lifestyle. Second, they show that without a coping mechanism, you won’t toughen up; instead, you might become overly sensitive to tournament pressure, resulting in an increasing inhibitory impact on your body.
Changing intentionally
The ultimate question is this: Can we intentionally change our personality cards in the desired direction? Research shows that we can. It’s not just random life circumstances that can change our personality; purposefully set up circumstances can do the same. Effective change in the levels of any personality trait requires us to actively engage in tasks and challenges that pull our behavior toward the desired trait levels (Stieger et al., 2021). This will trigger biological changes that reinforce and ingrain the changes to a certain degree. There are limits to what extend our biology can change, though, and currently there is no agreement on what level of change can be achieved. The most important note is that just wishing to change does nothing. Only when the drive is accompanied by a conscious effort does the focused behavior brings change via planned exposure (Hudson 2019).
Nothing changes without action.
Summary
Over the past few decades, research on personality development has pushed the field toward a better understanding of how personalities can and do change across one’s lifespan in response to life experiences and innate biological changes. It has been widely accepted that personality is a dynamic concept, as opposed to earlier theories suggesting we are born a particular way and die the same way. Instead, we can shift our traits with conscious action and intentional exposure in the desired direction. Our tournament preparation series utilizes the above contemporary knowledge to bring personal dreams one step closer to reality.
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