How does personality change throughout life?

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

Despite the fact that personality has traditionally been considered a rigid, stable and difficult to change construct; a number 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.

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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 common points 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.

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The Big Five model

The personality traits of each person can be seen reflected in the acts and behaviors of this, being coherent through the situations and independent of the contexts experienced or experienced by the subject. Hence, personality is what makes a person unique.

These personality traits to which reference is made are those collected in the Big Five model, this being the most currently accepted model. Depending on the model, there are five large dimensions that constitute the basis of our personality. These are:

• Extraversion.
• neuroticism.
• Kindness.
• Open to experience.
• Responsibility.

As is logical, these dimensions are not the same in all people, but rather the scores of these 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 the personality remains stable through 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 complex tendencies and patterns flexible.

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 rather that our personality has the ability to fluctuate throughout the different periods of our lives.

The main theories also agree that the personality accompanies the person from the moment he is born, possessing a series of characteristics of their own that will be modified and changed in interaction with their context and the vital experiences of this, being, in addition, essential for the development of the social skills of the person and consequently for the integration of this in society.

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Can personality change throughout life?

The question about whether our personality can change more or less radically throughout our lives is a constant throughout our lives. History of Psychology. Therefore, it is logical to think that after all these debates and investigations, 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 of rigorously monitoring subjects for scientific studies throughout his entire life.

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

The Northwestern University study

In this investigation, led by psychologist Eileen Graham, the results of 14 previously published longitudinal studies were compared and combined. Together they obtained data from approximately 50,000 participants from different states of 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, moreover, in more or less predictable ways.

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

It is necessary to specify that there was a bias in the included studies to assess people at older ages, but this helps to counteract existing studies of lifetime personality change, which have been biased toward older participants youths.

The results

Combining the results of the evaluated studies 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 on the whole seemed to remain relatively stable.

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

These results coincide with certain personality theories that hypothesize that older people 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 “responsibility”, “extraversion” and “openness to experience” suffered an increase in the score during maturity early.

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 previously pointed out, personality is a relatively flexible construct that can be affected by 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 frequent example is the one that happens in people who have suffered very serious or traumatic losses who report "not being the same" after that stressful event.

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

• Maternity and paternity.
• The retirement.
• The death of a close being.
• Puberty.
• menopause.
• Marriage.
• Adapting to a completely different culture.