How does personality change throughout life?

Do people change, or does their way of being remain unchanged beyond adolescence? Let's look at it.

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

Although personality has traditionally been considered a rigid, stable and hardly alterable construct, a series of studies reveal that this is not entirely true. Below we analyze the details of this study and the possible causes influencing personality changes.

How is personality defined?

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

Broadly speaking, the concept of personality can be summarized as the combination of thoughts, emotions and feelings that define a particular person. combination of thoughts, emotions and feelings that define a specific person.. 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 reflected in the acts and behaviors of this, being consistent across situations and independent of the contexts experienced or lived by the subject. Hence, personality is what makes a person unique.

These personality traits referred to are those included in the Big Five model, which is currently the most accepted model. According to the model, there are five major dimensions that form the basis of our personality. These are:

• Extraversion.
• Neuroticism.
• Agreeableness.
• Openness to experience.
• Responsibility.

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

Likewise, 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 we perceive reality and interact with it, creating a series of complex and relatively flexible tendencies and patterns.

This flexibility is explained by the fact that the person needs to adapt to the environment that surrounds him or her. This does not mean that we cease to be ourselves, but that our personality has the capacity to fluctuate throughout the different periods of our life.

The main theories also agree that personality accompanies a person from the moment he/she is born, possessing a series of traits that will modify and change in interaction with his/her context. a series of traits that will modify and change in interaction with its context and the life experiences of this and the vital experiences of this one, being, in addition, essential for the development of the social skills of the person and consequently for the integration of this one in the society.

Can personality change throughout life?

The question of 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 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 for scientific studies to rigorously follow subjects throughout their lives. throughout their lives.

Nevertheless, there are several teams of scientists who have managed to carry out extensive follow-ups 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 incapable of experiencing significant psychological alterations from the age of 30 onwardsThe study of the Northwestern University at the University of Northwestern University in New York, USA, found that

The Northwestern University study

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

After an exhaustive review, the findings confirm and even extend existing knowledge. They establish 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 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, mentioned above, on at least three separate occasions in the life of the individual. on at least three separate occasions in the participant's life.

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

The results

Combining the results of the studies evaluated revealed that four out of the five personality dimensions showed statistically significant changeson average, over the course of people's lifetimes. The only exception was the "Agreeableness" dimension, which as a whole appeared to remain relatively stable.

As for the rest of the traits, they tended to change by about 1 to 2% per decade. Participants became, roughly speaking, more emotionally stable, less outgoing, less open, less orderly, and less self-disciplined.

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

If we focus on the results in samples of younger participants, the results also provided evidence that the traits of "responsibility," "extraversion," and "openness to experience" underwent an increase in score during early maturity.

This fact is consistent with another theory known as the "maturity principle," which states that personality tends to increase during early maturity.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 events that happen to us throughout our lives. Social pressures, a change in life role or Biological changes can influence our state of mind. can influence our emotional state, our way of being and of course our personality.

A very frequent example is what happens in people who have suffered very serious or traumatic losses and report "not being the same" after that stressful event.

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

• Motherhood and fatherhood.
• Retirement..
• The death of a close person.
• Puberty.
• Menopause.
• Marriage.
• Adaptation to a completely different culture.