The idea that personality is fixed and unchanging over time has, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned in psychology. There may still be a few advocates for a life of stability, but the data continue to refute this outdated vision. Indeed, when you think about yourself, you’re likely to reflect on many twists and turns in how your own tendencies have evolved since your teens and early twenties. You know that you are the “same” person you have always been, but you also know that you have continued to grow and evolve with the changing demands and circumstances of life.

To demonstrate the existence of personality changeresearchers use a variety of methods. The simplest is to compare the average scores obtained by individuals over time on the most common traits. Another approach compares people’s rankings against each other to see if people jump above or below these averages in different ways. However, if you think about how your own personality has changed, you probably don’t really care whether you’ve progressed or fallen behind other people in your approximate age group. You might wonder more about the pattern of change that characterizes you as a unique individual and, beyond that, what you might project into the future. You’re more outgoing now than you were in, say, your 20s, but what will the decades to come look like? Will you continue to chart your path towards a more ambitious future?

Thinking about the form of personality change

According to a comprehensive new paper by Amanda Wright of the University of Zurich and Joshua Jackson of Washington University in St. Louis (2024), when researchers draw lines or even curves to connect the score points of personality over the years of adulthood, this “may not be the most appropriate model specifications for each person. The “average” trajectory of change may not truly represent the “individual” trajectories that underlie this model. In other words, an average is just that. Imagine 50 separate graphs for 50 people studied between 20 and 60 years old. Yes, there will be an average set of changes, but that masks the fact that some people’s curves are relatively flat, others wobble all over the place, and still others are growing. then descending along the lines of gentle slopes.

Why is this important? In addition to being overly simplistic, conclusions drawn from average scores plotted over time fail to capture the reality that no two people change in exactly the same way. You know from experience that an event in your life that shook you out of your carefree nonchalance about following rules such as meeting deadlines (for example, losing a job) can cause your personality to veer in the opposite direction. Someone else, just as carefree, might never have felt the need to change.

The other reason it’s helpful to think about individual differences in change over time is that if you could see the trajectory of your life so far, you might be helped to see where it will take you. It is in this regard that Wright and Jackson’s study becomes relevant. The goal of their work was to see if they could identify common “patterns” or variations in the rate and extent of personality change. Ultimately, such work could become the basis for “testable hypotheses” to “expand the scope of their examinations of what underlies personality change.” This work could allow you to focus the examination on yourself and understand yourself better.

Charting the shape of personality change

The basis of the Wright-Jackson study is the Five-factor model (FFM) to measure personality, which produces individual scores according to five traits:openness to experience, awareness, neuroticism, approvalAnd extroversion. With nearly 26,500 participants aged 48 on average, tested between four and eleven times, the authors not only had a large data set, but also one that allowed for complex statistical modeling of individual patterns of change in over time.

This method allowed the authors to plot linear, cubic and quadratic curves, as well as combinations of the above, for each of the five traits by age, comparing people of different ages and men versus women. The modeling procedures used made it possible to determine not only the variations depending on the best adapted shape, but also the problems created if an individual’s trajectory was modeled on the “wrong” shape.

After the dust settled on these complex analyses, the authors concluded that their results clearly refuted previous studies suggesting that adult personality change involves slow, linear, or even slow quadratic (top to bottom) changes. As they concluded, “personality changes are complex: they often start, stop, and fluctuate at different times over different periods for different people…it is these ebbs and flows that cannot be captured with polynomial terms simpler. »

What these results mean for you

This conclusion shows that there is no simple form to personality change. An event such as losing a job due to lack of conscientiousness could very well cause an upward “flow” in that particular trait. You can now understand that changing consciousness was an adaptive response to a life situation and that you are not so different from other people who also change shape.

Recognizing that these variations exist and are substantial was another main point of the study. According to the results, only a minority of people actually follow a linear trajectory of personality change. As a result, the magnitude of personality changes has been systematically underestimated in previous research. If you’ve come to believe in this “slow and gradual” model of adult development, you may worry that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t follow this trajectory. Instead, you might be like one of those people in other studies whose form of personality change went undetected. Putting a linear shape on top of your cubic shape will literally become the square peg in the round hole of growth and change.

To summarize, The results of Wright and Jackson’s study can provide you with ideas as you think about how your personality has responded and guided your path throughout life. There is no reason to worry if you think you have strayed from the “average” of stable growth or maturity that adults “should” display as they age. Complexity, not simplicity, is the norm as people navigate the many changing circumstances that can lead to flourishing.