Personality traits are less stable than people think

The belief that personality becomes fixed in adulthood persists despite decades of evidence that traits can change. This research tests how much the Big Five personality traits change over the lifespan compared with other personal characteristics, and whether people’s assumptions match measured change. It combines a survey of public beliefs with analyses of long-running studies, comparing traits with more than 20 variables across several areas of life.

In a nationally representative US sample of 887 people, participants judged the Big Five to change less over a lifetime than nearly all the other characteristics considered. But records from eight longitudinal datasets, covering 166,971 people in the United States, Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands, showed a different pattern: standardized annual and lifespan changes in the Big Five were similar to, and often larger than, changes in life satisfaction, perceived health, income, and self-esteem. The gap between belief and evidence suggests that people regard personality as unusually resistant to change, even though its measured change is not exceptional. That misconception may shape expectations about people’s capacity to adapt, improve, or develop over time.