Personality Psychology - how consistent are our personalities throughout life?

[Judy2]

This winter term, one of the lecture courses I am looking forward to the most is personality psychology. I read up on it a little and one of the central questions - that also happens to be one of the key reasons for why I am interested in psychology - is if personality is consistent/ unchangeable throughout someone's life. From what I gather so far, it is, for the most part, although neuroticism may decrease with age while conscientiousness will increase. However, your "peer ranking" will stay the same...so if you meet with some old friends 60 years from now, chances are that despite a general increase in conscientiousness, the most conscientious one of you at age 20 will still be the most conscientious one at 80, and so forth...

 

Now, as this is a community with the specific goal of personal development, I wonder if any of you would be interested in sharing how you believe your personality has or hasn't changed throughout the years (the exact period of time this commentary may cover depends on your age, but technically, from childhood until the present). I believe changes in introversion/extraversion are probably going to be the most obvious ones, but the other dimensions you could comment on are conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness (or anything else you may have to add).

I also wonder what the implications are for someone like me who ranks high on the neuroticism (=negative affect) dimension if personality is not as fluid or changeable as we may think....in my experience, I can put a lot of effort into therapising and changing this aspect of my personality, I can make efforts to be mentally healthy...but the predisposition to negative affect very much stays the same. 

...anyway, i'd love to hear your thoughts on all this:)

Edited 11 hours ago by Judy2

[Leo Gura]

In my experience, personality does not change but the mind can change a lot in all the other ways.

You don't know what you can change until you try it.

[PsychedelicEagle]

What's your definition of personality?

If we use the definition below, saying it does not change is basically a tautology.

Quote

“Personality” is the relatively stable, characteristic pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviours that distinguishes one person from another and persists across situations and over time.

 

[PsychedelicEagle]

A lot of the English I learned, especially pronunciation wise, was after I was 28yo. I find that I have a slightly different personality when I speak English, compared to if I speak Portuguese (my native tongue).

Psychedelics also changed my perspective quite significantly in terms of openness, politics, etc.

[Judy2]

5 minutes ago, PsychedelicEagle said:

 I find that I have a slightly different personality when I speak English

same:) 

[Judy2]

14 minutes ago, PsychedelicEagle said:

What's your definition of personality?

If we use the definition below, saying it does not change is basically a tautology.

 

i would say interpersonal differences that persist over time....but you are right that this is tricky...and i suppose it is the time frame that makes the definition so tricky. 

maybe i can tell you more 15 weeks from now after i'll have taken the course. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Judy2

[Lyubov]

I believe we have various personality outfits we wear around different people and in different places. Personality is like clothing of the mind. We change it, try on new stuff, some doesn’t fit us, some fits us really well, some is for working in, sometimes relaxing.  

[Heaven]

If we define personality by our perspectives in life. Mine changed a lot. Although I still have some of the core values I had.

 

[Joseph Maynor]

MBTI seems to be a very good model.  It is not perfect, but it has an explanatory aspect to personality if you are looking for that.  Especially if you look at cognitive functions.  

[Jirh]

54 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

MBTI seems to be a very good model.  It is not perfect, but it has an explanatory aspect to personality if you are looking for that.  Especially if you look at cognitive functions.  

It's a terrible model actually. It reduces all 8 billion people down to 16 rigid types, and regardless of context, which is ridiculous.

Cognitive functions are valid in my view, but MBTI misuses them. It assumes one function has to be dominant in relation to its counterpart, and that they cannot coexist together in high levels, which is false in my experience.

Edited 7 hours ago by Jirh

[Joseph Maynor]

6 minutes ago, Jirh said:

It's a terrible model actually. It reduces all 8 billion people down to 16 rigid types, and regardless of context, which is ridiculous.

Cognitive functions are valid in my view, but MBTI misuses them. It assumes one function has to be dominant in relation to its counterpart, and that they cannot coexist together in high levels, which is false in my experience.

I find it useful.  We might disagree.

[Jirh]

Personality often stays the same, unless the pain of staying the same outweighs the benefits it's providing. For this reason, people rarely change, unless they experience extraordinarily high levels of suffering.

Most people form their personality during adolescence, and it calcifies in its final form in their early 20s. And then they spend the rest of their lives building on top of that foundation.

Edited 6 hours ago by Jirh

[Jirh]

Just now, Joseph Maynor said:

I find it useful.  We might disagree.

Sure.

I find it too verbose and overly complex with very little rewards. Also very fluid and open to interpretation. Not worth it.

[iamlite]

I have a question what significant aspects of MIND can be changed and to what degrees?

[Human Mint]

1 hour ago, Jirh said:

Sure.

I find it too verbose and overly complex with very little rewards. Also very fluid and open to interpretation. Not worth it.

I feel people always get the same 2 or 3 MBTI personalities. Which is very suspicious.

Edited 5 hours ago by Human Mint

[oOo]

To me @Judy2, personality can never change and there's a larger context behind this.

However, there is a strong distinction between developed and underdeveloped personality.

Change occurs continuously throughout the life-time, however that change is dependent on the relationship to the personality itself.

The relationship the environment has with the personality - unconscious influence: stressors, conditionings, etc.

The relationship the individual has with their personality - conscious action: belief changes, activation of hormonal and nervous system patterns.

Further, what is actually still not clear are the precise dimensions of what distinguishes personality from non-personality.

For example, I actually don't believe that "openness to experience" is inherently a personality dimension even though its assessed on many assessments, like the HEXACO. However because of its impact on the expression and realisation of personality, it arguably has the largest impact out of any other personality dimension measured. 

It has already been proven that openness experience can easily be shaped by the minds experiences and changed based on environmental exposures and what the brain itself is exposed to say through different drugs like psychedelics.

Openness to experience also has many overlaps with cognitive dimensions that upon altering as well, especially in relationship to their respective changes in reward centres I.e. dopamine, openness experience changes along with the indirect influence this has on more stable personality dimensions. 

To this end, I personally would distinguish intrinsic versus extrinsic personality dimensions. 

Extrinsic, are those personality dimensions that are more changeable, like openness to experience. 

Intrinsic, are those personality dimensions less changeable, like the outcomes resulting from say being human. 

For me, personality has "species allocation" in the same way that DNA organisation does, so I consider that as the fundamental distinction between internal and external personality; where genetics here refer to the individuation of personality across our species in unique ways relative to the ancestral line and individual expression. 

Epigenetics and the subject of epigenetic changes make that dialogue between exploring the distinction between developed and underdeveloped personality not only open and alive, it extends it into territory we're still a long way from uncovering the full depths to. 

Agency, which I don't at all believe has the merits to qualify as solidified personality dimension where its relevant to say, more or less is what best predicts the degree to which a personality will be unveiled to the individual beneath the suffering its experienced and beyond its attachments to itself formed from its life experiences. 

Fantastical notions of the impacts of a neuralink for example, perfectly illustrate the divides I've relayed here. By inputting machinery, you may take away personality from your essence, but you can't add to it. Genetic manipulation reinforce this divide further, where intrinsic not just extrinsic personality can actually likely change when we compare those genetic changes with what human DNA is meant to mirror in intrinsic personality.

My views on personality are distinctly my own, with mainstream research yet to further its distinctions from the rudimentary personality tests that are given people. 

There are still further distinctions worth exploring, like between males and females at the genetic level, twin studies, mother and father influences, one could even venture into the "Personality Type" of a particular ancestral lineage, but I'll leave it there. 

[Leo Gura]

MBTI is good but there is much more to personality than that.

MBTI captures personality like IQ test captures intelligence.

Edited 41 minutes ago by Leo Gura