Personality change refers to the different forms of change in various aspects of personality. An individual's personality may stay somewhat consistent throughout their life, though there is evidence that an individual's personality can change throughout their lifetime. Social interactions, culture of origin, life stage, lived experience, and significant events (especially traumatic events) can all alter a person's external perceptions and self-concept to a degree which could facilitate a change in personality. There is an ongoing debate as to what encompasses personality and why personality changes. The development of personality is often dependent on the stage of life a person is in. Most development occurs in the earlier stages of life and becomes more stable as one grows into adulthood. While still uncertain, research suggests that genetics play a role in the change and stability of certain traits in a personality. They have also discovered that environmental sources affect personality too. The debate over nature versus nurture has been pervasive the field of psychology since its beginning. Culture is also a large factor in personality trait differences as well.
Definition Personality, one's characteristic way of feeling, behaving and thinking, is often conceptualized as a person's standing on each Big Five personality trait (extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness). A person's personality profile is thus gauged from their standing on five broad concepts which predict, among other life outcomes, behavior and the quality of interpersonal relationships. Initially, it was believed that one's Big Five profile was static and dichotomous in that one was either at one extreme of each trait or another For example, people are typically categorized as introverted or extraverted. Personality was therefore assessed in terms of generalities or averages. Some researchers also noticed significant inconsistencies in how people behaved across situations, challenging the traditional notion of stable personality traits. This school of thought attributes behavior to environmental factors, relegating individual differences to situational artifacts and contesting the existence of individual predispositions. It was led by situationists like Walter Mischel (1968). Their contention held that personality was a fictitious concept. For them, the discrepancies observed across one's behaviors were evidence that inter-individual differences did not exist Some aspects of the situationist perspective even suggest that all people are the same and that the differences observed are simply illusory byproducts of the environment. However, some personality psychologists soon integrated these inconsistencies into their conceptualization of personality. Some work suggests that people can adopt different levels of a personality dimension as the social situations and time of day change. This work also suggests that intrapersonal variations on a trait can be even larger than interpersonal variations. Extraversion varies more within a person than across individuals, for example. This work was based on individual self-ratings during the day across a long period of time. This allowed for researchers to assess moment-to-moment and day to day variations on personality attributes.
Impact of social roles In addition, social roles (e.g. employee) have been identified as potential sources of personality change. Researchers have found strong correspondences between the demands of a social role and one's personality profile. If the role requires that the person enacting it be conscientious, their standing on this trait is more likely to be high. Conversely, once they leave that role or takes on another which entails less conscientiousness, they will manifest a lower level standing on that trait. Longitudinal research demonstrates that people's personality trajectories can often be explained by the social roles they adopted and relinquished throughout their life stages. Thus social roles are often studied as fundamental predictors of personality. The goals associated with them elicit the appropriation of certain personality profiles by the people enacting them. For example, employees judged effective by their peers and superiors are often described as conscientious. Personality also changes through life stages. This may be due to physiological changes associated with development but also experiences that impact behavior. Adolescence and young adulthood have been found to be prime periods of personality changes, especially in the domains of extraversion and agreeableness. It has long been believed that personality development is shaped by life experiences that intensify the propensities that led individuals to those experiences in the first place, which is known as the correspondence principle. Subsequent research endeavors have integrated these findings in their methods of investigation. Researchers distinguish between mean level and rank order changes in trait standing during old age. Their study of personality trajectories is thus contingent on time and on age considerations. Mottus, Johnson and Geary (2012) found that instability engendered by aging does not necessarily affect one's standing within an age cohort. Hence, fluctuations and stability coexist so that one changes relative to one's former self but not relative to one's peers. Similarly, other psychologists found that neuroticism, extraversion (only in men), and openness decreased with age after 70, but conscientiousness and agreeableness increased with age (the latter only in men). Moreover, they suggest that there is a decline on each trait after the age of 81.
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