How to Change Your Personality
We’ve all heard that people do n’t really change. Your mom will always be narrow-minded; your ex will always be selfish; and you’ll always be a little neurotic.
A new report, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows that this is not entirely true, but change takes much more than just hoping for change and writing about it in your dream diary. Specific action required.
According to the Research Digest of the British Psychological Society :
The results show once again that deliberate personality change is possible, but they also indicate that simply wanting to change is not enough. In fact, the inability to support one’s goals with concrete actions seems to backfire, leading to the personality drift in the opposite direction of the desired one.
Here’s how the study worked: 377 psychology students at Southern Methodist University selected, on average, two of the Big Five personality traits, including benevolence, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness, which they wanted to change. At the beginning of each of the 15 weeks, students completed a 60-item personality test and selected tasks to try to change their personality. In the weeks that followed, the tasks became more difficult (for example, if they wanted to become more extroverted, one week they might need to say hello to the cashier, and the next week they might need to do a group project).
Nathan Hudson , assistant professor of psychology at Southern Methodist who led the study, told BPS that the study appears to indicate that “the more consistent behavioral problems students have successfully dealt with, the more personality traits change.”
“The most important takeaway from our study is that being actively involved in trait-changing behaviors actually predicts greater growth in traits over time,” Hudson said.
On the other hand, accepting a challenge, but rejecting it “was associated with a change in character traits in the opposite direction to the desired one.” It is unclear why this is the case, although BPS notes that failure to complete an assignment can be so demoralizing to participants that they assume they are incapable of change. “For example, an introvert who failed to introduce himself to a stranger may have adjusted his self-esteem to see himself as even more introverted than before,” writes BPS.
So what does this mean? This is further evidence that if you want to change something, you need to take concrete steps to make it happen. Make a plan, start small, and track your habits . But also allow yourself to doubt – if you don’t succeed at first, that doesn’t mean you will never succeed. But you have to start .