research about personality change

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• Published: 15 March 2024

The process and mechanisms of personality change

• Joshua J. Jackson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9490-8890 1 &
• Amanda J. Wright   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8873-9405 2  

Nature Reviews Psychology volume  3 ,  pages 305–318 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour
• Personality

Although personality is relatively stable across the lifespan, there is also ample evidence that it is malleable. This potential for change is important because many individuals want to change aspects of their personality and because personality influences important life outcomes. In this Review, we examine the mechanisms responsible for intentional and naturally occurring changes in personality. We discuss four mechanisms — preconditions, triggers, reinforcers and integrators — that are theorized to produce effective change, as well as the forces that promote stability, thereby thwarting enduring changes. Although these mechanisms are common across theories of personality development, the empirical evidence is mixed and inconclusive. Personality change is most likely to occur gradually over long timescales but abrupt, transformative changes are possible when change is deliberately attempted or as a result of biologically mediated mechanisms. When change does occur, it is often modest in scale. Ultimately, it is difficult to cultivate a completely different personality, but small changes are possible.

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Jackson, J.J., Wright, A.J. The process and mechanisms of personality change. Nat Rev Psychol 3 , 305–318 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00295-z

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Can you change your personality? Psychology research says yes, by tweaking what you think and do

Associate Professor of Psychology & Licensed Clinical Psychologist, University of Kentucky

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Shannon Sauer-Zavala receives funding from that National Institute of Mental Health to support her research.

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Have you ever taken a personality test? If you’re like me, you’ve consulted BuzzFeed and you know exactly which Taylor Swift song “ perfectly matches your vibe .”

It might be obvious that internet quizzes are not scientific, but many of the seemingly serious personality tests used to guide educational and career choices are also not supported by research. Despite being a billion-dollar industry , commercial personality testing used by schools and corporations to funnel people into their ideal roles do not predict career success .

Beyond their lack of scientific support, the most popular approaches to understanding personality are problematic because they assume your traits are static – that is, you’re stuck with the personality you’re born with. But modern personality science studies find that traits can and do change over time .

In addition to watching my own personality change over time from messy and lazy to off the charts in conscientiousness, I’m also a personality change researcher and clinical psychologist . My research confirms what I saw in my own development and in my patients: People can intentionally shape the traits they need to be successful in the lives they want. That’s contrary to the popular belief that your personality type places you in a box, dictating that you choose partners, activities and careers according to your traits.

What personality is and isn’t

According to psychologists, personality is your characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving .

Are you a person who tends to think about situations in your life more pessimistically, or are you a glass-half-full kind of person?

Do you tend to get angry when someone cuts you off in traffic, or are you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe they’re rushing to the hospital?

Do you wait until the last minute to complete tasks, or do you plan ahead?

You can think of personality as a collection of labels that summarize your responses to questions like these. Depending on your answers, you might be labeled as optimistic, empathetic or dependable.

Research suggests that all these descriptive labels can be summarized into five overarching traits – what psychologists creatively refer to as the “Big Five.”

As early as the 1930s, psychologists literally combed through a dictionary to pull out all the words that describe human nature and sorted them in categories with similar themes. For example, they grouped words like “kind,” “thoughtful” and “friendly” together. They found that thousands of words could be accounted for by sorting them between five traits: neuroticism, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness.

What personality is not: People often feel protective about their personality – you may view it as the core of who you are. According to scientific definitions, however, personality is not your likes, dislikes or preferences. It’s not your sense of humor. It’s not your values or what you think is important in life.

In other words, shifting your Big Five traits does not change the core of who you are. It simply means learning to respond to situations in life with different thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Can you change your personality?

Can personality change? Remember, personality is a person’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. And while it might sound hard to change personality, people change how they think, feel and behave all the time.

Suppose you’re not super dependable. If you start to think “being on time shows others that I respect them,” begin to feel pride when you arrive to brunch before your friends, and engage in new behaviors that increase your timeliness – such as getting up with an alarm, setting appointment reminders and so on – you are embodying the characteristics of a reliable person. If you maintain these changes to your thinking, emotions and behaviors over time – voila! – you are reliable. Personality: changed.

Data confirms this idea. In general, personality changes across a person’s life span . As people age, they tend to experience fewer negative emotions and more positive ones, are more conscientious, place greater emphasis on positive relationships and are less judgmental of others.

There is variability here, though. Some people change a lot and some people hold pretty steady. Moreover, studies, including my own , that test whether personality interventions change traits over time find that people can speed up the process of personality change by making intentional tweaks to their thinking and behavior . These tweaks can lead to meaningful change in less than 20 weeks, instead of 20 years.

Cultivating personality traits that serve you best

The good news is that these cognitive-behavioral techniques are relatively simple, and you don’t need to visit a therapist if that’s not something you’re into.

The first component involves changing your thinking patterns – this is the cognitive piece. You need to become aware of your thoughts to determine whether they’re keeping you stuck acting in line with a particular trait. For example, if you find yourself thinking “people are only looking out for themselves,” you are likely to act defensively around others.

The behavioral component involves becoming aware of your current action tendencies and testing out new responses. If you are defensive around other people, they will probably respond negatively to you. When they withdraw or snap at you, for example, it then confirms your belief that you can’t trust others. By contrast, if you try behaving more openly – perhaps sharing with a co-worker that you’re struggling with a task – you have the opportunity to see whether that changes the way others act toward you.

These cognitive-behavioral strategies are so effective for nudging personality because personality is simply your characteristic way of thinking and behaving. Consistently making changes to your perspective and actions can lead to lasting habits that ultimately result in crafting the personality you desire.

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Towards a Developmentally Integrative Model of Personality Change: A Focus on Three Potential Mechanisms

Elizabeth n riley, sarah j peterson, gregory t smith.

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While the overall stability of personality across the lifespan has been well-documented, one does see incremental changes in a number of personality traits, changes that may impact overall life trajectories in both positive and negative ways. In this chapter, we present a new, developmentally-oriented and integrative model of the factors that might lead to personality change, drawing from the theoretical and empirical work of prior models (e.g. Caspi & Roberts, 2001 ; Roberts et al., 2005 ) as well as from our own longitudinal studies of personality change and risky behavior engagement in children, adolescents, and young adults (Boyle et al., 2016; Riley & Smith, 2016; Riley et al., 2016 ). We focus on change in the trait of urgency, which is a high-risk personality trait that represents the tendency to act rashly when highly emotional. We explore processes of both biologically-based personality change in adolescence, integrating neurocognitive and puberty-based models, as well as behavior-based personality change, in which behaviors and the personality traits underlying those behaviors are incrementally reinforced and shaped over time. One implication of our model for clinical psychology is the apparent presence of a positive feedback loop of risk, in which maladaptive behaviors increase high-risk personality traits, which in turn further increase the likelihood of maladaptive behaviors, a process that continues far beyond the initial experiences of maladaptive behavior engagement. Finally, we examine important future directions for continuing work on personality change, including trauma-based personality change and more directive (e.g., therapeutic) approaches aimed at shaping personality.

Personality is understood to operate as a distal and transdiagnostic contributor to psychological and physical health: numerous studies document that personality predicts life trajectories as reflected in outcomes both positive and negative, in many domains of functioning ( Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007 ). Among the many outcomes predicted by personality are physical health, mortality, marital outcomes, interpersonal functioning, educational and occupational attainment, life happiness, engagement in substance abuse, and psychopathology ( Costa & McCrae, 1996 ; Roberts et al., 2007 ). Increasingly, the importance of personality has become apparent for the prediction of both adult ( Caspi, Harrington, Milne, Amell, Theodore, & Moffitt, 2003 ; Shiner & Masten, 2002 ) and adolescent ( Riley & Smith, in press ; Smith, Guller, & Zapolski, 2013 ) adjustment and behaviors.

Over the past several decades, the conceptualization of personality as dynamic and changing rather than immutably fixed has received more attention in the research literature. The impressive stability of personality across the lifespan has certainly been well documented, but within that overall stability there is also evidence of meaningful change. The recent work on personality development emphasizes both change and continuity across the lifespan and underscores the importance of examining factors that promote each of these processes.

Personality Stability

There are two primary ways in which population-level personality stability and dynamism can be measured: rank-order consistency/change and mean-level consistency/change. The majority of the research documenting personality stability has focused on rank-order consistency. Rank order stability in personality traits has been robustly documented in a number of studies and summarized in meta-analytic studies, and this stability appears to be largely invariant to the particular personality trait, assessment method, and gender of participants ( Roberts, Wood, & Caspi, 2008 ). The Big Five personality traits, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, show moderate to high test-retest correlations over long periods of time, with correlations uncorrected for measurement error ranging from .40 to .60 over a decade, and .20 to .40 over several decades. This rank order consistency appears to increase as a function of time/age ( Bazana, Stelmack, & Stelmack, 2004 ; Costa, Herbst, McCrae, & Siegler, 2000 ; Feist & Barron, 2003 ; Fraley & Roberts, 2005 ; Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000 ; Terracciano, Costa, and McCrae, 2006 ).

In their chapter, Roberts, Wood, and Caspi (2008) provide an excellent review of the factors that likely promote personality stability. The authors cite several possible mechanisms of personality consistency, which are: genetic, identity structure/social role, and person by environment interactions/transactions. A great deal of the variance in a person’s personality may be due to predominantly genetic effects (e.g., Lykken & Tellegen, 1996 ; Johnson, McGue, & Krueger, 2005 ), and because an individual’s genome remains fixed over time, all of the personality variance explained by purely genetic effects should also remain stable ( Roberts et al., 2008 ). Concerning identity structure and social role, those authors argue that if an individual maintains a stable social role and sense of identity, or a “stable subjective environment…that transcends the physical environment” (pg. 385), then this will promote stability in the personality traits that match the individual’s sense of identity/social role, at least in the sense of rank-order consistency.

Finally, Roberts et al., (2008) describe a number of person-environment transactions that might serve to promote personality stability: attraction to and selection of environments that reinforce pre-existing personality traits, reactive and evocative transactions that lead to differing subjective effects from objective environments, and manipulative and attrition effects in which individuals can actively change or de-select the environments or situations that are ill-fitted to their already established personality structures. The factors laid out by Roberts and colleagues describe a myriad of ways in which personality continuity and consistency might be promoted over time, and there certainly appears to be merit in investigating the mechanisms by which people stay the same, or even become more like themselves.

It is important to highlight, though, that what we and others refer to as strong stability correlations for traits over time also reflect the presence of substantive change in personality that varies from person to person. Thus, ongoing personality development, change, and growth are important objects of study, just as is the overall stability of personality. The theoretical model we present in this chapter is based on early work in this area and may serve as a guide for future research into personality change.

Mean-level Personality Change over Time

There is even more evidence for personality change when reviewing studies that have examined mean-level changes in population-level personality traits over time. Changes in mean levels of personality traits, or the “amount” of a certain personality characteristic in an individual or population, have been demonstrated across a number of traits and through a number of important developmental time points. While few researchers doubt that these changes in personality do occur, much remains to be learned about the mechanisms that promote them. Caspi and Roberts (2001) proposed four processes that promote personality change. The first is behavior-based personality change. As individuals engage in new behaviors, they experience a range of explicit and implicit contingencies from the behaviors, which can include both reinforcement and punishment. The second is personality change resulting from self-insight or change in self-perception. As individuals watch themselves act in and adapt to new situations, they may gain new insight into themselves, which can result in personality change. The third is intentional or accidental change as a result of observational social learning. Observing the behavior of others and its consequences can involve the observation of which behaviors are reinforced and which are punished, which can alter one’s view of the world and one’s typical behavior patterns. The fourth is change that occurs by way of internalization of feedback from others. One way in which individuals may establish meaning and self-understanding is through feedback from others. Changes in self-understanding can lead directly to changes in personality.

A particularly important factor for personality change seems to be going through a period of transition, such as the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. Early adulthood is thought to be a significant period of mean-level personality change ( Roberts et al., 2006 ). Individuals appear to become less neurotic, more agreeable, more socially dominant, and more conscientious as they go through this transition (e.g., Bleidorn, 2012 ; Roberts, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2003 ; Roberts et al., 2006 ; Roberts et al., 2008 ). This relatively normative process of personality change is sometimes referred to as maturity, and these changes are associated with what are often considered to be “adaptive” life changes such as job attainment and being part of stable and fulfilling relationships or partnerships ( Roberts et al., 2008 ).

One explanatory model for why personality changes occur during times of transition is social investment theory ( Roberts, Wood, & Smith, 2005 ), which posits that periods of transition require individuals to invest in new social roles (such as settling into a relationship, obtaining a job, etc.). New roles come with a specific set of social and personal expectations, as well as contingencies that together create a new environmental reward structure specific to the new social role. Investment in these new social roles prompts necessary changes in personality traits in order to meet the environmental demands of these new social roles. Investment in new social roles requires engagement in new behaviors that are demanded and rewarded by the environmental reward structure specific to the new social role. This process of reward and punishment, in turn, leads to personality change in what is thought of as a bottom-up behavioral fashion. Indeed, Caspi and Roberts (2001) propose that while there are several processes in personality development that promote change, the behavioral models seem to be the most powerful.

There have been several longitudinal studies that demonstrate personality change over long time frames, the results of which seem to be consistent with the social investment theory framework. Roberts, Caspi, and Moffitt (2001) report findings of both continuity and change in a longitudinal study of a young adult cohort followed from the age of 18 to the age of 26. Their results do indicate a degree of personality continuity, but they also found evidence of significant mean-level personality change during this transitional period. Over the 8-year time span, individuals became more mature: they demonstrated more control and social confidence, and less anger and alienation ( Roberts et al., 2001 ). From the ages of 18–26, individuals are taking on new social roles, such as obtaining jobs and investing in relationships, inherent to which are behavioral demands that necessitate a high degree of maturity. Thus, changes in personality that reflect general growth towards maturity fit well with social investment theory.

There is also evidence for personality change over shorter time spans in which significant role change occurs. Bleidorn (2012) followed a sample of German high school students over the course of one year as they were undergoing the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Even during this short observational period, adolescents demonstrated significant personality change that was consistent with maturation, and was most pronounced for the trait of conscientiousness ( Bleidorn, 2012 ). This research is also consistent with the social investment theory observation that when faced with social role transitions, individuals respond by engaging in role-appropriate behaviors, even over short intervals of time.

Mean-level personality change during the transition from adolescence to early adulthood is generally characterized, overall, as maturity: increases in emotional stability, conscientiousness, social dominance, and agreeableness are both normative and adaptive. Notably, however, there has been some research examining processes of personality change that occur in the opposite direction of what is normative and expected. There is some evidence for personality change in the more maladaptive direction across role transitions when individuals respond to those transitions in dysfunctional ways (i.e., social role de-investment). Persons studied from age 18 to 26 who engaged in counterproductive role behaviors, such as stealing from the workplace, fighting with co-workers, and using substances on the job, developed increased levels of negative emotionality and decreased constraint across that transitional period ( Roberts, Walton, Bogg, and Caspi, 2006 ). This finding suggests that, just as engagement in positive, prosocial behaviors can lead to personality change in an adaptive direction, engagement in negative behaviors can lead to personality change in a maladaptive direction.

Jackson, Thoemmes, Jonkmann, Ludtke, and Trautwein (2012) explored changes in personality following military training in a population of German young adults. Individuals who had undergone military training had lower levels of agreeableness following training compared to a control group; strikingly, these personality changes persisted five years after training, even after military-trained participants had gone to college or entered the work force ( Jackson et al., 2012 ). The results of this study indicate that transitional periods marked by highly specific and particular experiences such as military training can produce significant and long-lasting personality change. The Jackson et al., (2012) study documents decreases in agreeableness, a type of personality change that is contrary to the normative and expected processes of personality change in young adults (e.g., increases in agreeableness in line with the maturity principle; Roberts et al., 2008 ) and that many would consider to be possibly maladaptive. It seems likely that decreases in agreeableness may have been reinforced by the environment of military training and may in fact have been beneficial and adaptive for that situation. Thus, as with any discussion of personality traits being adaptive or maladaptive, it is important to consider them in the context of the situation(s) in which the traits are developed or active.

The intent of this chapter is to further develop theory of personality change across the lifespan, with a focus on exploring particular mechanisms of change. We hypothesize and highlight three core potential contributors of personality change, and we will address each in turn: (1) environmental/incidental personality change, whenever new behaviors are reinforced by the environment, the personality dispositions that underlie the behaviors are also reinforced; (2) change predicted by a specific, affect-loaded event(s) such as psychological trauma; and (3) direct and intentional personality change, in which interventions tailored to alter a personality disposition can produce change in the trait.

Environmental/Incidental Personality Change

The incidental/environmental hypothesis of personality change posits that whenever new behaviors are reinforced by the environment, the personality dispositions that underlie the behaviors are also reinforced. In a new context, it is often the case that new behaviors are reinforced. By definition, over time, those reinforced behaviors are exhibited more and more frequently. Slowly and over time, the personality dispositions that underlie the newly reinforced behaviors are themselves reinforced, because they contribute to a reinforced behavior. In this way, engagement in new behaviors that are rewarded by the environment leads to incremental personality change through a bottom-up behavioral process.

This hypothesis is perhaps an extension of social investment theory, which states that whenever a new social role is adopted, a new environmental reward structure specific to that social role is established (e.g., Roberts et al., 2005 ); individuals who invest in their new social role are more likely to engage in behaviors that are consistent with the roles and the environmental reward structure that surrounds the role. Social investment theory is consistent with our claim that personality change is subsequent to behavioral change that results from individuals responding to environmental contingencies.

There has been one set of studies, conducted in our laboratory, documenting the incidental/environmental hypothesis, in which engagement in novel, non-normative behaviors predicts significant, consistent and robust personality change across an important developmental transition. These studies focus on personality change within the high-risk trait of urgency, which reflects the tendency to act rashly when highly emotional, a trait that has two facets: negative urgency and positive urgency ( Cyders & Smith, 2008 ). The traits refer to the tendency to act rashly when distressed or when in an unusually positive mood, respectively. Urgency predicts engagement in, and early onset of, drinking, binge eating, and smoking among early adolescents ( Guller, Zapolski, & Smith, in press ; Pearson, Combs, Zapolski, & Smith, 2012 ; Settles, Fischer, Cyders, Combs, Gunn, & Smith, 2014). Each of these behaviors is thought to provide negative reinforcement in the form of distraction from distress, as well as positive reinforcement in the form of (a) social facilitation from drinking and smoking and (b) pleasurable food consumption from binge eating ( Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991 ; Hersh & Hussong, 2009 ; Small, Jones-Gotman, & Dagher, 2003 ). These forms of reinforcement are thought to occur promptly during and immediately after engagement in the behaviors.

Engagement in these maladaptive behaviors when emotional appears to be both negatively and positively reinforced, and elevations in the personality trait of urgency predict engaging in these behaviors. To study the incidental/environmental, behavior-based, bottom-up hypothesis of personality change, we conducted a set of investigations into the possibility that engaging in those behaviors, which are understood to provide reinforcement, predicted subsequent increases in the trait of urgency. Specifically, we tested whether, just as urgency leads to engagement in the behaviors, perhaps engagement in the behaviors, in turn, leads to subsequent increases in urgency. That is, we hypothesized a reciprocal relationship between the maladaptive behaviors and urgency.

To engage in alcohol consumption, binge eating, and smoking behavior during early adolescence is both rare ( Chung et al., 2012 ; Combs, Pearson, Zapolski, & Smith, 2012 ) and a departure from adaptive, prosocial behavior. In a set of recent longitudinal studies ( Burris, Riley, Puelo, & Smith, 2017 ; Riley, Davis, & Smith, 2016; Riley, Rukavina, & Smith, 2016 ), we followed a sample of 1,906 youth across 8 waves from the spring of 5th grade (the last year of elementary school) through the spring of 9th grade (the first year of high school). Participants completed surveys assessing both urgency and engagement in risky, maladaptive behaviors such as drinking, smoking and binge eating.

Using 8 longitudinal data points, we tested time-lagged predictions. For example, we tested whether Wave 1 urgency predicted Wave 2 drinking, above and beyond prediction from Wave 1 drinking. We also tested whether Wave 1 drinking predicted Wave 2 urgency, above and beyond prediction from Wave 1 urgency. For each of the behaviors studied (drinking, binge eating, and smoking), urgency predicted increases in the behavior beyond prediction from behavior at the prior wave. The key finding with respect to personality change was that it was also true that for each of the three behaviors, engagement in the behavior predicted increases in urgency above and beyond prior levels of the trait ( Burris et al., 2017 ; Riley, Davis, & Smith, 2016; Riley, Rukavina, & Smith, 2016 ). These findings constitute the first documentation that engagement in risky, maladaptive, non-normative behaviors predict subsequent maladaptive changes in personality during the early adolescent years. It appears that youth who enter into the adolescent years either (a) engaging in risky behaviors or (b) with unusually high levels of urgency are at risk to experience a process of progressively increasing personality risk and progressively greater engagement in maladaptive behaviors.

Although we see the results of these three studies as compelling evidence for environmentally- and behaviorally-promoted personality change, it may not be the case that personality change was caused simply by engaging in drinking, smoking, or binge eating. Rather, these behaviors may be best understood as important markers of a set of changes, involving behavior, peer affiliation, self-perception, and the like that, together, result in personality change. Thus, we do not consider the findings of these studies to indicate that behavior-based change operates independently of other factors to produce personality change. Following classic models of developmental psychopathology ( Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2002 ), we believe that a complex, interacting process of engagement in new behaviors, new self-perceptions, new peer affiliations, new observational learning, and internalization of new feedback from others combine to facilitate real, meaningful personality change. Certainly, more direct tests of the incidental/environmental behavioral hypothesis of personality change are needed, but the research support for this theory appears promising: when new behaviors are reinforced, the personality dispositions that underlie the behaviors are also reinforced, a process that leads to incremental personality change over time.

Personality Change as a Result of an Affect-Laden Event

Another mechanism by which personality change might occur is through (or subsequent to) the experience of a highly emotional event, such as a trauma. The idea of personality change following trauma is not new: indeed, the possibility that a traumatic event alters personality was described in the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) as Enduring Personality Change after a Catastrophic Experience (EPCACE; World Health Organization, 1992 ). Other authors have proposed an actual post-traumatic personality disorder, stating that “severe, unresolved chronic traumatization in childhood leads to more than a collection of symptoms - it actually shapes the personality, meeting the definition of a personality disorder according to the DSM-IV” (p. 88, Classen, Pain, Field & Woods, 2006 ). Research in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex-PTSD (CPSD) often highlights the possibility of personality change post-trauma ( Beltran & Silove, 1999 ). While several authors have proposed the inclusion of personality change as a function of trauma as an actual criterion for CPSD, this process has not yet received much attention in the research literature ( Resnick et al., 2012 ).

There has been some research documenting that the existence of certain pre-trauma personality traits/profiles may predispose some individuals to being vulnerable to develop PTSD following trauma exposure (e.g., higher levels of neuroticism; Fauerbach, Lawrence, Schmidt, Minster, & Costa, 2000 ; Holeva & Tarrier, 2001 ), and some research showing that individuals who have developed PTSD often demonstrate higher levels of neuroticism, lower levels of extraversion, and lower levels of agreeableness ( Breslau, Davis, Andreski, & Peterson, 1991 ; Chung, Berger, & Rudd, 2007 ; Chung, Dennis, Easthope, Werrett, & Farmer, 2005 ). Rigorous, prospective research on personality change following distinct, adverse life events is limited but growing.

Löckenhoff, Terracciano, Patriciu, Eaton, and Costa (2009) examined longitudinal personality change following adverse life events in a large, East Baltimore sample. These authors assessed the five-factor model personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) twice over an average interval of 8 years; 25% of the sample reported experiencing a traumatic event within 2 years before the second personality assessment. The participants who reported having experienced a traumatic life event showed increases in neuroticism, decreases in the compliance facet of agreeableness, and decreases in openness to values following the trauma ( Löckenhoff et al., 2009 ). While the effect sizes of personality change found in this study are small, the observed changes in personality following the adverse event were, on average, 3 or more t -score points; the authors note that this change is 3 times larger than the expected amount of age-related change that would be expected in a comparable sample over a similar, 8-year interval, about one t -score point per decade ( Löckenhoff et al., 2009 ; Terracciano, McCrae, Brant, & Costa, 2005 ).

While the results of the Lochenhott et al., (2009) study show some evidence for personality change following the experience of an adverse life event, it is important to note that, in general, findings on this topic are mixed. Jeronimus, Ormel, Penninx, and Reise (2013) also reported similar findings to the Lochenhott et al., (2009) study: negative life events were associated with increased neuroticism scores up to 2 years later, but this relationship was mediated by changes in depression and anxiety. Ogle, Rubin, and Siegler (2013) , however, found no evidence of personality change in adults if a trauma took place in middle adulthood; instead, the personality changes demonstrated by the participants in this sample were consistent with the normative age-related declines in neuroticism throughout adulthood found in a number of other studies. Specht, Egloff and Schmikle (2011) found that personality traits both predicted the occurrence of several objective major life events, which the authors call selection effects, and that these traits changed as a result of experiencing these events (socialization effects).

Research on personality change as a function of trauma exposure in emerging adults is more limited. Boals, Southard-Dobbs, and Blumenthal (2014) found that college students who experienced an adverse event during the study timeframe reported increases in neuroticism over a short timeframe, two to four months later. It is clear that more research on this topic is warranted. Furthermore, it will be crucial for future research to examine whether changes in personality traits following a trauma, such as those found by Boals et al., (2014), Jeronimus et al. (2013) , and Löckenhoff et al., (2009) , are longstanding, or whether they remit either with time or subsequent to therapeutic intervention.

Another direction for future exploration may be the area of post-traumatic growth, the idea that there can be significant positive or adaptive cognitive, emotional, and personality-related changes subsequent to the experience of a traumatic event. The concept of post-traumatic growth has received a wealth of theoretical attention (for a review, see Zoellner & Maercker, 2006 ), but evidence for specific personality growth is more limited. One cross-sectional study found that post-traumatic growth was associated with Openness to Experience ( Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996 ).

Finally, it is important to note the possibility of personality change that might occur after the experience of a highly emotional, positive event, like the birth of a child. Anecdotally, many individuals reference major shifts, changes, or even transformations in themselves after such an event, but there has been little rigorous personality research to document this process. One study by Jeronimus et al., (2013) found that distal positive life events were associated with decreases in neuroticism, but the authors did not measure the emotional intensity associated with these events, or how significant/central these events were to the individual.

Direct and Intentional Personality Change

The final component of this model involves a more intentional approach to altering or developing personality. Personality change might occur through direct or intentional strategies specifically designed and implemented in order to change certain, specific, maladaptive behaviors. That is, it may be the case that interventions designed to alter a target behavior also produce personality change; we review studies suggesting this possibility below. The mechanisms by which these interventions operate to influence personality have not often been studied empirically and so are not well understood.

Early research points to personality trait change as a result of therapeutic interventions. In one study on major depression and the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, 57 outpatients received a variety of treatments and were assessed across six months at two time points ( Bagby, Joffe, Parker, Kalemba, & Harkness, 1995 ). Depression and neuroticism scores were significantly associated at time 1, but more importantly, decreases in depression severity were accompanied by decreases in neuroticism over the sixth month period. Trull, Useda, Costa & McCrae (1995) , in a comparative study of the NEO-PI and the PSY-5, found similar results for a sample of individuals with anxiety, mild depressive, and personality disorders. Across a six-month follow up period, the researchers found significant decreases in negative emotionality, psychoticism, and neuroticism, as well as significant increases in agreeableness scores. While the changes were modest, the largest being a half standard deviation, the researchers concluded that the sample became slightly better adjusted, given that there were changes in those personality traits that predict emotional stability and positive health and interpersonal outcomes, over the follow-up time period.

Using this seminal work as a foundation, investigators have more recently conducted studies focusing on tracking personality change in individuals receiving psychotherapeutic intervention. Piedmont (2001) followed a clinical sample of individuals receiving counseling for substance use. In addition to receiving interventions for the treatment target (reducing drug addiction), participants in this study received several secondary interventions considered relevant to the domains of the FFM: vocational skills (Conscientiousness), coping ability (Neuroticism and Extraversion), spiritual development (Openness), and social skills (Extraversion and Agreeableness). Over the course of treatment, significant shifts in disposition were found across each of the domains of the FFM (mean Cohen’s d = .38); Neuroticism demonstrated the largest shift (Cohen’s d = .69). Importantly, these changes occurred above and beyond changes in symptomology. Another study demonstrated a half-standard deviation decrease in Neuroticism scores across a six-month period in a sample of individuals receiving treatment for depression ( De Fruyt, Van Leeuwen, Bagby, Rolland, & Roullion, 2006 ). These changes may indeed be substantial, given that the average change in personality factors are, approximately, only one standard deviation total across the lifespan ( Roberts et al., 2006 ).

The effects of specific treatments and interventions on personality change have also been examined. Two studies examining the specific effects of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) on personality have been conducted. In one study by Aguera and colleagues (2012) , outpatients with bulimia nervosa receiving CBT demonstrated changes in personality traits as measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised (TCI-R; Cloninger, 1999 ). Another research team examined personality development in the traits measured by the NEO Five Factor Inventory (FFI) pre- and post- intervention in a sample of patients with anxiety following a CBT intervention. Post-intervention, participants demonstrated significant reductions in neuroticism and increases in extraversion ( Gi, Egger, Kaarsmaker & Kreutzkamp, 2010 ); only 30% of those changes in neuroticism and only 21% of those changes in extraversion were due to reduction of symptoms following the intervention.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT; Linehan, 1993 ) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of borderline personality disorder ( Linehan, Armstrong, Suarez, Allmon & Heard, 1991 ; Linehan et al., 2006 ; Linehan et al., 1999 ; Linehan, Heard, & Armstrong, 1993 ). Davenport, Bore and Campbell (2010) compared pre- and post-treatment groups on the FFM of personality. They found significant differences between the groups on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, such that individuals who had graduated from DBT (post-treatment) were higher on these traits than individuals who either were on a waitlist or had begun but not completed DBT (pre-treatment).

DBT has been theorized to improve the lives of individuals with BPD and other diagnoses by targeting emotional dysregulation and teaching more skillful and adaptive ways of responding to emotional distress ( Linehan, 1993 , 2014 ). While studies examining the efficacy of DBT have not conceptualized those improvements in the ability to regulate emotion as personality change per se, it may be helpful to understand some of the changes brought about by DBT (i.e., increased mindfulness, increased emotion regulation, increased ability to tolerate distress, and increased ability to function effectively in interpersonal situations) using a personality change framework in addition to the existing skills-enhancement framework. For example, if an individual has altered the way they behave in response to their high levels of emotional reactivity in a significant, robust, and enduring way, these changes may be viewed as alterations in personality traits such as negative urgency and neuroticism. In fact, it has been suggested that assessment of FFM traits may be a way to ensure individuals are benefiting from DBT ( Stepp, Whalen, & Smith, 2013 ), pointing to the idea that these treatments may be altering the personalities of the individuals who receive them.

One study has directly examined the effect of emotion regulation skills on personality change in negative urgency. Weiss and colleagues (2015) found that a one-hour emotion modulation training predicted reductions in negative urgency one month post-manipulation in a small sample of African American women with PTSD. Researchers compared the effects the emotion modulation training to the effects of an impulsivity reduction training and a healthy living module (control). Interestingly and as hypothesized, only the emotion modulation training produced changes in negative urgency.

Personality change has been shown to occur in the context of psychological treatment (e.g., Bagby et al., 1995 , Piedmont, 2001 ; Weiss et al., 2015 ), and evidence for personality change has been found for individuals receiving both CBT and DBT ( Gi et al., 2010 ; Davenport et al., 2010 ). Importantly, while the primary purpose of treatments like DBT has not been to alter personality, but rather to enhance one’s ability to regulate emotions, personality change may occur as a result of these treatments. Future work examining personality change as a targeted, as opposed to an auxiliary, outcome of treatment and direct interventions will be essential.

Summary and Conclusion

Work over the past two decades on personality development emphasizes both change and continuity across the lifespan and underscores the importance of understanding mechanisms that promote each of these processes. The intent of this chapter was to present an integrative theory of personality change, with a focus on highlighting three particular (potential) mechanisms of change. We reviewed the large body of evidence documenting environmental/incidental personality change, which posits that whenever new behaviors are reinforced by the environment, the personality dispositions that underlie the behaviors are also reinforced. This precipitant of personality change has received the most theoretical and empirical attention in the research literature, but more prospective and experimental evidence is needed to elucidate the exact processes by which this process is likely to occur.

The last two hypothesized mechanisms of personality change, change predicted by a specific, affect-loaded event(s) such as psychological trauma, and direct and intentional personality change, in which interventions tailored to alter a personality disposition can produce change in the trait, have received less investigation. Both, however, have received sufficient support to indicate they are promising avenues for future research. It is likely, of course that these three processes, along with other models like the one proposed by Roberts et al., (2001) , operate in a more integrative manner: certainly each of these processes do not exist or operate in a vacuum. Our model for personality change is thus not yet fully integrative: more research is needed to understand, first, more about how these processes function independently, and, second, how these mechanisms of change influence and/or counteract each other to promote both change and continuity across the lifespan.

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