PERSONALITIES CHANGE

Personalities Change Over Time

Personalities Change Over Time

Introduction

The topic of personality change lies at the interface of two larger and more familiar topics: personality theory and developmental psychology. However, as the present summary will demonstrate, most explorations of personality development focus on broad issues of identity and not on the narrower personality traits and dispositions that dominated the field of personality theory during the end of the 20th century. For all intents and purposes, the topic of personality development could as easily be termed “person development.” In ways that will be made clear in this study, most people undergo significant psychological changes as they age. With respect to their psychological characteristics, infants become children, who become adolescents, who then become adults. These progressive age-related changes are much more than changes in what or how much the person knows. People “grow up” as they age, and an important part of growing up entails progressive shifts in how they know (in contrast to what they know) and, in particular, how fully they understand themselves and others. Interestingly, not everyone “grows up” to the same extent or at the same rate. We all know chronological adults who are, nonetheless, psychological adolescents. Indeed, knowing where someone is on the path of increasing psychological maturity may be the most important thing we can know about a person. Developmental differences in personal maturity are differences that make a difference. This process of personality development, of growing up, is the focus of the present study.

Much of modern personality research has focused on personality traits and attendant dispositions to act in certain ways in social situations. This study provides little focus on the development of these sorts of personality traits. It's not that changes in personality traits don't occur. Operating out of the Five Factor Model of personality, Costa and McCrae (1994) concluded that modest changes in individuals' positions along five basic personality dimensions do occur but are “essentially finished by age 30” (p. 148). In contrast, increasing levels of psychological maturity, ego identity, perspective, and integrative complexity are pointedly not typically complete by the age of 30. This study focuses primarily on the development of these more basic qualities, the structural qualities of a person's identity. The nature of these qualities and the challenges of studying them can be illustrated by a brief example.

Having recently returned to school from a trip home during his first year at college, “Jason” (not his real name) is reflecting upon some recent changes that he has noticed in his relationship with his parents:

… before when I was actually living at home I never wanted to spend time with my parents. I never wanted to get to know how they were doing, if they were feeling okay, how they were doing emotionally. And now I'll go home and I find myself wanting to go out to eat with them, so I can just talk with them one-on-one and get a feel of how they're doing.… And my mom, she just started a new ...