Does personality change as we age?

From a child to a teenager, to a young adult, to adulthood and old age, each of us will experience changes in our appearance, thinking, work, relationships, and social behavior. festival. So what about personality?

Personality is an inner quality or trait that is expressed through a person’s unique thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

People tend to think of personality as fixed, inherent in one’s nature, unchangeable. But according to psychologists, that is completely wrong.

Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), said: Character is a evolving phenomenon. It’s not just a ‘static thing’ that you have forever and cannot be changed. change”.

Does personality change as we age?
Each of us will be different, but is it because over time we grow up, our outlooks and personalities change, or is it because our changing biology makes us change too? – (Photo: ALCCORTING)

That means we are always a different person every morning when we wake up. However, we can barely notice the change in our personality.

The problem of personality change has been studied by scientists for the past century.

A conclusion 20 years ago published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, based on the results of an analysis of 152 studies on the personality of many people between the ages of childhood and early 70, showed that personality traits individuals tend to be consistent throughout each decade of life.

That consistent pattern begins around age 3 or possibly earlier, and early personality seems to influence later life experiences.

For example, a 3-4 year old child has a shy, timid personality; agile, flexible; easy to get angry and easy to give up, in the next 10-20 years, there is also a tendency to have the same personality. It’s just that the shyness of a 3-year-old is very different from that of a 20-year-old.

However, over the years, our personalities have changed, but gradually, to the point of being barely noticeable. We won’t notice it on a time scale of 5 to 10 years, but in the long run it becomes apparent.

In 1960, psychologists surveyed over 440,000 high school students, answering questions about everything from how they react to emotional situations to how effectively they get things done. Fifty years later, the researchers followed 1,952 of these alumni and gave them the same survey.

Does personality change as we age?
Not only appearance but also personality will change as we age – (Photo: STARTSAT60).

The results, published in 2018 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that at age 60, participants responded much differently than they did as teenagers to questions measuring measures calmness, confidence, leadership, and social sensitivity.

Again, scientists claim, personality tends to change, getting “better” over time. They call it the “maturity principle”. People become more extroverted, emotionally stable, and calmer as they get older and older.

Some individuals may change less than others, but in general, the principle of maturity prevails over everyone.

All of us will be different, but is it because over time we grow up, our outlooks and personalities change, or is it because our changing biology makes us change too?

Scientific and psychological research evidence shows that personality changes are not caused entirely by life milestones , such as marriage, the birth of a child or the loss of a loved one.

Instead, changes come as we adjust to our new lives every day, like when we adjust to college, work at work, start a family.

“Over time, you find yourself having to ‘live a little differently’ in different environments. So we adapt, then we change. Because of that, each of us is different. No one can say what kind of people we will become in the future,” psychologist Brent Roberts said.