How personality change and which factors helps to change personality.

1. Dose Personality Changed?
Dr. Sushma Rathee
assistant clinical psychologist
PGIMER, Chandigarh
email: sushmaratheecp@gmail.com

2. How Personality Changed?
• The development of personality is often dependent on the
stage of life a person is in, and the extent to which one's
levels of characteristics, relative to their age cohort, is stable
across long periods of time.
• Cultural and environmental influence are large factors in
personality trait differences.
• Personality change is usually seen over longer periods of
time and is analogical to height, as most development occurs
in the earlier stages of life and becomes more stable as one
grows into adulthood.

3. The impact of social roles
1). Social roles: (e.g. employee) have been identified as a 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, her standing on this trait is more likely to be high.
Conversely, once he leaves that role and or takes on another which entails less
conscientiousness, he 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 espoused 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.

4. Cont…..
• 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 corresponsive principle.
• 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. Moreover, they
suggest that there is a decline on each trait after the age of 81.

5. 2. Inconsistency as a trait:
• Personality inconsistency has become such a prevalent consideration for
personologists that some even conceptualize it as a predisposition in itself.
• Fleisher and Woehr (2008) suggest that that consistency across the Big Five is a
construct that is fairly stable and contributes to the predictive validity of
personality measures. Hence inconsistency is quantifiable much like a trait and
constitutes an index of and enhances the fit of psychological models.
• To accommodate the inconsistency demonstrated on personality tests, researchers
developed the Frame Of Reference principle (FOR). According to this theory,
people tend to think of their personality in terms of a specific social context when
they are asked to rate them. Whichever environment is cognitively salient at the
time of the personality measurement will influence the respondent's ratings on a
trait measure.

6. 3. Change over a lifetime:
• There are two very specific types of change that researchers tend to focus on:
rank-order change and mean-level change.
1. A rank-order change refers to a change in an individual's personality trait
relative to other individuals; such changes do not occur very often.
2. A mean-level change refers to an absolute change in the individual's level of
a certain trait over time. Longitudinal research shows that mean-level change
does occur. However, some traits tend to change while some traits tend to stay
stable.
• During adolescence there are many increases or rapid changes in hormones,
societal pressures, and environment among other things. These things
theoretically factor into significant personality changes as one progresses
through adolescence. As you progress through adulthood personality becomes
more stable and predictable because you fall into a pattern of thinking,
behaving, and feeling.

7. Cont….
• While this does occur, personality does not stop changing at a specific
age. Biological and social transitions in life may also be a factor for change.
Biological transitions are stages like puberty or first childbirth. Social
transitions might be changes in social roles like becoming a parent or
working at a first job. These life transitions do not necessarily cause
change, but they may be reasons for change.
• As humans we do not adapt just in our body, our mind also makes changes
to itself in order to thrive in our environment. One theory says that
whether or not these life transitions cause personality change is based on
whether the transition was expected based on age or was unforeseen. The
events that are expected will cause personality change because those
events have common scripts.
• A longitudinal study followed women over 30 years and found that they
showed increases in individualism. This may have been due to the changes
that were occurring in the country at the time.

8. 4. Stressful life events
• Negative life events, long-term difficulties, and deteriorated life
quality, all predict small but persistent increases in
neuroticism, while positive life events, and improved life
quality, predict small but persistent decreases in neuroticism.
• There appears to be no point during the lifespan that
neuroticism is immutable, which is known as the plasticity
principle.

9. 5. Mechanisms of change:
• There are multiple ways for an individual's personality to change. Individuals will
change their behavior based on the ideas in their environment that
emit rewards and punishments.
1. Some of these ideas might be implicit, like social roles. The individual changes his or
her personality to fit into a social role if it is favorable. Other ideas might be more
explicit like a parent trying to change a child's behavior.
2. An individual may decide to actively try to change his or her own behavior/
personality after thinking about his or her own actions. Therapy involves the same
type of introspection.
3. The individual along with the therapist identifies the behaviors that are inappropriate,
and then self-monitors in order to change them. Eventually the individual internalizes
the behavior they want to attain, and that trait will generalize to other areas of the
individual's life.

10. Cont…
4. Personality change also occurs when individuals observe the actions of
others. Individuals may mimic the behaviors of others and then internalize
those behaviors. Once the individual internalizes those behaviors they are
said to be a part of that person's personality.
5. Individuals also receive feedback from other individuals or groups about
their own personality. This is a driving force of change because the
individual has social motivations to change his or her personality. It has also
been shown that major positive and negative life events can predict changes
in personality.

11. 6. Late life changes
• Although there is debate surrounding whether or not personality can
change in the late stages of life, more evidence is being discovered
about how the environmental factors affect people of all ages.
Changes in health are regarded as an influential source of personality
stability and change.
• Across multiple facets of health which include cognitive, physical,
and sensory functioning, the elderly's ability to maintain their
everyday routine and lifestyle is being challenged.
• Mainly the debate in this area revolves around whether the health
consequences of old age can be linked to changes in traits, which
would suggest that personality is not changing, but rather the abilities
of an individual is hindering their behavior.

12. 7. Change in the Big Five:
• The Big Five personality traits are often used to measure change in personality.
There is a mean-level change in the Big Five traits from age 10 to 65.
• The trends seen in adulthood are different from trends seen in childhood
and adolescence. Some research suggests that during adolescence rank-order
change does occur and therefore personality is relatively unstable.
• Gender differences are also shown before adulthood. Conscientiousness drops from
late childhood to adolescence, but then picks back up from adolescence into
adulthood. Agreeableness also drops from late childhood to adolescence, but then
picks back up from adolescence into adulthood.
• Neuroticism shows a different trend for males and females in childhood and
adolescence. For females, Neuroticism increases from childhood to adolescence.
Then Neuroticism levels from adolescence into adulthood and continues the adult
trend of decreasing. Males however, tend to gradually decrease in Neuroticism from
childhood to adolescence into adulthood.

13. Cont…
• Extraversion drops from childhood to adolescence and then does not
significantly change. Openness to experience also shows a different trend
for different genders. Females tend to decrease in Openness to experience
from childhood to early adulthood and then gradually increases all
throughout adulthood.
• Males tend to decrease in Openness to experience from childhood to
adolescence, then it tends to increase through adulthood. In adulthood,
Neuroticism tends to decrease, while Conscientiousness and Agreeableness
tend to increase.
• Extraversion and Openness to experience do not seem to change much
during adulthood. These trends seen in adulthood are different from trends
seen in childhood and adolescence. Cross-cultural research shows that
German, British, Czech, and Turkish people show similar trends of these
personality traits.

14. Changes in Personality Disorder:
• Some of the largest changes are observed in individuals with psychiatric or
neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.
A meta-analyses found consistent evidence that large increases in neuroticism
and large declines on the other major personality traits are observed in
individuals with dementia.
• Personality change commonly occurs biologically as life goes on, and as
hormones shape our minds and bodies. Research can and does suggest changes
can also be brought about by other, more intentional means to help cope with
anxiety, shake behavioral habits, or change emotional response to stimuli.
1. Meditation: Studies have shown that mindfulness-meditation therapies have a
positive effect of personality maturity.
2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
3. Psilocybin Therapy: Following psilocybin therapy one study communicates
that Neuroticism scores lowered substantially while Extraversion increased.

16. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT):
• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a specific type
of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy developed in the late
1980s by psychologist Marsha M. Linehan to help better
treat borderline personality disorder.
• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) treatment is a type of
psychotherapy — or talk therapy — that utilizes a cognitive-
behavioral approach. DBT emphasizes
the psychosocial aspects of treatment.

17. ComponentsofDBT:
1. Support-oriented: It helps a person identify their strengths
and builds on them so that the person can feel better about
him/herself and their life.
2. Cognitive-based: DBT helps identify thoughts, beliefs, and
assumptions that make life harder: “I have to be perfect at
everything.” “If I get angry, I’m a terrible person” & helps
people to learn different ways of thinking that will make life
more bearable: “I don’t need to be perfect at things for
people to care about me”, “Everyone gets angry, it’s a
normal emotion.
3. Collaborative: It requires constant attention to relationships
between clients and staff. In DBT people are encouraged to
work out problems in their relationships with their therapist
and the therapists to do the same with them.

18. The4ModulesofDialecticalBehaviorTherapy:
• 1. Mindfulness
• 2. Interpersonal Effectiveness
• 3. Distress Tolerance
• 4. Emotion Regulation

19. BrainArea Damage and Personality Change:
A large iron rod was driven completely through his
head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe,
and for that injury's reported effects on his
personality and behavior