Personality change goals and plans as predictors of longitudinal trait change in young adults: A replication with an Iranian sample

You can’t always get what you want: The role of change goal importance, goal feasibility and momentary experiences for volitional personality development

“…Contrary to our expectations and theoretical frameworks (Hennecke et al, 2014), our results show that people with more pronounced change goals did not necessarily demonstrate larger trait changes over the subsequent two years, that is, stronger change goals were not associated with more pronounced trait changes. Similar results have been observed in three other studies (Asadi et al, 2020;Baranski et al, 2020;Robinson et al, 2015). These and the current findings stand in contrast to other previous studies, which have indicated that people do in fact change in the direction of their change goals (Hudson et al, 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2016a.…”

“…Combined with the repeated finding of goal-concurrent trait changes in shortterm (i.e. four months; Hudson et al, 2019Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2016a vs. longer term studies (Asadi et al, 2020;Baranski et al, 2020;Robinson et al, 2015; and this study), this could also suggest that change goals and/or interventions largely result in short-term (possibly mainly behavioural) changes but not sustainable long-term changes in underlying traits. For example, this could happen when participants stop working (as hard) on achieving their goals after a study/intervention and before the behavioural changes have become habitual or been integrated into the self-concept.…”

“…A similar study found somewhat smaller goal-concurrent changes in extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability even without an intervention (Hudson & Fraley, 2016a). In contrast, longer studies without an intervention found no such associations between change goals and changes in self-rated traits over one year later (Asadi et al, 2020;Baranski et al, 2020;Robinson et al, 2015). Instead, goals to increase conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism were sometimes even associated with decreases in the respective traits (Baranski et al, 2020;Robinson et al, 2015).…”

“…Currently, studies on associations between change goals and actual Big Five trait changes have displayed somewhat mixed results with change goals often, but not always, predicting trait changes in the desired direction (Asadi et al, 2020;Baranski et al, 2020;Hudson et al, 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2016aRobinson et al, 2015;Stieger et al, 2020). In these studies, traits were self-reported and trait changes were implemented as differences in self-reports across time.…”

“…] as well as "if -then" implementation intentions' (Hudson & Fraley, 2015, p. 8); this may have boosted change goal importance and feasibility. However, studies that relied on a more naturalistic design may have assessed less important or feasible change goals that could have merely reflected the desirability of changing traits and thus did not guide people's actions (Asadi et al, 2020;Robinson et al, 2015). Consequently, the authors explicitly suggest that future research should examine the expectancy and value (i.e.…”