Who wants to change and how? On the trait-specificity of personality change goals.

Abstract

The study of volitional personality change has received increasing attention in recent years, suggesting that individuals want to change for the better particularly on those socially desirable characteristics that they lack. However, individuals do not want to change for the better on all (even socially desirable) traits alike. In a meta-analytic summary of evidence on the Big Five, we demonstrate that individuals’ trait levels are only negatively related to their change goals for Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, but not for Agreeableness and Openness to Experience. In three studies, two of them preregistered, we replicated these meta-analytic findings using the HEXACO model, showing negative relations between trait levels and change goals for all dimensions, except Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience. Strikingly, however, these trait-specific differences in correlations of trait levels and change goals disappeared once providing individuals with personality feedback before assessing their change goals, suggesting that individuals may generally want to change for the better once having sufficient self-knowledge. Nonetheless, the mechanisms driving this desire differ between traits: Whereas the perceived social desirability of individuals’ trait levels accounted for change goals on most HEXACO dimensions, it did not account for change goals on Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience. By implication, a desire to have socially desirable characteristics that one lacks can explain change goals for some traits, but not for those traits underlying individual differences in values. As an aside, the studies offer vital information on personality development of the HEXACO dimensions over time, spanning 10 and 3.5 years, respectively.

Relations between HEXACO personality and ideology variables are mostly genetic in nature

“…In both Kandler et al (2019) and , heritabilities of honesty-humility (respectively .46 and .35) were somewhat (.10) lower than the average heritability of the other five traits (respectively .56 and .44). That is, the dearth of genetically informed studies using the HEXACO model, combined with evidence that honesty-humility changes more during the lifetime than any other personality factor (Ashton & Lee, 2016;Thielmann & De Vries, 2021)-implying that it is more "malleable" than other factors-makes an investigation of the heritability of the HEXACO factors especially worthwhile.…”

“…The decline in heritability should-one would think-provide more room for life experiences to affect both personality and ideology, which would show itself through higher environmental variance and higher environmental correlations between personality and ideology. Recent research has looked at such personality changes, especially with respect to honesty-humility and openness to experience (Thielmann and De Vries, 2021), the two key variables in our study. Relatively large changes were observed in honestyhumility and openness to experience, but these changes could not be explained through environmental factors, nor through volitional change factors.…”

Stimulating a future-oriented mindset and goal attainment through a smartphone-based intervention: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

“… • Incremental personality theory: The belief that personality can change over time can reduce problematic behaviors ( Yeager, 2017 ). • People's willingness to change on personality traits in socially desirable ways increases after feedback on their current trait levels ( Thielmann and De Vries, 2021 ). • Complete personal profile of the future self (e.g., work experience, skills, accomplishments) • Current scores on personality traits with an indication of norm scores • Psychoeducation that personality can change over time • Set scores of personality traits of future self 2 Future self perspective Practice with distanced perspective taking on problems to make future-oriented choices and increase self-insight with the potential to adjust attitudes and behaviors in favor of the future self • People make more future-oriented choices: 1) for others (i.e., Solomon's paradox; Grossmann and Kross, 2014 ) 2) when they have a vivid perception of the future self ( McMichael et al, 2021 ) 3) when they can psychologically or temporally distance themselves from the situation (i.e., Construal level theory; Trope and Liberman, 2003 ).…”

Personality Change Through Digital-Coaching Interventions

“…Recent research supports this view. Indeed, many people want to change their personality; the desire to increase extraversion and conscientiousness and decrease negative emotionality are the most common change goals (Stieger, Eck, et al, 2020;Thielmann & de Vries, 2021). Personality-change goals (e.g., "I want to be much more talkative than I currently am") predict subsequent trait growth in ways consistent with the stated desire to change, albeit with small effect sizes (Hudson et al, 2020), which indicates that the motivation to change can trigger change processes even without intervention efforts.…”