What Shape Will Your Personality Take Over Time?
New research suggests how your personality will shape-shift.
Posted November 23, 2024
Reviewed by Margaret Foley
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What Shape Will Your Personality Take Over Time?
随着时间的推移，你的性格将会变成什么样？
New research suggests how your personality will shape-shift.
新的研究表明你的性格将如何转变。
Posted November 23, 2024 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
发布于 2024 年 11 月 23 日 | 玛格丽特·弗利 (Margaret Foley) 审阅
The idea that personality change occurs in adulthood is well accepted, but what does that change look like? A new study explores the fascinating, and differing, shapes that personality growth can take. Recognizing the complexities of personality change can help you visualize and accept your own trajectory.
人格变化发生在成年期的观点被广泛接受，但这种变化是什么样的呢？一项新的研究探索了人格成长的迷人而又不同的形态。认识到性格变化的复杂性可以帮助您想象和接受自己的轨迹。
The idea that personality is fixed and immutable over time has, for all intents and purposes, become discarded in psychology. A few stalwarts who argue for a lifetime of stability may still exist, but the data continue to refute this outdated view. Indeed, as you think about yourself, it’s likely that you can reflect on many twists and turns in the way that your own tendencies have evolved since your teens and early 20s. You know that you’re the “same” person you always were, but you also know that you’ve continued to grow and evolve with life’s changing demands and circumstances.
性格是固定不变的，不会随着时间的推移而改变，这一观点在心理学中已被彻底抛弃。一些坚定的论者可能仍然存在，他们主张一生的稳定性，但数据继续驳斥这种过时的观点。事实上，当你思考自己时，你很可能会反思自己的倾向自十几岁和二十出头以来发生了许多曲折。你知道你还是“同一个”你，但你也知道，随着生活需求和环境的变化，你一直在成长和发展。
To demonstrate the existence of personality change, researchers use a variety of methods. The simplest is to compare the average scores that people have over time in the levels of the most common traits. Another approach compares people’s standings relative to each other to see if people jump above or below those averages in different ways. However, if you reflect on how your own personality has changed, you probably don’t care all that much about whether you’ve pulled ahead or behind other people in your approximate age group. You might wonder more about the pattern of change that characterizes you as a unique individual and then, beyond this, what you might project out into the future. You’re more extraverted now than you were in your 20s, let’s say, but what will the decades ahead look like? Will you continue to chart your way into a gabbier future?
为了证明性格变化的存在，研究人员使用了各种各样的方法。最简单的方法是比较人们在最常见性格特征水平上随时间变化的平均得分。另一种方法是比较人们之间的相对排名，看看人们是否以不同的方式超过或低于平均水平。然而，如果你反思自己的性格是如何变化的，你可能不会太在意自己是领先还是落后于与你年龄相仿的其他人。你可能会更想知道是什么变化模式将你塑造成一个独特的个体，然后，除此之外，你可能会预测到未来会是什么样子。假设你现在比 20 多岁时更外向，但未来几十年会是什么样子？你会继续规划自己通往更健谈的未来之路吗？
Thinking About the Shape of Personality Change
关于人格转变形态的思考
According to a new comprehensive paper by Amanda Wright of the University of Zurich and Joshua Jackson of Washington University in St. Louis (2024), when researchers draw lines or even curves to connect the personality score dots across the years of adulthood, this “may not be the most appropriate model specifications for every person.” The “average” trajectory of change may not truly represent the “individual” trajectories that underlie this pattern. An average, in other words, is just that. Imagine 50 separate graphs for 50 people studied from ages 20 to 60. Yes, there will be an average set of changes, but this obscures the fact that some people’s curves are relatively flat, others vacillate all over the place, and still others grow upward and then downward again along the lines of gentle slopes.
根据苏黎世大学的 Amanda Wright 和圣路易斯华盛顿大学的 Joshua Jackson (2024) 的一篇新综合论文，当研究人员画出直线甚至曲线来连接成年期各个时期的性格得分点时，这“可能不是对每个人来说最合适的模型规范”。变化的“平均”轨迹可能无法真正代表这种模式背后的“个体”轨迹。换句话说，平均值就是平均值。想象一下从 20 岁到 60 岁研究的 50 个人的 50 张独立图表。是的，会有一组平均的变化，但这掩盖了一个事实：有些人的曲线相对平坦，有些人则摇摆不定，还有一些人沿着缓坡向上增长然后再次向下增长。
Why does this matter? Apart from being overly simplistic, conclusions drawn from average scores traced over time fail to capture the reality that no two people literally change in the exact same way. You know from your own experience that a life event that shook you out of your carefree nonchalance about following rules such as adhering to deadlines (e.g., by losing a job) can cause your personality to veer in the opposite direction. Someone else, equally carefree, might never have felt the need to change.
为什么这很重要？除了过于简单之外，根据随时间推移的平均分数得出的结论无法反映出这样一个事实：没有两个人会以完全相同的方式发生改变。从你自己的经历中，你知道，生活中的某个事件（例如，失业）会让你从无忧无虑、不遵守规则（如遵守最后期限）的状态中走出来，这可能会导致你的性格向相反的方向转变。另一个同样无忧无虑的人可能从未感到需要改变。
The other reason it is useful to think about individual differences in change over time is that, if you could see the trajectory of your life up until now, you could be helped to see where it will be headed. It is in this regard that the Wright and Jackson study becomes relevant. The purpose of their work was to see if they could identify the common “shapes” or variations in the rate and amount of personality change. Ultimately, such work could become the basis for “testable hypotheses” to “expand the scope of its examinations of what underlies personality change.” This work could allow you to turn the examination inward and better understand yourself.
思考个体随时间变化的差异的另一个原因是，如果你能看到自己迄今为止的生活轨迹，就能知道它未来的走向。赖特和杰克逊的研究正是在这方面具有重要意义。他们研究的目的是看看能否确定性格变化速度和数量的共同“形状”或变化。最终，这类研究可以成为“可检验假设”的基础，以“扩大对性格变化根源的考察范围”。这项研究可以让你把考察转向内心，更好地了解自己。
Tracing the Shape of Personality Change
追踪人格变化的形状
The basis for the Wright-Jackson study is the Five Factor Model (FFM) approach to measuring personality, which produces individual scores according to five traits—openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and extraversion. With nearly 26,500 participants averaging 48 years old, tested within a range of four to 11 times, the authors had at their disposal not only a large data set, but one that allowed for complex statistical modeling of individual patterns of change over time.
赖特-杰克逊研究的基础是五因素模型(FFM) 人格测量方法，该方法根据五种特征得出个人分数——经验开放性、责任心、神经质、亲和性和外向性。近 26,500 名平均年龄为 48 岁的参与者接受了 4 至 11 次测试，作者不仅拥有庞大的数据集，而且还可以使用复杂的统计模型来对个人随时间的变化模式进行建模。
This method allowed the authors to draw curves following linear, cubic, and quadratic, as well as combinations of the above, for each of the five traits across age, comparing people across different ages and males vs. females. The modeling procedures they used made it possible to determine not only variations by best-fitting shape, but also the problems created if an individual’s trajectory became mapped onto the “wrong” shape.
这种方法允许作者绘制出五种特征在不同年龄段的线性、三次和二次曲线，以及上述曲线的组合，比较不同年龄段和男性与女性的人群。他们使用的建模程序不仅可以确定最佳拟合形状的变化，还可以确定如果个人的轨迹被映射到“错误”形状上会产生的问题。
After the dust settled on these complex analyses, the authors concluded that their findings clearly refuted previous studies suggesting that adult personality change involves slow, linear, changes, or even slow quadratic (up and down) changes. As they concluded, “Changes in personality are complex: they often start, stop, and fluctuate at different points across varying periods for different people…it is these ebbs and flows which cannot be captured with simpler polynomial terms.”
在这些复杂的分析尘埃落定之后，作者得出结论，他们的研究结果明确驳斥了之前的研究，这些研究表明成年人的性格变化涉及缓慢、线性的变化，甚至是缓慢的二次（上下）变化。正如他们所总结的那样，“性格变化是复杂的：它们通常在不同时期的不同时间点开始、停止和波动……这些起伏是无法用更简单的多项式项来捕捉的。”
What These Findings Mean for You
这些发现对你意味着什么
You can see from this conclusion that there is no simple shape to personality change. An event such as losing a job as a result of low conscientiousness might very well cause the “flow” upward in this particular trait. Now you can understand that changing your conscientiousness was an adaptive response to a life situation and that you’re not all that much unlike other people who shape-shift as well.
从这个结论中你可以看出，性格的改变并不是简单的形状。由于责任心低而失去工作等事件很可能会导致这种特殊特征的“流动”向上。现在你可以理解，改变你的责任心是对生活状况的适应性反应，你和其他也会变形的人没什么不同。
Recognizing that these variations exist, and are substantial, was another main point of the study. Only a minority of people, the results showed, actually fit a linear path of personality change. As a result, the extent to which personality change occurs has been consistently underestimated in previous research. If you’ve come to believe in that “slow, gradual” model of adult development, you may worry that there’s something wrong with you if you do not follow that trajectory. Instead, you might be like one of those people in other studies whose personality change shape failed to be detected. Putting a linear form onto your cubic shape will literally become the square peg in the round hole of growth and change.
认识到这些差异的存在，并且是实质性的，是这项研究的另一个重点。研究结果显示，只有少数人真正符合人格变化的线性路径。因此，以前的研究一直低估了人格变化的程度。如果你开始相信成人发展的“缓慢、渐进”模式，你可能会担心自己如果不遵循这一轨迹，就会出现问题。相反，你可能会像其他研究中那些人一样，人格变化的形状无法被检测到。将线性形式放到你的立方体上，实际上会成为成长和变化的圆孔中的方形钉。
To sum up, the findings from the Wright and Jackson study can provide you with ideas as you think about the way your personality has both responded to and guided your path through life. There is no reason to worry if you believe you’ve deviated from the “average” of stable growth or maturity that adults “should” show as they get older. Complexity, not simplicity, is the norm as people navigate the many changing circumstances that can lead to fulfillment.
总而言之，赖特和杰克逊的研究结果可以为您提供一些想法，让您思考您的个性如何回应并引导您的人生道路。如果您认为自己已经偏离了成年人在年老时“应该”表现出的稳定成长或成熟度的“平均水平”，则无需担心。当人们应对可以带来成就感的众多变化情况时，复杂性而非简单性才是常态。
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