Last week, I wrote about how the latest science of personality suggests that personality can indeed change — either through natural maturation, new responsibilities, or intentional strategies.
But would changing your personality actually make you happier?
Recently, a series of studies in Australia looked to see whether changes in personality were associated with increases in life satisfaction. They found that increases in extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness were all associated with increased life satisfaction, whereas increases in neuroticism were associated with decreased life satisfaction.
Another study, conducted on more than 8,000 Australians, found that personality changes during this same time period occurred as often as changes in socio-economic factors.
Together, these two studies add to a growing body of literature suggesting that personality changes are related to changes in life satisfaction, and that personality change can even be a better predictor of life satisfaction than many of the external variables that are normally considered in economic models of happiness.
Changes from within do matter — and these changes may indeed be undervalued in their role in determining happiness. In fact, they may even have strong economic consequences. The researchers calculated that a small decrease in neuroticism, for instance, could be worth $314,000 — "the implied change in income that would be needed to raise life satisfaction by the same amount as [a change of] one standard deviation" in neuroticism, in the study's words.
Not only can a personality makeover affect happiness, but a change in happiness, regardless of the source, can also have a big impact on personality. It's possible, for instance, that circumstances that consistently make a person feel negative can lead that person to be more anxious or cautious than they would be otherwise. Environments that support well-being may encourage someone to keep acting the way they do, or even to become more conscientious, agreeable, and so forth.
Inevitably, there are benefits and costs to changing personality that complicate any simple notions about how such a change would affect happiness. On the one hand, improving traits can bring out the best in someone. In general, the research shows, people who are more positive, assertive, hard-working, calm, kind, and creative behave in ways that help promote their own happiness. But there's a fine line to be walked. Too much change may cause someone to feel inauthentic and unstable.
For many people, it seems, striking a balance between authenticity and personal growth is important for well-being. In an investigation of the "goldilocks hypothesis" — the idea that moderate personality change is more beneficial to happiness than too little or too much positive change — Chris Martin and Corey Keyes, psychologists at Emory University, analyzed a dataset of 1,725 Americans and found there was indeed a "just right" amount of positive change in sociality, agency, and conscientiousness that resulted in the highest level of happiness.
Among adults with below-average levels of these traits, measured by having participants rate themselves on a series of adjectives, moderate amounts of increase produced the highest levels. The one exception was neuroticism: There seemed to be no point of diminishing returns when it came to decreases in this trait!
Too little personality change, meanwhile, risks making someone inflexible and rigid in their pursuits. The psychologists Adriana Miu and David Yeager found that teaching adolescents that it's possible for people to change who they are reduced depressive symptoms among them by nearly 40 percent over nine months, compared to a group of adolescents who were taught to believe that people cannot change. In fact, the subjects led to believe that people cannot change showed an even greater number of depressive symptoms.
The implication is that it's good to accept and love who you are, but it's also good to know that you can change for the better. Ideally, in approaching personality, a person should understand their repeated patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and work on improving aspects of their personality that are hindering their happiness. But at the same time, people should not get too focused on drastically changing who they are.
To the extent that changing your personality helps you express your values and advance what you see as your purpose in life, it does hold the potential to make you happier. But the most beneficial changes — not only for increased happiness, but also for a deeper sense of identity and meaning — seem to be the ones that make you a more authentic version of who you already believe you are.