Becoming More Conscientious or More Open to Experience? Effects of a Two–Week Smartphone–Based Intervention for Personality Change

Abstract

Research indicates that it might be possible to change personality traits through intervention, but this clinical research has primarily focused on changing neuroticism. To date, there are no established, proven techniques for changing other domains of personality, such as conscientiousness and openness. This research examined the effects of a two‐week smartphone‐based intervention to either change one facet of conscientiousness (i.e. self‐discipline) or one facet of openness to experience (i.e. openness to action). Two intervention studies (total N = 255) with two active intervention groups for mutual comparisons were conducted. Results of self‐reports and observer reports showed that people who wanted to become more self‐disciplined were less self‐disciplined at pretest. Similarly, people who wanted to become more open to action were less open to action at pretest. The results showed that people who chose the self‐discipline intervention showed greater increases in self‐discipline, and people who chose the openness to action intervention showed greater increases in openness to action compared with the other group. Changes were maintained until follow‐up two and six weeks after the end of the intervention. Future work is needed to examine whether these personality changes are enduring or reflect temporary accentuation as a result of participation in the intervention. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

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

“…Furthermore, previous intervention studies have often focused on few specific traits people chose to change, such as 'become more open-minded'. The focus on one or two traits may have facilitated successful trait change because of concentrating efforts and resources on single domains (Allan et al, 2018;Hudson et al, 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015;Stieger et al, 2020). In previous studies as well as the current one, change goals were moderately correlated, that is, people who wanted to become more sociable often also wanted to become more emotionally stable and conscientious (Hudson & Roberts, 2014).…”

“…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.…”

“…In these studies, traits were self-reported and trait changes were implemented as differences in self-reports across time. One study additionally included observer reports and changes therein (Stieger et al, 2020). In two intervention studies, small goal-concurrent changes were observed for all traits in college students who repeatedly reported their current traits and change goals over a period of 16 weeks (Hudson et al, 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015).…”

“…One limitation shared by this and most other studies is that they mostly rely on self-reported change goals, self-reported traits and self-reported experiences or behaviour. First evidence indicates that-at least in an intervention context-changes are also reported by significant others, albeit to a smaller degree (Stieger et al, 2020). Nonetheless, it would be extremely useful if future studies included more objective measures of situations and states to also assess automatically elicited behaviours relevant for personality development (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017).…”

Age differences in broader autism phenotype traits from young adulthood to older adulthood

“…This gap is important because other nonclinical trait-like characteristics (e.g., personality) have shown considerable age differences Soto et al, 2010). These age differences in other traits have led to a proliferation of studies assessing the malleability of psychological characteristics and interventions aimed at improving outcomes for individuals and their significant others (Hudson et al, 2020;Stieger et al, 2020). In the current study, we examined crosssectional age differences in the BAP in a large sample of nearly 3000 adults ranging in age from 18 to 85.…”