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

Abstract

Most adults want to change aspects of their personality. However, previous studies have provided mixed evidence on whether such change goals can be successfully implemented, perhaps partly due to neglecting the goals’ importance and feasibility as well as the experience of trait-relevant situations and states. This study examined associations between change goals and changes in self-reported Big Five traits assessed four times across two years in an age-heterogeneous sample of 382 adults (255 younger adults, Mage = 21.6 years; 127 older adults, Mage = 67.8 years). We assessed trait-relevant momentary situations and states in multiple waves of daily diaries over the first year ( M = 43.9 days). Perceived importance and feasibility of change goals were analysed as potentially moderating factors. Contrary to our hypotheses, the results demonstrated that neither change goals nor goal importance or feasibility were consistently associated with trait change, likely due to inconsistent associations with momentary situations and behaviours. The results suggest that wanting to change one’s traits does not necessarily lead to changes without engaging in trait-relevant situations and behaviours. These findings provide novel insights into the boundary conditions of volitional personality development.

Age and context effects in personality development: A multimethod perspective.

“…No previous publication based on this data set addressed the group differences in longitudinal multimethod development of Big Five traits. Previous publications used only the first wave of the project (Breil et al, 2022; Quintus et al, 2017; Weber et al, 2020), focused on daily experiences or change goals to predict personality development (Lücke et al, 2021; Quintus et al, 2021), or applied diffusion models longitudinally on IAT data only (von Krause et al, 2021).…”

Daily life processes predict long-term development in explicit and implicit representations of Big Five traits: Testing predictions from the TESSERA (Triggering situations, Expectancies, States and State Expressions, and ReActions) framework.

“…Participants provided informed consent and worked on questionnaires and tests as part of a larger study on age differences in personality development (Lücke, Quintus, Egloff, & Wrzus, 2019; Quintus, Egloff, & Wrzus, 2017; Wrzus, Quintus, & Egloff, 2020). Further articles from this study focused on predictors of goals to change personality traits without including longitudinal data or IATs (Quintus et al, 2017), on the role of goals to change personality traits, goal importance and goal feasibility for personality development (Lücke et al, 2019), and on age difference in personality development without examining momentary processes (Wrzus, Luong, Wagner, & Riediger, 2020). A list of all instruments used in the study is available at https://osf.io/k9wsv/.…”

Advancing a Three-Tier Personality Framework for Posttraumatic Growth

“…To the extent that people manifest such goals in actual daily behaviors, which over time turn into behavioral patterns, change can be observed in traits and characteristic adaptations (Hudson et al, 2019; Stieger et al, 2021; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017). Thus, life narratives sometimes include conceptions of people’s ideal or desired selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986), and such desired selves can contribute to actual changes in behavioral and experiential patterns, that is, changes in personality traits (Hudson et al, 2019; Stieger et al, 2021; but see Lücke et al, 2021 for boundary conditions of change).…”