Between adolescence and adulthood, you go through a host of changes-jobs, unpleasant haircuts and relationships that come and go. But what about who you really are? As you grow older, does your personality change?
Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behavior unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed. But according to psychologists, that's not how it works. "Personality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not just something that you're stuck with and can't get over," said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign.
That's not to say that you're a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be nearly imperceptible, Roberts told Live Science. Regular surveys on the personalities of participants over many years suggest that our personality is actually stable on shorter time scales.
We come into the world with unique temperaments (性情), and research suggests that our temperaments as children-for example, whether we're easy-going or unwilling to approach strangers-correspond to adult personalities.
Throughout the years, our personality is still changing, but slowly, Roberts said. "It's subtle. You don't notice it on that five-to-ten-year time scale, but in the long term, it becomes apparent, " he added. Psychologists also pointed out that personality tends to get "better" over time. They call it "the maturity (成熟) principle. " People become more outgoing, emotionally stable and agreeable as they grow older. Over the long run, these changes are often apparent.
Some individuals might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle applies to everyone. That makes personality change even harder to recognize in ourselves-how your personality compares with that of your peers doesn't change as much as our overall change in personality, because everyone else is changing right along with you. "There's good evidence that the average self-control of a 30- year-old is higher than a 20-ycar-old, "Donnellan said. " At the same time, people who are relatively self- controlled at 18 also tend to be relatively self-controlled at age 30. "
