You actually can change your personality

Are you the same person you were a decade ago? What about five years or even 12 months ago? The likely answer is “no.” Maybe you’re more resilient? Or perhaps you’re less judgmental? We all change and grow over time as our experiences impact and shape our personalities.

Brent W. Roberts, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a leading researcher in the field of personality, has spent most of his career looking at personality development in adulthood.

“Personality traits do change as you age,” he says. “The natural question, of course, is if your personality changes, can you actually change it?”

Roberts and fellow researchers decided to find the answer and spent years examining studies that looked at personality trait change through therapy. “We found that seeing a therapist led to a decrease of about a half a standard deviation in neuroticism,” he says. “And it happened really fast — at least from our perspective — in the first four weeks or so [of therapy].”

Often, the goal of therapy is to overcome a serious issue, such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders or substance use. While therapists don’t enter an arrangement with the intention of changing someone’s personality, the work that’s done sets the table for impacting traits, too.

If your goal is to simply change your personality instead of navigating deeper changes, you don’t necessarily need a therapist’s help, Roberts says. He and his fellow researchers conducted studies with participants who were not patients but wanted to change. They discovered that people could change any normal personality trait with about the same results that can happen during therapy.

Personality or behavior?

To change your personality, you need to understand how it differs from behavior. Personality traits are long-term patterns, while behaviors are reactions based on surroundings and circumstances. An introvert may demonstrate an extroverted trait in a specific moment and vice versa. For example, behaviors will vary significantly if someone is at a funeral or speaking to a crowd.

“That’s not what we’re thinking of when it comes to personality change,” Roberts says. “If you want to make the inference about someone’s personality, wait around and see what they do. We’re thinking about long-term pattern, what someone does unconsciously in social settings.”

How to change your personality

If you want to change your personality, the first step is to examine and establish your motivation, which is a critical ingredient. You have to want to change, Roberts says. Without motivation, you may shift behaviors in the short term, but will not likely experience lasting results.

Next, you must understand what it is you’re changing. Clarify what it is you are trying to become.

“For example, a lot of people say they would like to become less agreeable — that’s my favorite one,” Roberts says. “Oftentimes, what they really want is to be more assertive. Assertiveness doesn’t have to be mean. They just have to learn how to stick up for their position and do so effectively.”

A third part to changing your personality is being given the opportunity to act. “There’s a term on the clinical side, which is ‘psycho education’ ” Roberts says. “It’s teaching people the idea of what they’re supposed to do, but not actually giving them a chance to practice and work through the process. This is the mistake we usually make.”

An opportunity to implement and practice is essential. In the absence of this step, Roberts says he’s skeptical someone could change their personality.

“You have to give people the opportunity to try the new behaviors, implement them, fail at them, try them again, and give them guidance in an effort to create the skill itself,” Roberts says.

The fourth step is having somebody to guide you. You could work with a therapist, coach or accountability buddy, or you could turn to technology. “I don’t think it has to be a human necessarily, especially now that we’re getting sophisticated with generative AI,” Roberts says. “But you need some kind of system that helps you keep yourself accountable.”

If you’re motivated and follow a program that leverages well-informed techniques, Roberts says you can change your personality.

“There [are] lots of efforts to change people in a variety of ways, usually emerging out of more behavioral approaches,” he says. “They’re not changing personality; they’re just changing behaviors. The irony is that many of those techniques are really quite good for changing someone’s personality, too.”

For instance, he says, there are common methods people use to become better conversational partners. “I believe that if you practice what [these techniques] preach, you’re going to be become much more comfortable in interactions, and you’ll probably become more extroverted in the process.”

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