3 ms·

Hi there, psychologist here who has done research in personality including looking at the Big Five. It's not my personal favorite set of constructs, but I have

Hi there, psychologist here who has done research in personality including looking at the Big Five. It's not my personal favorite set of constructs, but I have great respect for the body of work supporting it. Modern personality theory in no way assumes that personality doesn't change over time. It finds instead that personality tends to be "somewhat stable over time" which means that personality doesn't vary massively from week to week or month to month but can definitely shift across the lifespan. In fact, here's a large study looking at exactly that (though cross-sectional which means that many effects could be a function of age cohorts rather than actual change). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/ Regarding your hypothetical introverted recent college grad, these kinds of shifts can and do happen, but massive shifts in personality appear to be quite rare. What's more, modern work in the area has found that "within-person" variability is much greater than "between-persons" variability meaning that as individuals we express a wide range of behaviors. For example, I might be more extraverted at work and more introverted among friends or vice versa, showing internal variation. That said, we can talk about a person's average level of a trait like extraversion and that average is meaningful and predictive. As to your point, both kinds of change can and do happen, but changing our behavioral approach to life tends to be gradual and slow for most people.

mettamage 5y ago
What do you think about psilocybin's effect on openness? Are there other studies that produce such marked changes in personality?
- anbende 5y ago
  That's a very interesting question, but unfortunately it's not really my area. If you'll permit me to speculate a bit: I do clinical work as well, and I'd say that therapy produces some personality change if done long enough, but it's not a massive shift in most cases, though even small changes can make a big difference over time. Unfortunately, trauma and hardship can also have a big impact on people's personality and average behavior. Going to war or prison or suffering great loss can have a big impact.
raspasov 5y ago
I enjoyed reading your responses in this thread very much! Do you have a “favorite set of constructs”?
- anbende 5y ago
  Thank you. My more recent work has focused more on mental health constructs used to track clinical progress over time. The parts I like the most are more concerned with the activation of emotion systems than behavioral tendencies or personality. I really like the Jaak Panksepp's affective neuroscience view of emotion systems and Paul Gilbert's work on social safeness as an often overlooked emotion system. Interestingly, emotions can be measured and viewed very similarly to personality traits (really the propensity to experience a particular emotion) and in fact positive emotionality forms a subcomponent (sometimes called an 'aspect') of extroversion and negative emotionality more or less IS neuroticism.

mettamage 5y ago

What do you think about psilocybin's effect on openness? Are there other studies that produce such marked changes in personality?

anbende 5y ago
That's a very interesting question, but unfortunately it's not really my area. If you'll permit me to speculate a bit: I do clinical work as well, and I'd say that therapy produces some personality change if done long enough, but it's not a massive shift in most cases, though even small changes can make a big difference over time. Unfortunately, trauma and hardship can also have a big impact on people's personality and average behavior. Going to war or prison or suffering great loss can have a big impact.

raspasov 5y ago

I enjoyed reading your responses in this thread very much! Do you have a “favorite set of constructs”?

anbende 5y ago
Thank you. My more recent work has focused more on mental health constructs used to track clinical progress over time. The parts I like the most are more concerned with the activation of emotion systems than behavioral tendencies or personality. I really like the Jaak Panksepp's affective neuroscience view of emotion systems and Paul Gilbert's work on social safeness as an often overlooked emotion system. Interestingly, emotions can be measured and viewed very similarly to personality traits (really the propensity to experience a particular emotion) and in fact positive emotionality forms a subcomponent (sometimes called an 'aspect') of extroversion and negative emotionality more or less IS neuroticism.