Your Personality does not Care Whether you Believe it Can Change: Beliefs about Whether Personality can Change do not Predict Trait Change among Emerging Adults

Abstract

Theorists have suggested that beliefs about whether personality can change might operate in a self–fulfilling fashion, leading to growth in personality traits across time. In the present two studies, we collected intensive longitudinal data from a total of 1339 emerging adults (ns = 254 and 1085) and examined the extent to which both global beliefs that personality can change (e.g. ‘You can change even your most basic qualities’) and granular beliefs that the individual Big Five personality domains can change (e.g. ‘You can change how extraverted and enthusiastic you generally are’) predicted trait change across approximately 4 months. Results indicated that traits did change across time, yet beliefs that personality can change were almost completely unrelated to actual change in personality traits. Our findings suggest that personality development during emerging adulthood does not depend to any meaningful degree on whether or not individuals believe that their traits can change. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology