The study of volitional personality change has received increasing attention in recent years, suggesting that individuals want to change for the better particularly on those socially desirable characteristics that they lack. However, individuals do not want to change for the better on all (even socially desirable) traits alike. In a meta-analytic summary of evidence on the Big Five, we demonstrate that individuals' trait levels are only negatively related to their change goals for Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, but not for Agreeableness and Openness to Experience. In three studies, two of them preregistered, we replicated these meta-analytic findings using the HEXACO model, showing negative relations between trait levels and change goals for all dimensions, except Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience. Strikingly, however, these trait-specific differences in correlations of trait levels and change goals disappeared once providing individuals with personality feedback before assessing their change goals, suggesting that individuals may generally want to change for the better once having sufficient self-knowledge. Nonetheless, the mechanisms driving this desire differ between traits: Whereas the perceived social desirability of individuals' trait levels accounted for change goals on most HEXACO dimensions, it did not account for change goals on Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience. By implication, a desire to have socially desirable characteristics that one lacks can explain change goals for some traits, but not for those traits underlying individual differences in values. As an aside, the studies offer vital information on personality development of the HEXACO dimensions over time, spanning 10 and 3.5 years, respectively. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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谁想改变，如何改变？关于人格改变目标的特质特异性。

近年来，对意志性人格改变的研究越来越受到关注，这表明个人想要更好地改变，特别是在他们缺乏的那些社会理想特征上。然而，个人并不想在所有（甚至是社会所希望的）特征上都变得更好。在对“五巨头”证据的元分析总结中，我们证明了个人的特质水平仅与他们的神经质、外向性和责任心的改变目标负相关，而与宜人性和经验开放性无关。在三项研究中，其中两项已预先注册，我们使用 HEXACO 模型复制了这些元分析结果，显示了特质水平与所有维度的变革目标之间的负相关关系，除了诚实-谦逊和开放经验。引人注目的是，然而，一旦在评估他们的改变目标之前向个人提供个性反馈，这些特征水平和改变目标相关性的特定特征差异就会消失，这表明一旦拥有足够的自我知识，个人通常可能希望改变得更好。尽管如此，推动这种愿望的机制在不同特征之间有所不同：虽然个人特征水平的感知社会期望解释了大多数 HEXACO 维度的变革目标，但它并没有解释诚实-谦逊和开放体验的变革目标。隐含地，渴望拥有一个人缺乏的社会理想特征可以解释某些特征的改变目标，但不能解释那些导致个体价值观差异的特征。作为旁白，这些研究提供了关于 HEXACO 维度个性发展的重要信息，时间分别为 10 年和 3.5 年。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。